No Petting Zoo : Endangered Big Cats Bred and Nurtured at Desert Compound

Poachers’ guns and dwindling forest habitats are thinning worldwide populations of big cats, leaving only 150 Amur leopards and 800 Siberian tigers to straddle the line between survival and extinction.

But here in the high desert north of Los Angeles, in the shadow of an abandoned gold mine, the Exotic Feline Breeding Compound is a haven for more than 50 of the animals, including the Amur leopards and Siberian tigers, North Chinese leopards, clouded leopards and jaguarundis.

Former truck driver Joe Maynard founded the compound in 1977 with his now-estranged wife, Jeanne. Although he had no formal training in the handling of wild animals, he felt a calling to save endangered ones and established the facility with his own money.

Zoos from all over the world began to send their cats to breed here because the desert locale offered the quietness and space few urban zoos could afford.

The animals are not, however, totally cut off from human gawkers. In 1983, the compound began admitting the public. Now it gets more than 80,000 visitors a year, the majority of whom come on school tours. Admission is free, but donations are accepted.

In the main courtyard of the compound, leopards, a California cougar and the small leopard-like felines known as fishing cats are among the animals on display. In one cage, Hobbes, a clouded leopard with an intricately textured yellow-orange pelt, crouches near his battered red rubber ball. Nay Lee, a North Chinese leopard in a nearby cage, eyes visitors warily. When they turn their backs, she leaps with lightning speed toward them, snarling and batting at the steel mesh of her cage with a menacing set of claws.

“You never turn your back on a leopard,” says Maynard. “They’re just extremely explosive . . . and some of them would just as soon eat you as look at you.”

Still, Maynard and the others who work at the compound have formed close bonds with the animals.

“Oh, they’re like your kids; each one of them has a different personality,” says general manager Sandy Masek, 42, who has worked here five years.

Masek sometimes cleans out the animals’ cages, although it’s not a formal part of her job. “I don’t want to lose contact with the cats or be stuck in an office,” she says, heading over to pet the compound’s friendliest denizen, an ocelot named Peaches.

Peaches was brought here by the California Department of Fish and Game, which found her living on a yacht. To give her an environment where she would feel at home, Maynard designed Peaches’ den to resemble a small blue and white tugboat.

An Asian leopard named Isaac was orphaned and left on the compound’s doorstep at the age of 8 months. His anonymous owners, who likely acquired him on the black market, left a note saying they could no longer take care of him.

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The compound’s annual budget of about $200,000 is provided through private sources, including 2,000 dues-paying members of a support group and a handful of small grants. Not surprisingly, the compound has a patched-together appearance. Sidewalks end abruptly, a variety of building and landscape projects are only partly finished. While some of the cages are relatively new zoo-class models, others are Spartan mesh enclosures.

Recently, the compound launched a national fund-raising campaign in hopes of improving its public viewing area, breeding facilities and medical clinic. But expansion comes at more than just a monetary cost. The construction has caused stress among the animals, resulting in lowered birth rates.

“Heavy equipment that makes a lot of racket--backhoes and cranes and all that--are not conducive to a lot of breeding progress,” Maynard says. “It’s necessary for the public to be able to experience these animals, so they understand that they need a place in the wilderness. If people keep encroaching on their habitat, they won’t be able to go on.”