[000:00:00;00] ah, when ever you ah ah, i mariam demising on going with a quick look at the main stories now. emergency workers in western germany and belgium, searching for more than a 1000 people still missing of the heavy flooding in the region. a 125 people are confirmed to have died. the rescue efforts of being hampered by collapsed roads and damaged communication lines. step vasa reports now from the german town of sin. think they were trapped in the rooms on the 1st floor when the water rose up to 4

meters in no time at least 12 residence of this home for disabled people died before they could be moved to safety. across the street gabriella wild watched the neighbourhood swiftly turn into a swirling river and feared the worst of the people on the la tours had not made at all. i don't know exactly what happened, but the next morning lucy survived, were evacuated from the balconies. it's absolutely horrible. living in this region, his whole life harmon angled still can't comprehend what he saw when the water came to panic. no pon, i wasn't just shocked. i panic, i quickly took out the car as well as my dog and the 2 cats blowing to my daughter that we were taking care of. this sort of destruction i've never seen before. floating yes, but not tree brantley's floating away. he was lucky enough to be moved to safety

and to find his house still standing upon return. auto thought a home washed away by water destroyed by landslide. many remain missing. nobody expected that. a few days of torrential rain could have such a widespread catastrophic impact. confronted with the sheer power of water, people here, a wondering what happened and where all this water came from raising questions about the effects of climate change. and if what was called this once in a century, flock would know happen more frequently. people are saying that this might happen like for now every 510 years or something like that. i'm not sure. and i mean like we try to learn from this to gather with relatives and friends. louisa who young is trying to clean up the mess at the family house, not knowing where to start. they try to return on thursday, but had to leave once again. the water was still here. we tried to get in the house

and get everything up on the like highest point in the house. so and then we just grab also some stuff that we could see that we knew, okay, this is important and now we just left the extent of the damage won't be known for days or perhaps weeks. but the memories and trauma of this twist of nature will likely remain with the people here for much longer, that fastened al jazeera syncing in the western part of germany. in south africa, the president to same week of violence and loosing, in which at least $212.00 people were killed, was planned and coordinated on a visit to the scene of looting in dub and several rama posters at security. forces of identify 12 ring leaders. ryan began off to full president jacob zoom was sent to j a last week. it is clear now that the events of the past week were nothing less than a deliberate, a co ordinated, and

a well planned attack on our democracy. the constitutional order of our country is under threat. the current instability and ongoing incitement to violence constitutes a direct contravention of the constitution of our country. and the rule of law covet cases arising in all us states and officials saying the surge is largely and people who have not been vaccinated. factions are up 70 percent of the law suite. deaths have jumped by 26 percent. san jellies county is again, making ma scoring mandatory indoors from this weekend. and then here in the u. k. governments reported its highest number of new covered cases in more than 6 months just days before restrictions that eased across england. u. k. government data shows that close to $15000.00 new cases of the virus on friday. the bottom line is coming up next on our era

the. ready i am steve clements and i have some questions. why is it so easy to own an exotic path, like a lion or a tiger in america? what's the hidden industry behind this trend? and what does the conservation movement stand for? let's get to the bottom line. ah, barely a day goes by in the united states without a headline about someone getting hurt when they're exotic animal turns on their mercy. let's loosen a neighborhood, but that's not flowing down the crease to own one. tune into tic toc and the feeds abound with videos of baby tigers. leopards, wolves, foxes, huge anaconda in pythons, and more for generations. we've seen cute baby tigers appear on america's leading talk shows, often called ambassador animals who are linked to those that are in zoos. all

allegedly validated by a conservation industry. well think again, today we're talking about a new film that aims to expose the abuse and trafficking that's behind the scenes of this trend. the documentary is called the conservation game and it's directed by michael webber who's been tracking this issue for years and years. carney and nasser is one of america leading big cat experts in animal protection attorneys. she became the 2nd full time animal law professor in the world when metric michigan state university appointed her to direct the animal welfare clinic of the college of law. and carol baskin is a c, e o big cat rescue in tampa, florida, where she started 30 years ago, and has brought so much attention to the plight of captive and abused a big cat. it's a real pleasure to have you on here. and i should say at the outset to my audience, i've seen the film. it is powerful, it is made an impact on me. and so congratulations. but our audience has not yet seen the film michael webber. so can you share with us? can you give our, our audience a picture of what you've done, what you've exposed, and why?

sure. i think it probably starts with my work undercover at the exotic animal auctions. you know, so it's at these auctions where you will see tiger cubs lion cubs. these are again options in america that's, that's correct in america exotic it will options where they will sell animals out. the general, public know licensing required a lot of cash, you know, changing hands and where someone can go buy a tiger cub, take it home, put it in their basement or backyard. and, you know, we, we've seen, actually, we, we see, and houston, what happened recently, you know, so that was, you know, that was something that i did several years ago. and that was expected. and that was shocking when i, when i did that. and, but what i didn't expect to see was when i was at one of these auctions is i look to my side and what i saw was a celebrity conservationist that i had watched for many years on a navy. who do you have to sit? you have to see to see that,

but who is standing right there to and actually this person actually, my kids grew up watching. ironically my kids may have been watching this person at the same time that i was at this auction watching him on tv. and so this person was not there to shut down the ox was not there to protest, it was out there to expose what was going on as, as i was, and these other public safety officers, they were there participating, buying and selling animals feeding into the exotic pets, right? and so it made me wonder, is this a one time event? is this an anomaly, or is this systemic? is this something that might be happening within the industry more broadly? and i will tell you that a little further investigation, which only requires looking at an ambassador cat, as you mentioned on tv watching, or celebrity conservationist, tell us where this cats going to, where it came from. did a very simple exercise which should have been unremarkable. just go to the place that they say that this endangered species will end up. what i found is that animals not there,

these cats aren't there. i have to tell our audience. so i jumped to cardeana carol because it was shocking to me. they were seeing little baby gus, you know, on, on a, you know, with jack hannah, i'll name name shak hannah, and others on these morning shows david's cell moni, others were bringing their pads from animal planet. and you would see them. and these were endangered animals. and it was his whole architecture and scaffolding of how they talked about being special protected species. and there was in know, this loving and engaging environment where they were free to roam and they were sanctuaries for them. i just was shocked when there was no registration for any of these animals. and you would go talk to these people and you've got to tell the story. cardeana, tim harrison who is just this obsessive, compulsive retired, former cop because it's such an important part of the story. but i guess my question to both of you is, as you saw, as we saw, as i saw the show,

these cats disappearing into the ether is, are there no laws against this? i mean what, what is the, how can this be happening? there's no meaningful legal mechanism to figure out where these animals are coming and where they're going. which is outrageous is that you have a legal framework in the united states of america right now. where in some states, there are fewer regulations to own a tiger than there are to own a dog. so if i wanted to go adopt a dog or a cat, it's incredibly difficult, right carol. i mean, tell us how you are part of this story and what you've been commenting on for a long time with regards to the absence of that legal scaffolding. with regards to these exotic animals. at our peak, we had to turn away 312 big cats and every other year that number was doubling until the captive wildlife safety act passed. and that made it illegal because you had no more resources to deal with them, right? us and all of the legitimate sanctuaries. we were full to the brim with all of

these cats because we were breeding hundreds of these lions and tigers every year to be used as these pay to play prompt and then discarding them into pet homes and worse and just disappearing. and so we had been working on a federal ban of this since the 9, and we got a partial band in 2003 that actually caused that number to drop. instead of doubling the $600.00, the next year it dropped like $160.00. so then we knew that the only way we were going to fix this was to change the laws. and that's where the big cap public safety came in. like, you know, i think when you start the film was young. boy they're probably in the sixty's. i said that's me. that's what i'm watching. mutual omaha wild kingdom that i'm watching the today show or the david letterman show. i'm probably not david letterman, when i was 8 years old. but you would see someone who looked like a wildlife conservationists with the jungle had come in with the you know, baby links are the baby tiger, the baby leopard. and we would play with them these, this was abc, nbc,

cbs major networks in the united states that have connected these entertainment 2nd sections to their new shows. is there not a complicity and minimum a blind eye, but if not, that a a dereliction of responsibility of these news organs about what was happening with these cats and what became of them? i think at least a blind eye, but i think maybe all of us, you know, that's no different than possibly me even tim harrison that you see in the film. and he acknowledges that which is what happens is you know, these conservation of gain, our trust. they have a level of celebrity to them, of course. and i think if anyone else might come on tv or maybe show up at a mall or something like that, you might actually give it a 2nd look and say is what they're telling me true. i'm not sure i trust this, you know, maybe it would war and some further investigation. but you know, when, when we've, when the celebrities have gained our trust, i think we just don't go and look. we believe what they tell us is true. and we

kind of go no further than that. i don't think that's unreasonable and you know, with the shows that they are on, these are people, the host of the shows and the producers of the shows are animal lovers. you know, they're involved in a lot of the same advocacy work that a lot of us are. it's just that the wall has been pulled over all of our i's with this because of the trust that we put in to these celebrities. carnie and some of the celebrities in this are grant camer, if i have names right? jared miller, david cell, moni jack, hannah, among many others that you profile that are part of the celebrity culture of showing big cats and sort of, you know, creating a pretend in, you know, non existent environment or bout sanctuaries. and the care of these, of these cats have any of them responded to what you have on earth, have they responded to you formerly or even informally, and reaction to what you have, what you collectively have surfaced. well,

i don't know that any of them have seen the movie yet. however, grant camera has been in trouble in the state of new york for violating state law relating to the handling of animals on late night shows and at birthday parties and being a supplier for entertainment. while out of the other side of his mouth saying that he's involved in conservation. so we have seen that these individuals have been implicated in the same nasty industry. whether it's the auctions, the exotic pet trade, the animal d. c on late night shows the exotic animals used in circuses. it's all part of the same cesspool. and they really can't say anything about it because there's no justification for the things they do. they can't debate this with people like us that know what's going on. yeah, there's no, there's no justification. let me ask you also because i know you've been running your park to help save big cats for 30 years. have not been there, but of course we've seen tiger king. we see the,

the issues and the value went through on this, but there are a lot of regulatory out regulatory authorities out there. u. s. depart valued culture. i assume that you know, fish and game administration there are, there are players out there that one would think we're part of the regulatory environment, which is happen. where have they been, do you interact with them? i know that you've been very active politically trying to get this legislation passed. when you hear from these parts of the administration have, are they complicit or are they trying to do the right thing? absolutely complicit to the point where when i bring it up to our inspectors, why are you not doing something about this at this facility that we have witnessed? and we've had all of these people submit complaint forms, and they'll say that the higher ups, they are tell them not to even file a citation because been the animal rights crazies will actually force them to do something about it. so instead, they'll make it a teachable moment and not do anything. and so it's been, oh, frustrating that these people have hundreds of citations before they're ever

brought to court. and then usually they'll pay a $2500.00 up to a $25000.00 fine. they just considered that the price of doing business you is i understand, i don't know the legal dimensions basically were involved and i know carney and you were with with joyce artic and his, his is tiger park and what happened and as i understand it, you basically received a judgment in that my question is scale because when i talk to my producers about doing today's show and they said, yeah, but how big a deal is as i said, have you driven across america? have you gone through some of these states in backwards? there are billboards of these kinds of parks paintings use exotic animals, you know, in every corner of united states i've been, i just never had put it together. how big is this industry? how big is it? and do you have to go through a legal process with an e? should every one of them to get a change? we refer to it as wakeham, all because as soon as one of these people loses their life and somebody else just gets it in some other family member name and they continue to do the same bad things. if you think about the thing with joe exotic,

i mean we filed that case in 2011 and we weren't able, we still haven't finished the case. we weren't even able to take review until last year. so these things just take decades sometimes, and the animals die in the meanwhile, because there's nobody coming in to protect them from the government. current traffic. the lead a wildlife trafficking monitoring agency has written about how the d facts in the laws in the united states and the lack of enforcement by the us department of agriculture and 5 us fish and wildlife service service is creating a perfect storm. where there's an increasing likelihood that these tigers and other exotic cats born in roadside to is born with backyard breeders and all of these exploiters are going to end up also supplementing the demand for tiger parts in other parts of the world. so this is not just, i mean there are global implications for our lack of doing what we need to do here in the united states. i'm so glad you brought that up in one of the other things

that strikes me about the beginning of your powerful film. mike is the beginning, starts with tim harrison and you apparently seeing these celebrities at wildlife auctions and the saying, wow, ok, this person and then the string and the wall connecting people who in our eyes we don't even know are connected. and as it builds up, it's like a police investigation drawing together, you know, who's operating in the mafia and which, which elements to the control is this like a mafia. and i'll ask you, because there's 11 seen in the film with grant camera who is pointing it, you folks from a football field where they're showing off their annual tiger cobs that they brought in. i think it's obee 47, and he's looking at you menacingly. and showing people, were you ever at risk? yeah, i think that's one of the tactics that we've all experienced to, which is there's an intimidation tactics. so this happened when i did my 1st film,

the elephant in the living room. and i realized it the 1st day that the movie played just for a 100 tell how about the elephant and well in the living room. that's right. it is the my 1st documentary with that really i think exposed the issue of exotic pets in america. and the day that it world premiered only just to a small crowd of 100 people in santa barbara the next day i got my 1st death threat on, on the, on my phone. so in many more from there you see what, of course, of course, obviously what carol dealt with and, and, but the, the intimidation tactics. some things that are in the film were things that where we interviewed people who were trying to give us information about where we could find these missing ambassador cats. they wouldn't reveal their name, they would send anonymous e mails. i would record them and record their knees and their feet and so forth. and it's like, but we're just looking for a tiger that we saw on tv. we're just looking for, you know, and,

and let me tell you if you are trying to base and we want to fasting, it would take gus the tiny little cute tiger and say, where's gus today? and then you had a list of more than 200 of these animals that it appeared on morning chosen tv very carefully with whatever celebrity handler they had with these sanctuaries behind them. and all you did was go to them and say, where is that cat now? yeah, i think that's the most revealing. because at the end of the day, as far as we go to try to discover our so if you have to go to the source, you have to go to the last person who was seen with that animal and give them the chance, obviously to say, well look, i know that you think this is awesome, bruce or whatever, but it's not, we've got it right over here and you can see and you have to leave that open to that possibility. and so it was only fair to do that. but what i wanted was to hear the truth and so i think in the way that i journalist typically do as a documentarian, we did that and we did get the truth. and the truth is, this is, this is crazy. they weren't shocked by it. so when you go to someone and say, hey,

your ambassador cats are men that were on tv, nobody was shocked there. they just go, you know, where are they not going to tell you? well, anybody helped us know, you know, go away and then you see some of the intimidation factors when we go deeper. so there's quite a contrast between what you see in the phone with the recordings, with that interaction, than what we see very polished on the tv shows with care care. what were your on tick tock. i look on tick tock and i'll tell you everywhere. i'm going to have produce my own videos and take talk one of these days because you're on tick tock. and you see what i do. you see the cute cuddly pictures of exotic species? sometimes you see people there that are saving animals, have been harmed to hurt and releasing them as well, which are very fine, very moving. but off more often than not, it's somebody continuing to engage in the same kind of practice. we're seeing visual images where everything is okay and the cat is a moment. we're not seeing visual images of how they're ending up. you've been in this business for a long time. i want you to describe to our audience. what are the horrors that

these, that these animals are going through? you know, when people see those images on tick tock and other social channels, what they're usually seeing is a juvenile animal who's under 5 years old. it might be $500.00 pounds, but it's still mentally a kid. and so they're still able to play around with it. as soon as that cat reaches sexual maturity, like with a case of roy horn, they're going to get attacked and that's going to be the end of it. and there won't be any more tick, tock channel for that person. but the way that these cats end up the places that i have gone into and rescued cats from the neighbors would have been absolutely appalled to know that these animals were literally starving right next door and desperate for their lives and being kept in flimsy cages. my daughter reached up to the door of one of these cages one time where we had gone into rescue. 13 tigers and the whole door just collapsed in her hand. and it was like all that had to have done was hit that worth enough force. it would have been loosened, neighborhood, and we just see this over and over and over again,

just wretched conditions. and some of the conditions that you saw in the conservation game. people will be just a poll that those cages contain the most magnificent animals on the planet. and many times these cat, when they're pulled away from their mothers, immediately at birth, these roadside views and backyard breeders, their decline ma'am, which is a partial amputation procedure with pliers and hammers. and this is a standard industry practice. and it's just one of the many things that these facilities are doing to try to make these animals less of a liability when they, when they offer them for public contact and pay to play. so there's a section in tiger king where all of a sudden they were missing large cats and you saw even his own staff worried about that and saying, wow, maybe he went and shot them and disappeared them. and i kept a wondering, as i watched the film, are there killing fields out there are there, you know, are you know where, where do these, where do these? because, i mean, is that also part of the picture? i'll give you

a good example of that and that is dark angel who was in the film tiger king. every year he has a roadside su, type thing where people can come in. they can choose from a dozen different cubs to have their picture made. they can only use them from about 8 weeks to 12 weeks, so they have a one month shelf life. there's always plenty of cubs to choose from. and yet his census, every year goes up to cats for cats. it's not going up by the dozens of cats that are being born every year. and yet those cats are not in the gap in sanctuaries. we're not seeing them end up in other facilities. so where are all those cats go in and u. s. department of agriculture, when they do their inspections, they're counting what they see, but they're not verifying identities. so they're not checking to see if the same 10 or 20 or 50, or 100 cats are still there. then the next inspection that they do. so there's this revolving door in roadside views and nobody there is no,

there is no legal requirement for anybody to be checking where the cats are coming and where they're going. so they're just check, they're just counting numbers. they're not checking their identities. so i transparent that we are filming this today audience in washington, d. c. you have visited here both to do my show. so thank you very much. but to talk to people in the policy world about what the response, how to be. so mike, what, what are you hoping to achieve, either either public policy or through public attention right now. and all of you that you think needs to be heard by citizens in this country. so when you see the conservation game and when you've been in the subculture, as i have as a filmmaker for say, 1012 years, you know, it really pulls back the veil and the illusion that we're talking about, that we see whether it's from the cub padding versus what's really going on afterwards. the vanishing of these animals where the cub is valuable, whereas the full grown tiger line is not in that that, you know,

translates even to our television celebrity conservation. so what i had hoped with this investigation that we did together and also with the film is, is, is the transparency that you talk about, which is, let's see what's really going on here and see what needs to be done. and i think the thing that needs to be done as the film also follows is the passage of the big cap public safety act, which would seek to protect these endangered species and keep them out of the hands of the backyard breeders roadside, sous. and what's most curious about that is the pushback that we got from high level celebrities that we see on tv where we are trying to locate the animals. we find that there's pushback for that bill as well. so the people that you see on tv telling us to protect and help these endangered species behind the scenes or pushing back to stop the big cat, public safety act. so jimmy kimmel bring these pads on, jim, we all know jimmy campbell, i will call jimmy kimmel up and say, where is he on the big cat, public safety, carroll just in our last minute or so. and carny,

if you just just quick places. i just love to hear how you got into this. i know you started out west virginia. i want our audience understand, you know, and kind of the, the authentic way you came into this world of trying to save these animals. when i was 17, i was rehab, releasing native bob cats that have been hit by cars or, or, and, and i saw what magnificent animals they were and how much territory they need. and so when i saw these animals in captivity, it just broke my heart right in carney. and how did you get in this business? 32nd, i grew up in the pal alco stanford area, and the age of 11. i went to interview the director of laboratory research at stanford university about animal experiments, and i was horrified and i've been involved in animal protection ever since. and when i had the opportunity to leave a big law firm job, pursue animal law, i've done on it. the film is called the conservation game. be sure to watch it when it comes out. thank you all for being with us director michael webber,

animal law professor carney and nasser and the founder. a big cat rescue in florida . carol baskin. so what's the bottom line? as was so much in america, there are 2 totally opposite mentalities at play here. one believe that this is a land of do whatever you want freedom. that means no one can tell you what to do, whether it's about owning assault rifles getting a corona, virus vaccine, wearing a mask or regulating wild animals that you want to exploit for profit or social videos or your own ego. the other believes that liberty needs laws and regulations to protect the people. and in some cases, animals from cruelty and abuse through the reality show tiger king and the epic battle between jo exotic and carol baskin, more americans than ever been exposed to the underbelly of an illicit trade and tigers and other big cat. the film the conservation game takes us public awareness a step further showing us that our entertainers, our media and our talk shows, had been promoting a huge lie about the welfare of exotic species in america. the least we can do is

to give wild animals the same protections that we give dogs and cats in america. and that's the bottom line ah, across the world, young activists and organizes the rhonda most motivated and politically engaged. the talent is they faith couldn't be more daunting here, and we were the one who had life on what was going on. and the way that means to me then there's looking stuff like that, both of them, and there's always in a dynamic formation, we have the agency to create the vibe of the generation on al jazeera, the stories that need to be told, find away and demand to be heard the opening the window into another night and chanting,

perception and personal endeavours in epic struggle with the colossal sacrifices in individual journey with new showcases, inspiring documentary, the change the word on al jazeera. ah, me am. i am was in london with a look at our main stories now. emergency workers in belgium and weston gemini, is searching for more than a 1000 people still missing off the heavy floods. a 125 people are confined to have died. but that figure is expected to rise. rescue efforts being hampered though by collapse, roads and damage communication lines, raging waters and landlines have devastated entire communities,