Group Calls on Pahrump Authorities to Revoke Big Cat Encounters' Owner's Permit to Keep Big Cats
For Immediate Release:
February 12, 2013
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Pahrump, Nev.— PETA is urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to pursue criminal charges against animal exhibitor Karl Mitchell, owner and operator of Big Cat Encounters, who has continued to disregard federal law and public safety by exhibiting big cats without a USDA exhibitor's license. And as the Pahrump Regional Planning Commission (PRPC) will vote on Wednesday whether to revoke the Conditional Use Permit (CUP) that allows Mitchell to keep big cats, PETA has also written to the PRPC to urge committee members to revoke the permit, stressing that CUPs require compliance with federal law—a requirement that Mitchell has repeatedly violated.
"Of all the despicable animal exhibitors PETA has encountered, Karl Mitchell—who thumbs his nose at public safety and the law every time he exhibits a tiger—is one of the worst," says PETA Foundation Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Delcianna Winders. "The time for warnings and civil penalties has long passed: The USDA must press criminal charges, and Nye County needs to enforce the local laws that make it illegal for Mitchell to have big cats in Pahrump."
As PETA explains in its letter to the USDA, Mitchell's website advertises direct contact, including for children, with dangerous big cats—a violation of federal law even for licensed exhibitors. Mitchell has even endangered visitors on an episode of National Geographic's Animal Intervention, during which he also made threatening remarks about the USDA, including that "those people could not ever come here without having one of these tigers eat them" and that if someone tried to take his cats, "I'd shoot them."
In addition to revoking his license, the USDA has previously issued three cease-and-desist orders against Mitchell and fined him more than $100,000.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.