After thirty years of breeding, confining, and killing hundreds of lynx and bobcats in North Dakota, the Schultz Fur Farm wants to re-open in the state of Montana – and your public comments are the only thing standing in its way.  

At Larry Schultz’s former North Dakota farm, over 50 exotic cats, including Bobcats, Eurasian Lynx, and Canada Lynx, lived the entirety of their short lives locked in tiny, wire cages devoid of any enrichment. All they knew was confinement, pain, and fear.

 To Schultz, these intelligent animals were nothing more than “crops”, existing for one reason – so that their pelts can be sold on the international market and their kittens into the pet trade. But when oil drilling came near his North Dakota farm, the noise and disturbance resulted in so much stress that his cats started killing their own kittens. With his “stock” dwindling, Larry Schultz is seeking permission to move his cruel business to the state of Montana.

“It’s farming,” Schultz said in a recent interview. “It is just a different type of farming.”

Mr. Schultz took some of his first bobcats from the wild, then forced them to act as “breeders” for his new operation. To “farm” his “crop”, Schultz tears the newborn kittens from their mothers when they’re 18 days old. This allows the mother to produce another litter right away.

Kittens lucky enough to be born with unsuitable pelts will be sold into the profitable pet trade, where they will be marketed as safe “housepets” to unsuspecting consumers. A bobcat, even when hand-raised, is still a wild animal, and so many “pet” wildcats are abandoned by their owners or even euthanized once they start showing their natural instincts. They are the lucky ones.

Most kittens on Schultz’s proposed farm will be killed for their pelts as soon as they are the proper size. Their mothers will be sold as taxidermy when they are no longer able to reproduce.

A bobcat kitten on a fur farm can be electrocuted, poisoned, skinned, and sold when she’s as young as four weeks old.

Because the fur farmer’s top priority is obtaining a clean, undamaged pelt, and because there are no federal regulations regarding the humane treatment of animals on fur farms, the cats can be abused and slaughtered in the most horrific ways – and it’s all legal.

Genital electrocution, which induces painful cardiac seizures in the cat by running a powerful electrical current through its body, is very popular, despite being deemed “unacceptable” by the American Veterinary Medical Association. Other popular methods are gassing, neck-breaking, and bludgeoning. Sometimes, these methods fail, and animals are skinned alive.

The fur industry is so undeniably cruel that several countries, including Austria, Croatia, and the United Kingdom have banned fur farms within their borders. It’s harmful to the environment, too - the pelts are treated with dangerous chemicals to ensure that they will never biodegrade, and Schultz plans on spreading bobcat fecal matter, which often contains harmful zoonotic parasites,  on his hayfield. These infectious agents can put our waterways at risk. And with today’s synthetic materials, there is simply no longer a legitimate need to wear fur products, despite Schultz’s claims that it’s a “necessity” in other countries.

Despite the overwhelming evidence against it, the State of Montana views fur farming as a “form of agriculture” and plans to approve the permit for Schultz’s fur farm in the hopes that it will bring revenue into the state. But due to overwhelming public rejection of fur, the best pelts only fetch $300 each - not the windfall that Montana's expecting, and certainly not worth the pain and suffering required to obtain it.

 We have until August 29th to tell the Montana Fish, Game, and Parks committee to deny Schultz's permit. Add your name to this petition, and a message against the fur farm will be sent to the FGP in your name.

Together, we’ll send a clear message: Cats are not “crops", and fur farming is not welcome in Montana.