FOREVER WILD, FOREVER HOME

The Shellenbargers celebrate a sanctuary for America’s many captive bears and big cats in this work of nonfiction.

In 2020, America got to know Joe Exotic and his exotic animal park thanks to the hit Netflix documentary series Tiger King. But what happens to animals when they are no longer owned by the Joe Exotics of the world? Melanie and Mark Shellenbarger offer this portrait of a very different kind of exotic animal facility—the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Keenesburg, Colorado. Started by Pat Craig in the 1980s, the current facility is home to 500-plus animals, including bears, lions, and tigers—including 42 former residents of Joe Exotic’s zoo. All the sanctuary’s animals have been rescued from various states of captivity, from roadside attractions and shuttered circuses to people’s backyards. Some of them come from abroad, like Lambert and Tasha Joy, a lion and tigress rescued from a typhoon-decimated zoo in the North Mariana Islands. The animals had been so isolated that they had not even been socialized in the normal sounds made by their respective species: “Lambert did not know he was a lion and Tasha Joy seemed clueless about the fact that she was a tiger....Having been purchased as cubs from a Guam zoo fifteen years before, both had lived in solitary confinement in the intervening years and simply did not know how to talk.” The book chronicles the origins and operations of the sanctuary, including its many remarkable rescue stories, while also providing commentary on the current “captive wildlife crisis.” The Shellenbargers’ prose is clear and passionate—they admit to learning about both the sanctuary and the crisis relatively recently, and they preach with the strength of the converted. While the book has a strong point of view, it’s generally persuasive, especially when the reader sees the before-and-after photos of some of the rescued animals. (The book’s full-color photography is one of its strongest attributes.) For those fascinated by the world of Tiger King, the book provides further information on the world of captive wildlife and the ways people are working to improve the lives of the animals.

A compelling, often surprising account of a Colorado wildlife sanctuary.