## The Animals’ Lives After the Film
The specific challenge of what to do with more than a hundred large cats after a film project ends is not one that most film producers have faced, and the solution that Hedren arrived at — a permanent sanctuary — reflects both the practical constraints of the situation and what appears to have been a genuine ethical commitment to the animals whose captivity she had initiated.
Large cats in captivity do not have the behavioral repertoire of wild animals. They have not learned to hunt; they have not developed the territorial behaviors that guide wild cats through the landscape; they have lived their lives in proximity to humans and have, in many cases, lost the capacities that would allow them to function in conditions that wild cats navigate. This is the specific problem of captive large cats: the domestication that makes them manageable in captivity makes them incapable of independence.
The Shambala Preserve, established in Acton on the property that had been the Roar production’s main location, addressed this problem by making the captivity permanent and professional. The animals would live at Shambala for the rest of their lives; they would be fed, provided veterinary care, maintained in enclosures appropriate to their size and behavioral needs. The organization that managed the preserve — the Roar Foundation, founded in 1983 — was established as a nonprofit with the specific mission of funding and managing this ongoing care.
The preserve’s eighty acres in the Antelope Valley are designed around the animals’ needs rather than around any commercial purpose. The volunteers who work at Shambala do not interact directly with the animals — the direct animal contact is managed by trained staff, because the preserve’s decades of experience with large cats has produced an organizational understanding of the difference between the familiarity that existed in the Roar production context and the professional animal husbandry that sustainable sanctuary work requires. The LIFE photographs show a family that had normalized direct physical contact with a large predator; Shambala’s operational protocols reflect what that normalization actually costs when things go wrong.