![]() That's when Harrison takes matters into his own hands. In the documentary, Harrison approaches each of the big cat handlers from TV - Hanna, Miller, Salmoni and Smith - to ask where their cats go after their TV appearances. When celebrity animal experts bring a big cat or other exotic animal on TV, they often say they're associated with an accredited zoo or animal sanctuary.īut Harrison notes in the documentary that, despite having connections with almost all the zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), he's never seen a single ambassador cat show up at one of the accredited facilities. ![]() Tim Harrison connects the dots between celebrity animal experts and roadside zoos and backyard breeders of endangered species. "A regular person can just buy themselves an endangered species and walk out of there without any paperwork whatsoever." "You walk through this big mass crowd of people, and all sudden, you see carts filled with these cages: big cats, bear cubs, primates," recalls Harrison in the documentary. In The Conservation Game, Harrison visits an exotic animal auction in Ohio, equipped with a hidden camera. The absolute worst were these exotic animal auctions." Uncovering the truth about celebrity conservationists We had backyard breeders, we had the roadside zoos. ![]() "And, on the other hand, you had a seedy underbelly. "You had the celebrity conservationists, they come on TV and they've got their endangered species, their ambassador animals," says Harrison. Harrison began to wonder if there was a link between the celebrity conservationists and the exotic animals in people's homes. "I asked them, 'Why did you bring this tiger into your home?' 'I watched it on Animal Planet.'" "All of a sudden, I get a call from a local police department," says Harrison in the documentary, "somebody a tiger in their basement." Exotic and dangerous animals were turning up in people's homes and backyards, he recalls. Late-night hosts would regularly ask where the animals lived, where their parents lived or where they'd go after their TV appearances, and the conservationists might reference "a sanctuary there in Pennsylvania" or "a nice little zoo somewhere." These "ambassador animals," which often represented endangered species, were said to be there to educate the audience. Where do the cats go? / Watching two worlds collideįor a long time, many late-night talk shows had their own "animal guy" - a conservationist who would bring exotic animals onto the studio stage for light-hearted entertainment. And he's shocked when he makes a bombshell discovery: some of North America's top celebrity conservationists, like Hanna, Jarod Miller, Boone Smith and Dave Salmoni, may be secretly connected to the exotic pet trade. In The Conservation Game, a documentary presented by The Passionate Eye, Harrison, who's a retired police officer and director of the non-profit Outreach for Animals, goes on a mission to find out what's happened to some of the entertainment industry's favourite cats. ![]() After those lions, tigers and jaguars had their moments in the spotlight, they would disappear. But as he grew older, Harrison noticed a problem with the animal experts he idolized. "Someday, I wanna be like Jack Hanna … That was my dream," he says. He especially loved to watch exotic animals on late-night talk shows, appearing live in front of studio audiences. When Tim Harrison was growing up, he loved watching animals on TV. ![]() ‘The Conservation Game’ follows one man’s investigation into TV conservationists and their connections to the exotic animal trade. ![]()
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