Banning Exotic & Dangerous Wildlife for the Animals's Sake

October 2002

ANIMAL PEOPLE

BY Merritt Clifton 

WACO, Texas__As the living conditions of large carnivores and exotic wildlife in private hands go, the mascot bears at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, are better off than most. The six-month-old baby bear has a toy: an orange cone. Some say it resembles a Baylor cheerleader's megaphone. Others call it a dunce cap. The 18-month-old senior bear has a multi-level enclosure. Both bears have pools. Few roadside zoos or backyard menageries offer comparable amenities__but few are as visible to as many well-educated people, who might recognize conditions falling far short of optimal for the animals.

Baylor recently did something about that, after the bears' stereotypical pacing, filthy water, and lack of any way to get off the bare concrete drew protest: someone put up a plywood fence to inhibit casual viewing.

Cut off from any way to see either the outside world or her quasi-companion in the next cage, the baby bear cried for hours, reported Steve Hindi and Colleen Gardner of SHARK. Despite the plywood, Hindi and Gardner videotaped her, using a camera mounted on an adjustable pole.

Gardner flew from Salt Lake City to Chicago and drove south to Waco with Hindi after viewing earlier footage of the bears taken by her son Jeremy Beckham during a summer visit to Baylor to participate in a student debating tournament.

"Our mascot program meets all standards of the USDA for a Class C zoo," responded Baylor University associate vice president for external relations Larry D. Brumley. "Having said that, the University is always looking for ways to improve the bears' environment. In 1976, a major renovation of the facility was completed. Plans were developed two years ago to expand the facility and add natural habitat features such as grass and trees. The Baylor Chamber of Commerce, which manages our bear program, is in the process of identifying funding for the expansion."

That does not impress Rob Laidlaw of the Canadian organization ZooCheck, critiquing zoos since 1979.

For starters, 1976 is ancient history in terms of ideas about how zoos should be built. The Walt Disney Corporation opened the Discovery Island Zoo in Orlando, Florida, for example in 1974, as a then state-of-the-art facility--and closed it as hopelessly obsolete in 1998, when it opened the nearby Wild Animal Kingdom.

Few bear exhibits at zoos accredited by the American Zoo Association have not been built or completely rebuilt since 1976, typically with very different design concepts. The AZA membership also long since identified the major source of funding for expansions and renovations necessary to maintaining the physical and psychological health of zoo animals: they borrow it, at competitive mortgage rates, and pay off the loans by pleasing visitors and donors.

"The larger bear is displayed in an antiquated grotto-style enclosure that, for the most part, allows viewers to look down on the animal," explained Laidlaw to Hindi and Gardner, after viewing their videotape. "This kind of enclosure is a throwback to the old 19th century menagerie-style zoos, where visitor viewing took precedence over responding to the needs of the animals. Grotto style exhibits are no longer considered acceptable for any bear species," Laidlaw continued. "Most animals become stressed when viewed this way."

At Baylor, Laidlaw wrote, the older bear "has only two choices: to be looked at from above, or to remain in or around the upper pool," where the bear paces for much of each day, "so as to be on the same level as the viewers. The ground surface in the exhibit is also extremely problematic," Laidlaw added. "American black bears are forest-dwellers, who should be housed on soft substrates in large, naturalistic paddocks, incorporating live trees, understory vegetation, high grass, hillocks," and places to climb.

"Over the long term," Laidlaw said, "the concrete substrate may lead to chronic sores, and/or more serious pathologies of the feet and legs."

Bears who incessantly pace on a hard surface may develop chronic stress injuries similar to those suffered by marathon runners who overtrain__except that pacing bears actually tend to spend more hours pounding the pavement than marathoners, and often weigh four times as much, so that the cumulative pounding their knees absorb is even greater, without special shoes to reduce the shock.

Laidlaw went on to note that the Baylor bears cannot dig, cannot construct day beds for themselves as they would in the forest, cannot escape the sound of running water, are exposed to artificial lighting all night, and receive little by way of environmental enrichment.

In consequence, Laidlaw confirmed, the stereotypical pacing and head-weaving that Hindi and Gardner documented was only to be expected.

"The videotapes clearly show distressed bears in horrendously substandard conditions," Laidlaw concluded.

Retorted Brumley, "Anybody can find an 'expert' to support their cause."

A similar controversy is underway in Massillon, Ohio, where the high school football team booster club has kept a tiger as mascot at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium during each of the past 22 football seasons. PETA asked the club to abandon the tradition on August 19, coinciding with the acquisition of the 13-week-old 2002 mascot tiger cub from Stump Hill Farm, a USDA-licensed exhibition facility.

Turning to the law

The Baylor bears and Massillon tiger cub are only three among thousands of exotic and dangerous animals in private hands whom activists would like to place in sanctuaries__ except that there is not a fraction enough sanctuary space to take them, and not nearly enough money to ensure their care.

In the past five years, Houston SPCA chief cruelty inspector Jim Boller alone has taken in 59 exotic cats, half a dozen nonhuman primates, and three bears, plus "countless" wolves and wolf hybrids, he recently told Rachel Graves of the Houston Chronicle.

The average of nearly 12 exotic cats per year handled by the Houston SPCA is about four times the current "normal" exotic cat intake of a big city humane society. A generation ago, cruelty inspectors and humane officers might have handled such animals perhaps once in a decade. Instead of keeping statistics, agencies kept press clippings. Today most exotic cat seizures do not get newspaper space, unless there is some further compelling angle.

Fed up with the constant demands on their resources created by exotic and dangerous animal breeders and sellers, roadside zoos going out of business, and fly-by-night animal exhibitors, humane organizations including The Association of Sanctuaries (TAOS) and the rival American Sanctuary Association (ASA) have become increasingly successful over the past two years in obtaining legislation to prohibit exotic and dangerous pet ownership, close substandard animal exhibits, and ban circus animal acts. Apart from the cruelty often involved in training animals to perform in circuses, acts involving dangerous and exotic animals are commonly blamed for inspiring the public to consider such animals as pets.

Of the 39 known local and state laws in the U.S. which ban exotic and dangerous animal possession or performances, at least 12 were adopted in either 2001 or 2002.

At least eight other jurisdictions outside the state of Texas have had such legislation under discussion during 2002__along with as many as 200 of the 254 counties in Texas, which were empowered to ban dangerous and exotic animal possession by the 2001 Wild and Dangerous Animals Act.

Among the non-Texas communities taking action:

* Western Connecticut State University, in Danbury, banned animal acts from campus grounds in February 2001.

* The planning and zoning commission in Hillsborough County, Florida, in June 2001 refused to allow Jungleland owner Eugene Calabrese to provide a winter home to the L.E. Barnes circus family.

* Ferndale, Michigan, in July 2001 banned keeping reptiles above four feet long, banned keeping more than three snakes, and required all reptile owners to register them.

* Missouri in August 2001 required exotic animal owners to register their animals with local law enforcement.

* Washington County, Arkansas, in August 2001 required owners of exotic animals to post warnings of the animals' presence and asked the owners to register their animals. Registration becomes mandatory if the animals are subject of complaints to the county animal control department.

* Orange County, North Carolina, in August 2001 banned traveling elephant acts.

* South Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania, in October 2001 banned possession of "any animal which is wild, fierce, dangerous, noxious or naturally inclined to do harm," including alligators, bobcats, potbellied pigs, raccoons, venomous and constricting snakes, ferrets, and wolf hybrids. The ordinance was amended in January 2002 to allow potbellied pigs and ferrets under certain conditions.

* Southwest Ranches, Florida, in January 2002 prohibited public display of dangerous and exotic wildlife other than animals kept by a nonprofit organization, which uses the receipts from exhibition toward the animals' care. The Southwest Ranches ban was requested by Destiny Big Cat Sanctuary founder Tori Canzonetta, whose facility is reportedly not normally open to the public.

* Racine, Wisconsin, in January 2002 banned private possession of any wild, vicious, or hybrid animal.

* Encinitas, California, in April 2002 banned all exhibitions, circuses, rides or trade shows featuring nondomestic animals, such as elephants, giraffes, camels, ostriches, and emus. An exemption was permitted for llamas.

* Greenburgh, New York, in May 2002 banned wild and exotic animal acts plus rodeos from city property.

* Cleveland, Ohio, in June 2002 banned big cats, dangerous reptiles, and other pets deemed dangerous.

* Austintown, Ohio, in August 2002 banned private possession of endangered species, non-native wildlife, and predators not indigenous to Ohio.

* Portage, Indiana, in August 2002 tried to halt a traveling tiger exhibit but discovered that it lacked the necessary enabling legislation.

Possible federal action

Local ordinances pertaining to exotic and dangerous animals tend to be highly idiosyncratic, responding to the pressures and concerns of each community. Some target exhibition but overlook petkeepers; some target petkeepers but overlook exhibition. All, so far, might be most important as indicators to state and federal legislators of constituent interest in addressing exotic and dangerous animal-keeping, preferably in a more consistent and coordinated manner.

Movement toward stronger federal legislation addressing exotic and dangerous animals may have begun on July 25, when Representative George Miller (D-California) introduced a bill called the Captive Wildlife Safety Act. The bill "would ban interstate shipments of lions, tigers, and bears for the pet trade," according to a press release from the Humane Society of the U.S.

HSUS requested the Miller bill, in concert with the American Zoo Association and the International Fund for Animal Welfare. The Miller bill has received notice from major news media, but has little realistic chance of advancing through the present Congress.

However, "It appears that bird breeders, dealers, transporters, exhibitors, and carriers will be regulated under the Animal Welfare Act," American Federation of Aviculture president Benny J. Gallaway advised members on September 3.

"This turn of events was totally unexpected," Gallaway continued, "as the so-called Helms Amendment," passed as part of the 2002 Farm Bill to exclude rats, mice, and birds used in biomedical research from protection by the Animal Welfare Act, was believed to have completely excluded birds from any protection.

"Last week," Gallaway explained, "the USDA contacted the AFA to express concerns that, in reviewing the recently received text of the final legislation, changes in punctuation and phrasing of the Helms Amendment as incorporated into the final version of the Act were such that USDA would be required to include birds (and other specified animals not exempted for laboratory research) under the regulations. This interpretation of the language contained in the final legislation was subsequently confirmed by USDA legal and administrative staffs."

The USDA move to regulate birds is a step toward stronger federal regulation of exotic and dangerous wildlife. Most birds commonly kept in private captivity are not native, and though birds are not commonly thought of as dangerous, many species can be quite dangerous if improperly handled.

Among the potentially dangerous birds often found in private collections are falcons, hawks, owls, gamecocks, and large parrots, like Bird, a cockatoo memorialized on page 22 of this edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE who defended murder victim Kevin Butler, 48, of Dallas, at cost of his own life.

Several state wildlife agencies seeking to eradicate feral mute swans have also called them dangerous, although authenticated injuries inflicted by mute swans are few.

Emus, on the other hand, can severely injure humans, and ostriches, relative to their numbers in captivity, may be the deadliest species commonly kept as livestock.

Within a recent four-year span, Ouma Hendriks, 63, of Joostenbergvlakte, South Africa, was kicked to death in December 1997 by an ostrich who had already incapacitated her husband Abraham, 65, after attacking them as they walked near a neighbor's ostrich farm; hiker Jasper Smith was injured in a 40-minute attack during September 1998 on a trail that crossed an ostrich farm near Saldanha Bay, South Africa; Fred Parker, 81, was stomped to death in June 1999 while feeding his daughter Linda Carter's pet ostrich named King Tut, at Winlock, Washington; a 90-year-old man was killed and his 86-year-old wife was critically injured at their son's ostrich farm in Union Parish, Louisiana, during February 2000 (none were named by police); and Norwegian ostrich breeder Oeystein Froeysnes, 38, suffered a crushed rib cage and punctured lungs in April 2000 after coming between a male ostrich and two females.

Reported deadly and nearly-deadly ostrich attacks dropped abruptly with the drop in the captive ostrich population which followed the end of an ostrich speculation boom that circled the world during the 1990s.

Meanwhile, among species usually raised for meat and byproducts, only breeding bulls killed more people in the U.S., South Africa, and Norway during 1997-2000.

International issue

The movement toward restricting private ownership of exotic and dangerous animals has growing momentum in many other nations:

* Mount Pearl, Newfoundland, Canada, in June 2001 banned animal circuses, following the recent examples of at least 20 British Columbia cities, including Vancouver.

* A two-year campaign in Brazil begun by Alianca International do Animal founder Ila Franco after a circus elephant killed a trainer in 1999, boosted a year later by the fatal mauling of a six-year-old boy by a circus lion, in November 2001 brought a ban on the use of dangerous animals in circuses in Rio de Janeiro state. Rio de Janeiro in May 2002 extended the legislation to ban animal circuses outright. Similar legislation was meanwhile approved in the cities of Sao Leopoldo, Olinda, and Puerto Alegre, and the state of Pernambuco.

* Bogota, Colombia, in May 2002 banned circus animal acts.

* Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia, in February 2002 banned animal circuses.

* The Cyprus veterinary department in April 2002 tightened restrictions on importing exotic pets, after approving the import of more than 3,000 exotic birds in 2001.

* Costa Rica banned animal circuses in July 2002.

The Royal SPCA of Great Britain has since January 2002 urged the British government to strengthen the 1976 Dangerous Wild Animals Act, has requested a total ban of animal circuses, and has asked the European Union to more tightly restrict imports of exotic species. During the 1990s, the RSPCA says, 28,000 live crocodiles and 80,000 monitor lizards were imported into European Union nations, among more than a million total reptiles. RSPCA data shows that 23% of the reptiles did not survive the trip, while 72% of the turtles, 56% of the snakes, and 40% of the lizards were improperly housed by their purchasers.

In Norway, not a nation known for animal rights activism, agriculture minister Lars Sponheim recently proposed banning elephant transport as a public safety measure. Circus Merano owner Knut Dahl responded in late August by threatening to go out of business, after 28 years on the road.

"This is a cultural institution that is being shut down," said Circus Merano spokesperson Turid Beth Hansen.

"That's dumb and meaningless," responded Sponheim to the newspaper Aftenposten, rejecting the argument that cultural tradition should trump other considerations.

Both Norway and Japan have claimed a cultural need to continue whaling, but culture has not been raised as an argument relevant to keeping exotic and dangerous animals in Japan, perhaps because keeping any kind of animals other than livestock in captivity has a relatively short history there. Japan has little animal-related entertainment, compared to most other affluent nations, and by the standards of most of the rest of the world, Japan has a relatively small dangerous and exotic wild pet problem, at least if measured in terms of public incidents involving escapes and injuries, despite being among the major importers of animals from Australia and Southeast Asia.

Yet the relative scarcity of dangerous and exotic animal-related incidents in Japan may be only because most of the imported animals do not live long__other than some raccoons, monkeys, rabbits, and squirrels who have established feral populations after escaping or being released.

The Nogeyama Zoo in Yokohama reports receiving an average of 35 rare exotics per year from police, well below the intake at similar facilities in the U.S., but enough to encourage the Japanese environment ministry to consider stronger regulation of the exotic pet trade.

Mexico, among the nations reputedly most involved in exotic and dangerous wildlife trafficking, with little effective regulation, has long been under pressure from animal advocacy groups seeking a crackdown, to little evident effect.

Since the evening of July 28, however, expressions of concern have come from tourism promoters, as well. That evening schoolgirl basketball star Brittany Regeliski, 13, went to dinner with her 15-year-old sister, Ashley Regeliski, and her mother, Penny Pilcher, at the Parrilla La Mision restaurant in Cozumel. Restaurant owner Estella Miranda had a pair of two-year-old declawed African lions on exhibit in a cage which reportedly was without signs warning visitors to stay away. As many as five teenagers including Brittany Regeliski approached to pet the lions. While touching one lion, Brittany Regeliski momentarily turned her head to speak to one of the other teens. The lion seized her left arm in his teeth and pulled. Emergency surgery saved the arm, but she may never again be able to play competitive basketball.

For decades, Mexican promoters have used wildlife to attract tourists. Maulings, however, tend to discourage tourism, especially when the victims are children.

Money in parts

Liability issues are driving most of the recent action to ban or restrict keeping exotic and dangerous wildlife, both in the U.S. and abroad. Relatively little of the public policy debate pays attention to what may become of the animals after bans are in effect.

Already overwhelmed by the incoming animal volume, and knowing that each ban on possession or exhibition of exotic or dangerous wildlife will mean more arrivals if the ban is enforced, the TAOS and ASA sanctuary alliances nonetheless strongly favor restrictive legislation because it tends to discourage breeding and trafficking. In the long run, most TAOS and ASA members believe, restrictive exotic and dangerous animal regulation hastens the time when extensive sanctuary networks will no longer be necessary to take care of animals who never should have been bred or removed from the wild.

Meanwhile, because sanctuary space and funding is quite limited, there is increasing risk that animals who are supposedly being rescued are instead being sold by "scamtuaries," as TAOS and ASA members call dubious operations, and are ending up in canned hunts and the body parts traffic.

Bears, big cats, elephants, rhinos, and even wild horses are literally worth more these days dead than alive.

Hindi, Gardner, and many TAOS and ASA members familiar with the Baylor bear program suspect this includes the Baylor bears, after they become too big, old, debilitated, and/or cranky to be paraded safely at football games.

Chance, a Baylor mascot preceding the present pair, was delivered to Bear Country USA, described by Animal Underworld author Alan Green as, "a South Dakota drive-through park just down the road from Mount Rushmore, with a chronic history of flunking Animal Welfare Act inspections. Home to about 360 bears, this park has a radical approach to keeping its population stable," Green charged in 1999. "Some of the bears are quietly trucked off to South Dakota slaughterhouses, where they are butchered and packaged for the exotic meat trade. During one recent year, 20 bears in South Dakota were slaughtered under state inspection. The state veterinarian will not say how many of those animals came from Bear Country USA, nor will the park owners."

"We have assurances from Bear Country USA that Chance is not going to be slaughtered," claims Brumley.

Considering the number of bears at the facility, however, the difficulty of identifying any one bear among them, and the reluctance of the owners and the South Dakota state veterinarian to provide details about the sale of bears to slaughter, such assurances are practically impossible for animal defenders to monitor.

Covert traffic

Bear Country USA sells animals to slaughter within the law. Many other exotic and dangerous animal-keepers cut corners. This recently landed at least 17 people in trouble with the USDA and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Ross Wilmoth, 77, owner of the Wild Wilderness Drive Thru Safari in Gentry, Arkansas, settled USDA charges in June 2002 by agreeing to pay $5,000 to the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, spend $2,500 on improved training in animal care and nutrition for the safari workers, and spend $2,500 on site improvements. His son Freddy Wilmoth was on May 20 given three years on probation and ordered to pay $10,000 restitution in connection with selling four tigers to Todd and Vicki Lantz of Lazy L Exotics, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Todd Lantz shot the tigers at his father-in-law's 5-H Ranch, and sold their hides, meat, and other body parts for $4,000, prosecutors said. On August 27, Todd Lantz drew five months in prison. For allegedly falsifying related documents, Vicki Lantz drew six months under home arrest, plus five years on probation.

Timothy Dale Rivers, of Animals in Motion in Citra, Florida, better known for promoting the nationally notorious Tim Rivers Diving Mules traveling show, in mid-August pleaded guilty to illegally selling two black leopards to an Illinois buyer through Todd Lantz. Rivers also admitted selling a Bengal tiger to a co-defendant from Chicago.

Steven Galecki, 32, who formerly operated the Funky Monkey Animal Park in Crete, Illinois, on August 29 pleaded guilty to conspiracy for his alleged involvement in selling at least 19 tigers, seven leopards, two African lions, a snow leopard, a puma, and an Asian swamp deer to their deaths. Galecki admitted selling six of the animals to Robert Martinez, M.D., of Palos Heights, Illinois, who allegedly then borrowed a gun from William Kapp of Tinley Park, Illinois, to shoot the animals in cages on Galecki's property. A friend, David Woldman of Lombard, was also involved in killing at least two of the animals, the prosecution charged.

Martinez allegedly paid Galecki $7,000; Galecki paid Kapp $2,000.

The carcasses were allegedly delivered to meat market owner Richard Czimer. Czimer and Woldman have also been indicted in the case.

Previously convicted were Woody Thompson, owner of the Willow Lake Sportsmen's club in Three Rivers, Michigan, who was fined $30,000 and given six months of home detention, and Timothy Laurie, of Elgin, Illinois, who is still awaiting sentencing.

Numerous related cases are also pending.

The U.S. cases echoed the suspicions of Dr. Harish Maikhusi, of the organization Prithvi Kalyan Samiti Godeshwar in Garhwal, Himalaya, India, who recently wrote to ANIMAL PEOPLE after the exposure of a zoo-based wildlife parts trafficking ring in India, "I think tiger parks are maintained only to provide tiger skins to smugglers."

Maikhusi enclosed a photograph of leopard pelts seized from smugglers in his region.

ANIMAL PEOPLE compared the reported death rates among big cats in Indian zoos and AZA-accredited U.S. zoos for three months after receiving the message from Maikhusi, and found that they were approximately the same, with no evident reason to suspect wrongdoing on a significant scale at the public zoos of either nation. Many of the recent deaths of tigers, lions, and leopards in India, moreover, involved animals who were recently confiscated from illegal traveling shows, and arrived in poor condition, with untreated parasitic infections and tumors.

In Lahore, Pakistan, however, Punjab state director general of wildlife and parks M.D. Chaudhary and Zoological Garden Bahawalpur curator Muhammad Lateef Chaudary boasted to the Frontier Post of Peshawar in mid-August of having just sold six lion cubs, raising their total of cubs sold to more than 100.

"We have a stock of two tigresses and 15 lions and lionesses," Chaudhary reportedly said.

If there is a major difference between the practices of the Zoological Garden Bahawalpur and those of many U.S. roadside zoos, it may be that the U.S. facilities rarely announce their ethically dubious deals through mass media. __M.C.