Please send an email to Nanaimo council members urging them to ban on
rabbit sales. The next meeting is Oct 4.

COPY AND PASTE INTO AN EMAIL: john.ruttan@nanaimo.ca; bill.bestwick@nanaimo.ca; bill.holdom@nanaimo.ca;
diana.johnstone@nanaimo.ca; jim.kipp@nanaimo.ca; larry.mcnabb@nanaimo.ca;
fred.pattje@nanaimo.ca; loyd.sherry@nanaimo.ca; merv.unger@nanaimo.ca

City targets bunny sales by pet shops

Irresponsible pet owners are blamed for releasing pet rabbits, boosting
populations

By Darrell Bellaart, Daily News
September 28, 2010

They're cute and cuddly, but bunnies may soon be banned from being sold in
Nanaimo pet shops.

The City of Nanaimo is eyeing a ban on rabbit sales to head off a repeat of
the University of Victoria's rabbit problem.

The sales ban is being considered as part of a new bylaw that would also
make it illegal to feed deer inside the city limits. Both regulations are to
take aim at what some say is a growing problem with human-wildlife
conflicts.

Nanaimo is hardly as overrun as the University of Victoria, which is
trapping and shipping bunnies to Texas, but city staff say action is needed
to control rabbits before they get out of control.

The highest concentrations are north of Rutherford Road, and especially
around May Richards Bennett Park, and on Vancouver Island University campus.

"What we have, people are buying these pets, they're not spayed and neutered
and they're getting rid of them six months later," said Randy Churchill,
city bylaw services manager. "People are deriving a benefit from selling
these rabbits, they're giving them to people who get tired of them and they
abandon them."

Besides a ban on rabbit sales, the city wants to include rabbits with a
proposed feeding ban on deer.

Barry Bender, owner of Paws N Jaws said he sells "three or four" rabbits a
month.

"If they're going to ban them in pet stores, are they going to ban the 4-H
clubs and stop people selling them on Craigslist?" Bender said.

City staff are putting together a draft bylaw expected to go to council as
early as the Oct. 4 meeting.

"We're looking at Victoria and we're saying you know what, we've got the
same problem coming," Churchill said. "We want to get ahead of it."