Drugs, Death, Neglect: Behind the Scenes at Animal Planet

[douglas9]

By the time three orphaned raccoons arrived for emergency care at the Kentucky Wildlife Center in April 2012, "they were emaciated," says Karen Bailey, who runs the nonprofit rehab clinic set in the sunny thoroughbred country just outside of Georgetown, in central Kentucky. "They were almost dead."

A fast talker with ashy blond hair and an easy laugh, Bailey is a newborn raccoon specialist. She also takes in injured or abandoned opossums, otters, and skunks. Though she cares for up to 800 animals every year—including around 300 baby raccoons—she is haunted by the memory of those three gaunt cubs.

These weren't just any raccoons. They were the stars of one of the highest-rating episodes of Call of the Wildman, the hit Animal Planet reality TV show.

When cubs are in such bad shape, Bailey says, "It's a race against time." The animals were incubated and intubated, fed fluids and antibiotics. As a last-ditch effort, Bailey administered blood plasma and managed to save two of the raccoons—"a miracle."

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/01/animal-abuse-drugs-call-of-the-wildman-animal-planet

[geardaddy]

1. Time to start a boycott of the network

-snip-
"We're not looking to be a natural history channel," Animal Planet group president Marjorie Kaplan told the New York Times in 2008. "We're looking to be an entertainment destination." The network recently aired two documentary-style programs purporting to present evidence that mermaids are real.

-snip-
WTF!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Time to boycott all those alleged "reality" shows

which means pretty much giving up cable. Which I did, bit by bit, starting in 2002 and completing the switch to local channels only in 2009. When I bought my HD TV about 14 months ago, I discovered that I could bring in all the local channels, including the three local PBS stations, over the air beautifully, so there went the last TV cable connection. (Comcast told me that I wouldn't be able to receive HD over my cable connection without a special $10-a-month adapter, so that was the end of that.)

For the rest, I find an endless variety of movies and high-quality programming to stream over Netflix, Hulu, Acorn TV, and MHz Worldview (the last one is free to Roku users and available on smartphones and tablets as a free app). That's in addition to all the DVDs I've bought from Amazon UK and Japan to play on my region-free player.

Comcast keeps sending me "unbeatable offers" to hook up to cable again (I still use them for my Internet, because unlike local DSL service, they don't have an overly zealous spam filter that bounces e-mails without telling me, a fatal flaw when trying to run a business).

In my more paranoid moments, I believe that the severe and noticeable dumbing down of the formerly intelligent cable channels is part of a ploy to distract and further stultify the types of people who otherwise would be rioting in the streets.

[geardaddy]

4. Exactly.

Luckily, I don't have cable. So, I don't watch Animal Planet. We just watch PBS and Netflix.

[sked14]

2. How horrible.

Why would Animal Planet allow this to happen? Shame on them!!
That's one show I won't watch any longer. Ugh.

[douglas9]

5. Animal Planet Star Was Warned He Was Breaking the Law

This morning, I appeared on CNN's New Day to discuss my investigation into Animal Planet's hit reality TV show, Call of the Wildman. (Watch the interview above). My story detailed a cavalier culture of animal treatment on the set of the show, produced by New York's Sharp Entertainment, including the improper drugging of a zebra and the placement of bats—a protected species in Texas—inside a Houston hair salon to be "rescued" by the show's star, Ernie Brown Jr., a.k.a. Turtleman. Dan Adler, a senior vice president with the production company, represented the program for the first time in public since the story broke on Tuesday.

Most notable was Adler's insistence that nothing whatsoever occurred on COTWM sets that could be described as improper: "The idea that there is a culture of neglect or abuse on the show is completely false," he said. "So many shows out there kill animals for sport or for money. This show is about saving them." Adler also said that Sharp's own internal investigation, prompted by a former staffer last May, failed to find anything questionable with production practices.

But at the same time, new evidence is emerging of another case involving legally dubious production activities. In a letter sent in August 2013, Kentucky wildlife officials warned Brown that he was breaking the law.

The letter, made available to Mother Jones, was sent by legal counsel for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, after officials saw footage of Turtleman catching a deer in a consignment store on YouTube—despite the fact that that's against Kentucky law, according to department spokesman Mark Marraccini.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/01/officials-warn-turtleman-illegal-animal-handling