Eric Goode

“I would say the big cat people see tigers as sort of a status symbol, as you would a Ferrari or fancy car collection. They have the animals to elevate their position. It makes them special.”

“The real takeaway should be to give your money to conservation programs around the world that are really working hard to save tigers in their range countries and not give your money to sanctuaries, which are really, effectively just caging tigers and cats.”

“Sometimes our criminal justice system is about punishing people and not reforming people.”

“Unlike accredited zoos like the Bronx Zoo, San Diego Zoo, the Los Angeles Zoo, these are private menageries, and these people are frightened and there is an existential fear that they are going to be shut down by the government, by PETA, by HSUS, by animal rights groups. So they, generally, are very guarded.”

“Animal rights can be as extreme as not riding a horse, or not wearing leather, not having a pet at all. Animal welfare advocates are preventing the suffering of animals. And then there's conservation and species conservation and what conservation biologists do.”

“The reality of our world today is not every species can be left in the wild.”

“I'm not one who thinks that people should be locked up and thrown away the key.”

“I definitely have, on paper, an unorthodox career path. And from childhood onward, I was always fascinated by the outdoors and wildlife.”

“So I'd say that the Doc Antles, the Jeff Lowes, these people were very guarded. Carole Baskin wasn't and Joe Exotic, wasn't, obviously, because he's such a narcissist and an egomaniac that he did so many things against his better judgment.”

“I spent my summers in Sonoma at my grandfather's ranch, we called it Rancho Rodeo.”

“What you do in Oklahoma with tigers in these roadside zoos would be frowned on if it opened in the L.A. basin or New York. I think it's a lack of education. And people believe we should be able to have a tiger, because this is America - who should stop us?”

“I kept a few turtles and tortoises and maybe a snake in my apartment in New York City, off and on. Maybe sometimes against my better judgment.”

“People fantasize about working with animals, and then they start doing it, and then they start to believe that they're indispensable and the animal loves them just as much they love the animal.”

“I set out to expose the issue with big cat ownership in America and where that exploitation lies.”

“If hotels are replacing nightclubs, then they're replacing nightclubs for yuppies.”

“If you keep more 230 tigers, it's like having 230 children, you don't really love them, you're just collecting them.”

“My focus personally has been to be a conservationist, which is to save species, protect wild lands, sometimes bring animals into assurance colonies in the wild - like California Condors for example - and put them back in the wild. It's very different from animal rights.”