The extremely weird saga of Joe Exotic’s animal preserve in Oklahoma is still going, but at least one of its threads got wrapped up. According to reports, Exotic’s former big cat rival Carole Baskin sold the animal preserve Exotic used to run and which was at the center of the Netflix hit docuseries Tiger King.
The catch, however, is that the property cannot be used as a zoo for at least the next century. As TMZ reported, Baskin acquired the land after a years-long rivalry between the Big Cat Rescue figurehead and the eccentric Exotic, who regularly threatened her over a variety of mediums and eventually was sent to prison for a murder-for-hire plot.
A judge granted Carole’s Big Cat Rescue sanctuary control over Joe’s former Oklahoma exotic animal park in Wynnewood back in mid-2020 … to satisfy the $1 million judgment she won against him in their notorious trademark lawsuit.
Yahoo Entertainment‘s Megan Johnson wrote on Sunday that Baskin, who lives in Florida and operates Big Cat Rescue there, had confirmed the sale, which has a stipulation that the new owners would not put any kind of zoo or animal preserve on the property.
Reached by phone on Sunday, Baskin, the owner of the nonprofit sanctuary Big Cat Rescue, confirmed to Yahoo Entertainment that not only has the Oklahoma property formerly used as an exotic animal park been sold to a local couple who are known for purchasing properties that need a lot of work, but that the new owners cannot use the ownership for anything Tiger King-related.
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“When we sold the property in June, we required that it never be used as a zoo, or for anything related to Tiger King or anything like that,” Baskin told Yahoo.
The rivalry between Baskin and Exotic was chronicled in one of the pandemic’s early guilty pleasures. But the real-life legal drama of Exotic’s murder-for-hire plot and subsequent conviction came with some true horrors when it came to animal safety. Baskin’s actions here seem to be an attempt to end that property’s use as an animal preserve once and for all, and though there may be more Tiger King on the way, there won’t be any animals on that property moving forward.