The founder of the Keepers of the Wild animal sanctuary and nature park was hospitalized with two broken bones and multiple other wounds after being attacked by a tiger on Monday, the nature park said in a statement.
The tiger, Bowie, is "fine" and resting and will not be euthanized because of the incident, the park says. Founder and executive director Jonathan Kraft will be in recovery for several months.
The incident happened during a flash flood warning where there was heavy rain, lightning, thunder and hail.
"Jonathan was concerned for the welfare of several large cats in his approximate area including the tiger and took unilateral action to allow them access to protection from the elements. During that process, a safety protocol had obviously failed resulting in the incident," a statement from the nature park said.
Bowie the tiger has been at the park since September 2018 after he was previously owned as a pet and declawed as a young cub.
The heavy thunderstorm prompted Kraft to have animal care staff “open” transfer gates for the various animal species to have access to their nighttime den areas, which is standard procedure during extreme weather events, the park said.
Kraft went to shift Bowie's gates to allow him to access his night den when the park said the usually docile big cat pushed the gates before Kraft secured the safety clips and the tiger took hold of Kraft with his teeth.
That's when park staff rushed to remove Kraft from the tiger's grip. Kraft was transported to Kingman Regional Medical Center and then Las Vegas for more treatment. He suffered two broken bones and multiple wounds and will be recovering for several months, the park says.
“There are many photographs showing me having close contact with a variety of animals when they were young or ones that I had raised," Kraft said in the statement. "Those are from ‘the old days’. Close contact with wild exotic and native species has not been a practice in many years. My accident with Bowie was my fault. I was concerned for his welfare and did not stay focused on him. It only takes a fraction of a second for a captive wild animal to revert to their instinctual behavior. These situations occur when there is human error.”
