Temple of the Tiger Officially Gone

[WadeJ]

UPDATE (10-7-2010): A message from "Christine Nordmann" on facebook has CONFIRMED that john fitzgerald closed Temple of the Tiger and fired all of the trainers for the horrible crime of wanting to mate Kingda Ka and Chandaka. Why? New cubs would have been a great crowd magnet for the park. The sea lions are breeding, the lions are breeding, why not the tigers? It is commendable of the trainers to be willing to take upon themselves the responsibility of caring for and training the next generation of tiger performers. Kingda Ka and Chandi would have produced awesome cubs. Now we have nothing!

Photos and bios of the 6 tigers from Temple of the Tiger are posted on my facebook page "William David Kuehne". Video is posted on my youtube page "mtnwolf63".

Thank you for the heads up on the fb post mtnwolf63.  As Jerry said though, rules are rules and if this is in fact true, you can't just go and do something like this without it being part of the plan for the corporation as a whole.  If I say, worked for a really large software company, I couldn't just decide one day to add a feature to it on my own without following the proper procedures and guidelines. 

Ultimately, the biggest issue I could see with this at our park are the costs involved.  These animals must have a HUGE budget.  Adding more tigers to the family would certainly need to be budgeted for.  And then, as Jerry mentioned, they may not have the proper facilities.

I'm not saying these things as excuses but just to make sure people are aware of the other side of things.  It's still a shame that we now have nothing at all. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail eventually.  Perhaps guest complaints could be bad enough next season to bring them back?  Who knows.  What I do know is the trainers loved and cared for these animals as if they were their own family and I personally don't feel there was anything purposely done here to jeopardize things.

[mtnwolf63]

So they're not at Safari?

This update just in from a friend: I had a wonderful time at the park on Sunday for Fright Fest.  However, I was once again saddened when I walked by the Temple of the Tiger area and see it so empty & sad.  I really miss those cats.  So I decided to take one of the safari tour buses in the afternoon.  While enjoyable, I was even sadder to NOT see the Temple cats there.  The tigers I saw were NOT Balin, Hara, Kingda Ka and the others.  Where are my cats? Our bus driver told us the trainers are no longer working there (which I already know) and that the tigers are still in the Temple, yet one employee said they are in the safari (as does the letter below you sent me, which is a letter from "corporate").  Are they locked up in cages indoors all the time?  Those poor tigers must be so depressed!  They had a wonderful life outside, interacting with the trainers who raised them, whom they considered their family, until corporate took them away by firing them for a silly reason. This show educated me (and the hundreds of thousands of others who saw the show) on how important it is to help preserve this beautiful animal!  Over a century ago, there were more than 100,000 tigers in the wild. Now, it is estimated that there are fewer than 3,000. Due to poaching, habitat loss and scarcity of prey, all tigers are highly endangered and struggling to survive. Unless a solution is found, all wild tigers will become extinct.  So what’s the problem with breeding the Temple tigers?  You'd think the park would have welcomed some new cubs which could have been featured in the show.  Instead those amazing trainers  who dedicated their time to the cats were fired?!  What's wrong with this picture?