Environment Minister Barry Penner env.minister@gov.bc.ca and Agriculture and Lands Minister Pat Bell AL.Minister@gov.bc.ca are still considering options with regard to exotic animals although an earlier response to me indicated that the most effective approach to this matter would be a system requiring a permit to possess specified exotics. Carmina Gooch
Tri-City News Coquitlam B.C
Calls grow to regulate exotic pets
By Jeff Nagel Black Press
Jun 29 2007
One month, it's a 10-foot Burmese python slithering abandoned in a closed Vancouver pizza parlour. The next, it's a crocodile-like caiman running amok in Abbotsford or an iguana gone AWOL in Richmond. The stories of misadventure in the mostly unregulated world of exotic pet ownership seem endless.
But they could begin to change following the tragic mauling death in early May of Tania Dumstrey-Soos by one of the tigers her boyfriend Kim Carlton kept as a tourist attraction near Bridge Lake, B.C.
Now, the provincial government is pledging to bring in some form of regulation, although there are no promises of an outright ban. Agriculture minister Pat Bell said new rules will likely emerge from a review of the Wildlife Act now under way.
"There would be a list of exotic species identified which are restricted," Bell said. To get a permit to own those species, applicants would have to show proficiency in their care and that their housing would ensure public safety.
New rules can't come soon enough for SPCA officials, who for months wanted to seize Carlton's tigers from their small enclosure but could find no facility equipped to house them.
"It's abysmal that there's no legislation on the import and trade of exotics," says SPCA cruelty investigations general manager Marcie Moriarty.
The SPCA is among the groups tabling submissions to the government calling for changes, most of which would mirror ones in place in Alberta. "We'd like to see B.C. go one step further [than restriction] and have a prohibited list," Moriarty said. "That would include large cats and other more dangerous animals. We'd like to see primates on there."
With the exception of some local bans, B.C. residents can keep an alligator, a leopard or an ape in their back yard and take them into public places without restriction or consideration for public safety.
Carlton's Siberian Magic road show - a money-making venture that roamed the province promising exciting and entertaining "attacks" by his tigers, lions, baboons and lemurs - isn't the only collection of exotics that trouble authorities.
A Fort St. John-area petting zoo operator recently convicted on cruelty charges keeps lions, tigers and hyenas.
SPCA officers monitor other big cats on private property in the Lower Mainland, including a tiger tied up in a field in south Langley.
The Vancouver Humane Society (VHS) warned the provincial government in a letter in December that Carlton's tigers were a "disaster waiting to happen."
The society now wants a province-wide ban on the ownership of exotic animals by anyone other than accredited zoos. It also wants to outlaw agencies that rent out exotic animals for entertainment and film-making.
"There are a number of these agencies in B.C. that are not regulated, including one in Mission with a polar bear," said VHS spokesperson Peter Fricker. "No one knows if these animals are being kept humanely or safely."
So far, Vancouver, Abbotsford, Surrey, Burnaby, Langley City, New Westminster, North Vancouver and Richmond have bylaws that either restrict or prohibit exotic pet ownership or sale. Burnaby limits the number of snakes kept while Surrey, Langley and Richmond ban only the sale of exotics - not their ownership.
Even if the current patchwork of local regulations were more uniform, bylaws depend on violators getting caught, and must be backed up by tough enforcement and penalties. Strong provincial regulations would be much easier to enforce, advocates say, and would end the ability for exotic profiteers to jump from one local jurisdiction to the next.
Carlton lived in Abbotsford with a tiger under his deck until public protest prompted city council there to pass a bylaw banning exotic animals from residential neighbourhoods. He left for Bridge Lake soon after.
One rationale for ousting exotics is the ability of some species to transmit diseases to humans. Reptiles and amphibians are blamed for tens of thousands of annual cases of salmonella in people, and monkeys can carry hepatitis C and other diseases.
And SPCA cruelty investigators report they're seeing more caimans in the Lower Mainland. "These are bloody big alligators," said chief animal protection officer Shawn Eccles. "They're five to seven feet long."
Moriarty links the rise in caimans to marijuana grow ops, whose operators see the big reptiles as a way to deter thieves.
The Rainforest Reptile Refuge in south Surrey houses some 350 snakes, lizards and other exotics. It's all but full, rejecting scores of requests to take iguanas and turtles lately. "I want a federal ban nation-wide," says curator Paul Springate, who argues no exotics should be kept or sold.
Springate points to Terrazzo, the refuge's 25-foot-long man-eating reticulated python, as an example of what can happen when people try to dispose of deadly creatures they no longer want. "She came up a toilet bowl in 1995 in an apartment in North Vancouver," he said, noting someone in the same building had flushed the then-juvenile serpent.