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Exotic Animal Trafficking and Safe Havens with Bobbi Brink · The Animal Advocate

0:00
Welcome back to The Animal Advocate, your guide for moving
0:04
from compassion into action. Have you ever wondered
0:07
what happens to the animals when an idiot with a pet tiger gets
0:11
caught or a crappy roadside zoo gets shut down by the
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authorities? Today, we're going to meet someone who
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steps in to care for captive wild animals with nowhere else
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to go. She's a hero, and she's gonna let us
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in on what it's like to live with lions, tigers,
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and bears.
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Welcome to the animal advocate, where we arm animal lovers
0:38
with the information and inspiration you need to become
0:42
effective advocates. I'm your host, Penny Ellison, and
0:46
I've taught animal law and advocacy at the University of Pennsylvania
0:49
since 02/2006. If you've ever thought
0:53
someone should do something about that, I'm here to guide you
0:57
on your journey to being that someone. You can
1:00
find us on the web at
1:02
animaladvocacyacademy.com. And that's where
1:05
you'll find show notes and resources, and you can send us your comments
1:09
on episodes and ideas for topics you'd like to hear on future
1:13
shows. So on to today's topic.
1:23
In our last episode, we explored the world of private
1:27
exotic animal ownership and roadside wildlife
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attractions. We learned about the patchwork of largely
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inadequate regulations that often allow people to purchase
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tigers, bears, and primates with little more than a permit,
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if that. We discussed how these animals often live in
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deplorable conditions, from backyard cages and
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residential neighborhoods to disgusting roadside zoos that
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prioritize profit over animal welfare. But here's
1:55
what happens next in this story, and it's a question most
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people never think to ask. When these exotic animals are
2:03
abandoned by their owners or seized by authorities for
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neglect or illegal possession, where do they go?
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You might assume there are some government facility that takes them in.
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After all, if authorities are seizing illegally owned tigers or
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bears, they must have somewhere to house them. Right?
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Wrong. Government agencies generally don't maintain
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facilities for the long term care of confiscated wild animals.
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So these animals, often traumatized, sometimes
2:34
injured, and always in need of specialized care,
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find themselves in limbo. This is where wildlife
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sanctuaries come in. And I need to be very clear about something
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when I say sanctuaries. I'm not talking about
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every facility that calls itself a sanctuary.
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The unfortunate reality is that many so called sanctuaries
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are barely better than the situations these animals came from.
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Some are essentially roadside zoos in disguise, still
3:05
allowing public interaction, breeding animals,
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or operating with minimal oversight. Others may have good
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intentions, but lack the resources, expertise,
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or proper accreditation to provide the right kind of care for these
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incredibly complex animals. True sanctuaries,
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legitimate accredited sanctuaries, are remarkably
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rare. According to the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries,
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the only globally recognized accrediting body for sanctuaries,
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only 8% of organizations calling themselves
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sanctuaries in The United States have earned GFAS
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accreditation. Globally, GFS has accredited and verified
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just over 215 facilities that meet their
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rigorous standards. The financial burden on these legitimate
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sanctuaries is staggering. Caring for exotic animals
4:00
requires specialized diets, veterinary expertise,
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and secure enclosures that can cost hundreds of thousands, if
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not millions of dollars. Add in veterinary expenses
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that can be extraordinary, and you can begin to understand
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the enormous responsibility these sanctuaries shoulder,
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often with limited or no public funding, instead relying
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on private donations. So what does it take to
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run a real sanctuary? What does proper care look like
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for a tiger who spent years pacing in a small cage
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or a bear who was declawed and had teeth removed for photo
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opportunities? How do you rehabilitate animals who've
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never experienced appropriate social interaction with their own
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species? And perhaps more importantly, how do you
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provide this level of care sustainably knowing that these
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animals might live for decades? Today, I'm
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so excited to share my conversation with Bobby Brink,
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founder and director of Lions, Tigers, and Bears Sanctuary
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in California. Lions, Tigers, and Bears is exactly
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the kind of facility we need more of, a GFAS accredited
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facility that provides lifetime care for rescued exotic
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animals. Bobbie has dedicated her career to this work
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and has seen firsthand the consequences of our failed exotic
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animal policies. She's going to tell us what it
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really takes to give these animals the lives they deserve after rescue,
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and why the exotic animal crisis in America is far worse than most
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people realize. So why she makes part of her mission
5:39
fighting for legal change, and you can too. So
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let's explore the world of true wildlife sanctuaries and hear from
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someone who's dedicated her life to cleaning up the mess created
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by private exotic animal ownership. Here's my conversation
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with Bobbie Brink from Lions, Tigers, and Bears.
6:02
Welcome, Bobbie. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's great to
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have you because I I hadn't really talked to anyone who runs the sanctuary before,
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and I really wanna learn everything I I can from you. Tell me about
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lions, tigers, and bears and how you got started. Lions,
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tigers, and bears were an accredited sanctuary. We rescue animals
6:20
all across the country and a little bit abroad, and we work with
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the first responders, help get animals out of places that they shouldn't
6:27
be. We are their voice, and then we're an education
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center. Where do the animals come from? Every
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single animal has their very own story. So some of them are
6:38
pets that are surrendered. Some are animals that are actually
6:42
compensated by the authorities. You know, someone might have, believe it or
6:45
not, a tiger in their basement or their horse trailer or their kitchen
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or they're just housing a pet or they're the actual wildlife
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trafficking. A lot of people don't know wildlife trafficking is second to
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drugs and weapons and human trafficking in our country. So there's
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a lot of money involved. So, of course, there's a lot of drugs
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and cartel involved, and the animals are the ones that suffer.
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So we work on trying to stop that and then, of
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course, place the animals that are compensated, you know,
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when we're lucky enough to catch these people. So let's talk about that
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because I think you're right that most people don't know a whole lot about wildlife
7:23
trafficking. They hear the word, but let's talk about what it really looks like. What
7:27
kind of animals are most likely to be trafficked? Where are they coming from? And
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who's buying them? Lots and lots of animals. So believe
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it or not, I think reptiles and birds are the most.
7:38
They're you know, sometimes a hundred birds will have to die or a hundred snakes
7:42
will have to die for one to get through, and they try everything. They
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literally are hiding them in sea crates, hiding them in luggage, taping them to
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their own body, you know, whatever they can do to try to sneak the animals
7:53
through here in San Diego. We're right by the ports. We're close to Long Beach.
7:57
We're close to the Tijuana border. So we have a tiger
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named Moka who they caught coming over the border on the
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floorboard of someone's car just as a baby little baby
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tiger, US customs. From Mexico then? From Mexico.
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Yeah. We have another tiger right now that came over the Texas
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Mexico border, and then we occasionally get the
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babies that people that the authorities compensate from people trying to have
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them as pets. So it's pretty amazing how they try
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to sneak animals in and, you know, it just makes you wonder. It must be
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very lucrative. I mean, I don't know what a baby tiger or a baby lion
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goes for. What do you do you have any idea? It depends. Like, we have
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a a jaguar that the girl I'm really
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not sure the source. I don't even know if the authorities really were able
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to find the source. That was part of her not getting sentence as they were
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trying to get her to talk. But she literally was taking a baby
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jaguar around to, conferences or conventions,
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and then she would get people to come to the hotel rooms to get her
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photo taken. Mhmm. She sold Eddie, our jaguar, for
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$50,000, and then he brought the jaguar
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home as a pet for his wife in, to Riverside, which is north of
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us, couple hours north of us. Eddie was sold again for
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$25,000. Then they hired somebody to
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kill Eddie. Yikes. So they could get rid of him because they gotta get rid
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of the evidence after they're done having him as a pet. Well, the guy who
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they hired to kill him chickened out and abandoned him in the middle of the
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night on our road. So that's $75,000 for one
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animal, plus she got paid to transport him illegally
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because he's an endangered species across the state lines.
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So it just depends on the animal, and sometimes we never really get to find
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out how much money is involved. And I know some of I
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read your website where some of your line you have a few lions, and I
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think tigers that came to you as cubs, like, did they come from other
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sanctuaries? You know, usually, they do something stupid
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like post pictures on social media. And I have a
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friend who's incredible at figuring out who these people
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are, you know, through cyber, like, security behind the scenes
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on social She's a great online sleuth? Mhmm. Yep. So
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he's really good at it, and then the authorities go and arrest them and
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take the animal. So we have quite a few animals that have come from that
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situation, and then we have a lot of situations where we're watching the
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bad players and watch how many animals are bred
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and and go through their place. Like, some of these places, they're not even
10:29
USDA licensed. The USDA will come once a year
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and inspect, but, you know, if a tiger breeds every hundred and five
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days, there's a lot of animals that could be bred and go
10:40
in and out the door before that. Without in between
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inspections? And And that that was the next thing I wanted to ask you about
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is is enforcement. So I'm guessing that you
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get the lucky few animals that get caught in this
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transport, but I'm thinking that's the tip of the iceberg.
10:58
Definitely. Because I think more of them disappear. And, you
11:02
know, before we got the Big Cat Public Safety Act passed, you see these
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people, Doc Annals, a perfect example on the East Coast,
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breeding hundreds of animals every year just to keep the
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photo op business open. And I I've been outside of his
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place and witnessed the line out the door, you know, for people
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to stand and get their photo taken. And me and my girlfriend stood there a
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couple hours. The longest a cub was on someone's lap was, like,
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fifty seconds. So they're literally standing in line.
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They're sitting down on a bench. The cub's being placed on their lap. The
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bottle's being plugged into the baby, and they feed it. They get their
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four, five, six pictures taken, and then they set the next person down. So
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they're just making money, but those babies gotta rotate because they can
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only use the babies two, four, six months max,
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and then they've gotta get rid of them and get new. So it's
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just a vicious cycle. Cycle. So we
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always tell people, please, please never have your picture taken with a baby animal. There's
12:01
no legitimate organization left in our country that'll do it. And
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then we've got to work globally to educate people not to do
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it Because I think they're really good liars, and they tell
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the public it's con I call it conservation, or
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they're rescuing, you know, all these babies in their sanctuary,
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which they're really not when they're doing it for nothing more than to
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make money, make money, make money. All the bad actors co opt the
12:26
words rescue and adopt, and it drives me crazy. Some of
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them, they start out with good intention, and then I I don't
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know what happens. But it just gets worse and and worse and worse.
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That's piece of advice number one to our listeners is don't
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ever get your picture taken with a baby, big cat, or other exotic
12:45
animal. Yeah. Like, especially if you get off a cruise ship. I've gone on the
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cruise ships and go in the theater and and warn people, you know, please don't
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go support these people and explain to them what happens to the babies
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after. Because they probably think by paying to do that,
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they're supporting the baby in some way. Like, they're giving that person the money so
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they'll take better care of the baby. Yeah. There's a place right down in,
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Ensenada, La Bluffadora, which is the bluff the blowhole down
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there south of Ensenada, and it's gone bananas or
13:14
something. Banana Republic, it's called. There's something banana. But, yeah,
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please don't go there either. Just babies it's Mexico. There's nothing we can
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do about it, but you know the babies are getting killed and drugged and everything
13:25
else. It's really sad. Wow. That is terrible. It should
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be illegal for cubs. Right? Because you told me that you fought for
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nineteen years to get the big cat public safety act passed at the
13:36
federal level. Most of my listeners are advocates, and they wanna advocate for
13:40
laws. So let's talk about your advocacy on that issue and what it
13:44
took to get it passed. Right. Eighteen years ago, Tippi Hedren
13:48
and I walked the halls for the first time to try to get our
13:51
sponsors to sign on, and it took multiple times. The first
13:55
time we got shot down by Kenneth Feld, which is the person who
13:58
ran Ringling Brothers. Right. So many times we had to rewrite
14:02
the bill so that we could exempt the circuses and, you know,
14:06
still try to work at the circuses at a different angle, but yet to try
14:09
to get the bill to stop the photo ops and stop the unnecessary
14:13
breeding. Because the way these animals originated into the
14:17
private sector is as surplus animals from the zoos.
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So, you know, you think about your local zoo and every year they're breeding a
14:24
tiger, well, a tiger will live twenty years in captivity. So in order for
14:28
them to continue to breed and have baby tigers at the zoo every
14:31
year, those other tigers have to go someplace.
14:35
So a lot of them would go to private breeders, which actually breed
14:39
more, and then that's where the trouble starts. So But
14:43
they were getting into something a little controversial here, but I think we should, which
14:46
is, you know, there are big cats in zoos and other large exotic
14:50
animals that and that's certainly their environment there is nothing like
14:54
their environment in the wild. But, you know, they do do some
14:57
work on conservation, but they have people raise legitimate problems
15:01
with them, including what you've said, which is they breed more animals to have
15:05
babies. Right. So the surplus. So it's gotta be really
15:09
limited breeding and, you know, there's gotta be a place for these animals
15:13
to spend their entire life because when they go out the back door, then
15:16
that's when the trouble starts with the bad players.
15:20
And some of these breeders, they don't care what they breed to what. They just
15:23
care about getting a baby and making their profit. So So then we
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even come up with the hybrids, you know, the ligers and the tigons,
15:31
and these animals have so many health issues. I mean, I
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I can tell you how much money we've spent on the hybrids just trying
15:38
to save their lives and, you know, the things that happened to them after the
15:42
photo op. So it's really hard. You know? So the Big Cat
15:46
Public Safety Act, if enforced, should stop the
15:49
unnecessary breeding outside of the species survival plan, which
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is means outside of the AZA accredited zoos. And
15:56
then hopefully, we can, you know, educate the public to only support
16:00
accredited sanctuaries and what an accredited sanctuary is.
16:04
And the biggest thing being an accredited sanctuary will never buy,
16:08
breed, sell, trade animals. They rescue for life so the
16:11
animal gets to live out their life at the sanctuary, you know, with dignity
16:15
and properly cared for with individual care. I think that's
16:19
another really important point that I wanna drive home in this
16:23
episode is there is a difference between sanctuaries.
16:27
And just like people misuse the words rescue and adopt, I think
16:30
they borrow the word sanctuary. But if they're not accredited, that
16:34
could mean that they don't meet those standards, that they aren't providing
16:38
great care, that they aren't committed to those animals for life. There's a lot of
16:41
those sanctuaries around. Right? There's more unaccredited
16:45
sanctuaries. And, you know, if they're not accredited, there's a reason. And a lot of
16:49
them don't wanna be accredited because you're getting a peer review
16:52
when when you're accredited. I mean, they're gonna go through your financials.
16:56
You're gonna have an audit every single year. Like, my books, we want them
17:00
to be audited. They're audited every single year. So if you make a donation,
17:04
you can feel comfortable knowing your money is going to the animals and to the
17:07
cause. And, you know, a lot of them have offshore accounts. The money's not
17:11
even going to the animals. It's a mess. And if they're not accredited, there's
17:15
usually a reason because, like myself, I've helped many
17:18
sanctuaries to get accredited. You know, we help each other. Because, you
17:22
know, not any one sanctuary can take all the animals. I've driven
17:26
myself well over 300,000 miles in my little semi truck
17:30
delivering animals, you know, not only here, but to other sanctuaries. Because not
17:34
all sanctuaries have, you know, the transport like we do. So that's
17:37
one way we can help, and we're trained to go in and help the first
17:41
responders go in dangerous situation and get animals
17:44
safely out. And I read that you were involved in the
17:48
situation in Ohio years ago where mentally ill
17:52
individual released a a large number of exotic animals.
17:55
Right. That was Sainesville, and that really actually you know, you always get something
17:59
good out of something bad. That helped us, you know, push our bill through.
18:03
Because the governor had told us, you know, absolutely not. This bill
18:07
will never go through. You're taking away people's rights by not
18:11
allowing them to own a tiger. And then Zanesville happened where they
18:14
released, like, 55 exotic animals to run loose in the
18:18
city, and then we instantly it was game back
18:21
on. We got a meeting with the governor. I got a meeting with the state
18:25
officials. I worked to train the state officials what a good you
18:29
know, what proper fencing is and how to go in and get the
18:32
animals, and then I moved over about 220 animals for
18:36
the state of Ohio out of the state of Ohio and to proper
18:39
sanctuaries, including here. Your work is amazing, and that
18:43
contribution is amazing. And, Mark, something that
18:47
is sort of frequent in trying to get legal change is you kind of needed
18:51
a disaster to get people's attention to that issue and get that
18:54
law passed in Ohio. Because, you know, we talked about the Big Cat Act
18:58
that you got passed at the federal level, but I think a lot of our
19:01
listeners are thinking about, you know, what can I do at the state and the
19:05
local level? And I will put a a link in the show notes
19:08
to an interactive map that's online where you can look at what
19:12
your state's regulations are because it really is a patchwork quilt
19:15
of some states pretty much ban ownership of
19:19
exotic animals. Some, you know, have some regulations, some do not
19:22
much. More can be adopted or more can be done at the state
19:26
level to try to get rid of that market. Like, when you said at the
19:30
zoos, breed a lot of babies, then at the they go out the back door
19:33
to whoever. Well, if your state lets people own that type of animal, it
19:37
can go out the back door to a private owner who has no idea how
19:40
to care for it. Right? Right. Exactly. What I'd like to see is them
19:44
be spayed and neutered before they go out the back door if they're not gonna
19:48
be used for the SSP plan anymore and that we know where they're
19:52
going and that they're gonna at least safely live live out
19:55
their life. Right. Well, let's talk about that too because we haven't
19:59
talked about what life is like at your sanctuary. And you said, you know, some
20:03
people, whether they're individuals or they're people who are calling
20:07
themselves a sanctuary but really aren't providing the right care. How many
20:10
animals do you have on how many acres? What does it look like to care
20:13
for them? So right now, we have a 42 acres. We have
20:17
65 animals, 19 different species, and then
20:20
it's individual care for every animal. Because a lot of these
20:24
rescue animals, when they come in, they've never had any medical care,
20:28
and a lot of them have either psychological problems or
20:31
medical problems or both. So we always start with a
20:35
quarantine, which is a small area so that they can get comfortable,
20:39
learn how to shift, which is where you move from one enclosure to another.
20:43
That allows us to medicate them, to manage
20:46
them, and then the keepers can get in the empty side and clean.
20:50
And then we just will move up to after a minimal thirty
20:53
day medical because we we gotta get we can't put unhealthy
20:57
animals next to our healthy animals, so they gotta get through all the medical. But
21:01
in that time, they'll get to know their keeper. They'll get conditioned to go in
21:04
and out of a transfer cage, and you want them to go in and out
21:07
of a transfer cage. So number one, you can evacuate an emergency or a
21:11
fire or any kind of emergency, and you can always get them in that transfer
21:15
cage to get them up to the medical or the surgery room for medical and
21:18
an easy way to transport them around. Because some of them, we do move around,
21:22
so they don't get bored, and they're not always in the same
21:26
And then we'll have, like, geriatric animals, so they have to have a smaller
21:30
area. We have a tiger that we brought in named Cali. She was abandoned in
21:33
a field. And she'd been declawed, and this is a big one, is
21:37
metabolic bone disease. Because most of these people who take these animals
21:41
on as babies, they don't know how to properly feed, so they get
21:45
metabolic bone disease, meaning lack of calcium in their bones.
21:49
And it just causes pain, lameness. The declaw
21:52
is literally cutting. It's not filing a nail. It's
21:56
cutting at the knuckle. So it's really painful for the rest of their lives.
22:00
So Cali came in really painful. And from the
22:04
metabolic bone disease, she fractured her leg. So we did a surgery where we put
22:07
metal plates, screws, and she did really well, and
22:11
then the screws gave out on the plate. So
22:15
we ended up having to amputate her leg. So now she's our three
22:19
legged tiger, but she's, like, the happiest tiger ever. But, of course,
22:22
she can't have a big habitat, and she can't have a big pool. So
22:26
we had to put her in a smaller habitat with a shallower pool
22:30
so she can always touch the bottom. And then she had to have rails on
22:34
her platforms, and her platforms aren't as high, so we don't allow her to
22:37
climb as high so she doesn't doesn't hurt herself. So it just
22:41
depends on the animals and, you know, the enrichment we can give
22:44
them and how much we can have them naturally
22:48
forage and things like that. But we just try to go one animal at a
22:52
time and make it the most natural care. You know, we've we
22:55
brought in bears. Like, we brought in our sugar bear. He lived in a corn
22:59
crib on concrete for probably seven years. So
23:03
it took him, like, a a over a week just to put his head out
23:05
the open door because he was so afraid of space.
23:09
It does remind me of the chimps that come out of labs after decades,
23:13
and it's not like they're chimp. They don't know what acting like a
23:16
chimp means. They gotta learn how to be a bear. He had to learn what
23:19
dirt was, but now now he covers the whole three acres. I
23:23
know you have big cats, obviously, and and, you know, you're not gonna release them
23:26
into the wild, but I see that you have bears and bobcats or mountain
23:30
lions. But all of the animals that you have cannot be released into the
23:34
wild? Yeah. Or they wouldn't be here. If an animal had a
23:37
chance of going back out in the wild, we would take it to a rehab
23:41
first. They would try to rerelease, and if not, then it
23:45
would come to a sanctuary. Yeah. So, like, we have a couple bears,
23:48
like a meatball, our bear. He was coming into Glendale and get the
23:52
food, and they transport him a couple hundred miles. They darted
23:56
him from the trash cans in couple hundred miles, but he'd come back
23:59
every Tuesday. So they really did try to put him back
24:03
out. Every Tuesday on a schedule that like that? On a schedule. Is that
24:07
because he knew what trash day was? Yep. So
24:11
he, you know, he's here, and he's done really well. We were really concerned because
24:14
he was an adult male black bear right out of the
24:18
wild, but he's done really, really well. He's had no problems adapting,
24:21
and he lives with five other bears. So he's a happy bear.
24:25
That's great. Yeah. What type of advocacy efforts, like, on
24:29
the legislative front are you working on now? So I work with a
24:33
group of people, you know, all across the country. We meet on Thursdays by
24:36
Zoom or phone, and we just try to go state by state and do what
24:40
we can. So right now, we're working on the Primate Public Safety
24:44
Act along with many other organizations, and we're
24:47
gonna work on try to get that through. That's federal. We just
24:50
finished working on a bill up in Washington, which stops traveling
24:54
circuses. So believe it or not, people are still traveling around
24:58
trying to travel around with elephants and bears and lions, and
25:02
it's really sad, a a life on the road for animals. Yeah.
25:05
Ringling Brothers stopped, which was great, but, you know, thanks in part to public
25:09
pressure and local laws. But I guess there's smaller players that are
25:13
still doing it? They're still trying, and they're very secretive of it. And
25:16
it's really hard because they all of a sudden just pop up at a state
25:19
fair or pop up at the shrine or circus or wherever. So what should
25:23
people do if if you see that? What do you do if if you say,
25:26
oh my gosh. I'm at the state fair, and there's animals here that are you
25:29
know, don't belong? We try to immediately go to the authorities, and we try
25:32
to catch it before so we can write letters and, you know, do the best
25:36
we can, try to stop the media for them, things like that. But
25:40
the biggest thing is we work on the state getting it state by state.
25:44
And the state by state that you're trying to get is bans on the
25:47
private ownership of big cats and other exotic species? The
25:51
traveling acts. Traveling acts. Okay. Right. Yeah. So the
25:55
federal bill now should cover private ownership, and it
25:58
should cover the photo ops. It's just a matter of
26:02
getting it enforced now. For big cats. Yes. I'm thinking of other
26:06
species. Yeah. And that was another thing that's really hard. You know, myself being a
26:09
small organization, you don't always have all the say. I
26:13
really wanted this whole eighteen years, it to be big cats,
26:17
bears, wolves, and primates, which would have been huge.
26:20
But did somebody make the decision that that was too heavy of a lift?
26:25
Yeah. I think so. I don't need a job.
26:29
I need to get this job done. We're we're working on it. We have the
26:32
primate one going, and now we're gonna work on the bears and the wolves, which
26:36
are big. And then you'll also see sloths. So this is another problem they
26:39
move to other animals. So they'll move to sloths. They'll move to the little
26:43
lemurs, the quatumondis, anything the public
26:47
can hold. Right. So that's why the you need a broader based
26:50
band. It's a matter of really if we could get in every third
26:54
grade class and teach the kids what not to do, maybe we would have better
26:57
luck. Human education is certainly an element of it. Is there a way
27:01
that people can find out what state laws you're fighting for? Is there
27:05
a website or anything? We usually have it on our website.
27:09
We're working on getting another list going so that we can start working on
27:13
that primate one, which will if people wanna sign up, then we
27:16
email them, like, what they can do to help, like, write a letter and who
27:20
to write it to. And then we have a website where they can look up
27:23
who their representative is. Like, you do that right on our
27:26
social media. And when we talk about the primate bill, it's to do the same
27:30
thing for primates that you've done for big cats, which is to make this type
27:33
of holding and petting opportunities illegal so you
27:37
take the profit out of it and hopefully don't have them being bred for that
27:39
purpose. And for the people who try to have them as pets in their home
27:43
because Right. It's really sad. Well, there's certainly been enough examples of
27:47
that's not a safe practice. You should have a long You would think. List. Yes.
27:51
Yeah. But it still happens. We mentioned that when we can
27:54
people can follow what you're doing on your website, which is
27:58
lionstigersbears.org? Lions tigers and bears Org. Everything
28:01
is plural and is spelled out in .org for nonprofit. We'll put a
28:05
link to that in the show notes. And how can people help you if most
28:08
people can't take a rescued lion or tiger into their house even though they would
28:12
very much want to? I know there are sponsorship opportunities on your website.
28:16
Mhmm. There's sponsorship opportunities. You could even help by giving a
28:19
silent or live auction item. Sharing on your social media
28:23
helps huge, telling other people, peer
28:27
fundraising fundraising. You can come and volunteer. If you wanna help, there's always
28:31
ways to help. That's great. So we'll we'll put links to all that stuff in
28:34
the show notes and send everybody there, and thank you so much for the work
28:38
that you do. I'm so glad that when these kinds of animals are in crisis
28:42
that somebody like you is there to help them. Thank you, Penny. Thank you. Come
28:45
out and visit us if you or if you're ever here. I will. I will.
28:49
Alright. Thank you.
28:54
So I hope you enjoyed the interview with Bobby Brink and you learned
28:58
something. If you haven't had a chance to listen to last week's episode
29:02
about all the laws regulating exotic pet ownership, it'd be a
29:05
great idea to go back and that will give you some ideas for how you
29:09
can advocate for wild animals in captivity.
29:14
That's it for today. The Animal Advocate podcast is brought
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29:52
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30:00
remember, compassion is great, but compassionate
30:04
action is infinitely better. Until next week,
30:08
live with compassion.