Page 34 - ABILITY Magazine - Avril Lavigne Issue

The Roar Foundation, founded in 1983 by Hendren, supports Shambala. The mission: to educate about the dangers of private ownership of exotic animals.
34 ABILITY
Cooper: That must be amazing.
Hedren: It’s absolutely beautiful.
Cooper: I don’t suppose you hear sounds like that other than in Africa, but even then the concentration there might not be as dense.
Hedren: Sometimes when one of them starts to roar, they all start talking. I’m building a room onto my house, and there’s a squirrel running around in it right now, and my cat’s sitting right here, not even looking.
Cooper: So you’ve got an open-door policy? (laughter)
Hedren: I do; I welcome everybody. Cooper: Do you have coyotes?
Hedren: Not in the preserve. We run a tight ship, because we don’t want to have any possibility of them getting into the compound.
Cooper: How many species do you have?
Hedren: Well, let’s see, we’ve got all of the big cats, and oh, gosh, the lesser cats as well.
Cooper: Do you have any elephants?
Hedren: No. They lived out their lives with us. They were the most thrilling animals to get to know.
Cooper: Would you take some elephants now?
Hedren: Yeah, but we’d have to take the lands that the elephants were using and put compounds on them. We have 32 undeveloped acres, so we’d have to spend a huge amount of money to build an elephant enclosure. Anybody can put up a little pen and enclose them, but that’s not what we do here.
Cooper: What is the most endangered type of cat that’s on the property right now?
Hedren: Actually, they all are. The lions are certainly endangered. They’re diminishing in numbers in Africa to the point that is truly frightening. When I started working with these big cats, I think there were 20,000 lions, and now there’s less than 5,000 in Africa. The tigers are dimin- ishing in numbers. It’s people. We’re going to breed to the point where we won’t have any space. And that’s what’s happening. I started talking about it 30 years ago, and peo- ple said, “You can’t talk about that.” And I said, “Well, we’d better.” And look what’s happening to our world.
Cooper: That’s why China’s had its one-child-only policy. But even that’s not enough.
Hedren: It’s so out of hand that it’ll never be okay.
Cooper: Is there any breeding of the cats?
Hedren: Absolutely not. We’re totally against breeding these animals because they should not be in captivity. They are apex predators. Top of the food chain. Among the most dangerous animals in the world. Who makes a pet out of that?