The Keenesburg sanctuary has saved animals from Tiger King and the Puerto Rico zoo, and now it's focusing on mustangs.
The bold move comes at a time when many animal welfare groups are still reeling from the aftershocks of the pandemic, which cut into donations, and the toxic emanations from the 2020 Netflix documentary series, which introduced millions of Americans to Joe Exotic and the grotesque world of private zoos. But instead of cutting back, Craig is doubling down.
north of Boulder, Pat Craig never gave much thought to what he now calls the “captive wildlife crisis.” But shortly after he finished high school, he visited a friend who worked at a South Carolina zoo.
Craig also pushed for new ways for visitors to interact with the place. Twenty years ago, TWAS began erecting an elevated walkway that would allow people to safely stroll 35 feet above the habitats, observing the wildlife below — without, Craig insists, inflicting stress on the animals that comes from the in-your-face gawking in a typical zoo. The “Mile Into the Wild” walkway now spans a total of 1.5 miles, which the group says is a world record for such a structure.
“There was this big misnomer that we were another zoo,” he recalls. “We started getting up to 200,000 visitors a year, and at least half of them thought it was for entertainment. They were leaving trash everywhere. They were writing graffiti. They didn’t care. They didn’t want to learn. It was crazy. We tried so many different ways to fix that.”
“I was one of the first to say that I didn’t care if people thought it was funny or what,” Craig says. “What happened was millions [of viewers] learned that there are people breeding the crap out of lions and tigers, and a lot of the bad actors have seen that the Department of Justice is now much more willing to go after them. They know they have to get out of this and do something else.”
There are now more than 60,000 wild horses and burros in long-term holding facilities around the country, costing taxpayers $80 million a year. That’s close to double the number still left in the wild. The BLM has pushed its successful adoption rate up to 50 percent and claims that its remaining captives are “cared for on open pastures for the rest of their lives.
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