An Ohio safari

“The state should imme­di­ately adopt a rule for­bid­ding the pri­vate own­er­ship of exotic animals.”

— Wayne Pecelle

Pres­i­dent, Humane Soci­ety of the United States

“We have to have a strict per­mit­ting process here.”

— Jack Hanna

Direc­tor Emeritus,

Colum­bus Zoo and Aquarium

By all accounts, what hap­pened Tues­day night and Wednes­day in Musk­ingum County was the largest exotic ani­mal escape in Amer­i­can his­tory. Some 56 ani­mals, most of them large cats, bears and wolves, escaped from a pri­vate farm near Zanesville shortly before dark on Tues­day when their owner released them from their cages, cut the cage wires to pre­vent the cages from being reclosed and then com­mit­ted suicide.

To put the scale of the escape in per­spec­tive, the ani­mals at large included nine male and eight female lions. The Colum­bus Zoo and Aquar­ium has, accord­ing to their web­site, only three lions. The escape included 18 tigers. The zoo has four. The escaped ani­mals included eight bears (six black and two griz­zlies). The zoo has four bears. Three moun­tain lions, two wolves, a baboon and a mon­key also escaped. News reports indi­cated that a griz­zly bear, three leop­ards and two mon­keys were cap­tured alive and taken to the zoo and that sev­eral other pri­mates had not been released and were also taken to the zoo.

Deputies arrived on the scene only 90 min­utes before night­fall. They were imme­di­ately pre­sented with a sit­u­a­tion akin to (or worse than) all of the most dan­ger­ous ani­mals from the Colum­bus Zoo escap­ing simul­ta­ne­ously. Know­ing how close res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods were to the area, they were forced to shoot and kill ani­mals to attempt to pre­vent them from leav­ing the prop­erty. Zoo offi­cials raced to the scene but direc­tor emer­i­tus Jack Hanna (who drove through the night from a speak­ing engage­ment in Penn­syl­va­nia) later noted that they have only four tran­quil­izer guns and that large, dan­ger­ous ani­mals can­not be tran­quil­ized at night because of the dan­ger to the per­son wield­ing the tran­quil­izer gun and because of the pos­si­bil­ity that the ani­mal will become enraged or wan­der off to points unknown and be lost again.

In fact, CNN later aired an inter­view with Dr. Bar­bara Wolfe, direc­tor of Wildlife at The Wilds who noted that a 300 pound tiger had been found alive on Wednes­day morn­ing. She went with a spe­cial­ized team to find and cap­ture the ani­mal. In order to shoot it with a tran­quil­izer gun she had to approach within 15 feet of the ani­mal. Ten sec­onds later it roared and charged at her and deputies on scene had to shoot and kill the ani­mal before it could get to her.

The ques­tion then is how we got to this point. Par­tic­u­larly, how a man who would not have been per­mit­ted to own a firearm because of his felony record could be per­mit­ted to own dozens and dozens of dan­ger­ous exotic ani­mals. The answer is that Ohio has some of the most lax reg­u­la­tions on wild ani­mals of any state in the coun­try. In fact, the Humane Soci­ety of the United States iden­ti­fied Mis­souri, Nevada, North Car­olina, Okla­homa and Ohio as the worst states in the nation on the con­trol of exotic pets.

Ohio reg­u­lates only the breed­ing and exhibit­ing of exotic ani­mals and requires that their own­ers cer­tify that the ani­mals are healthy and have been seen by a vet­eri­nar­ian. Because the facil­ity in Musk­ingum County was nei­ther breed­ing nor exhibit­ing the ani­mals, it fell out­side of Ohio’s reg­u­la­tory struc­ture and was per­mit­ted to oper­ate with­out interference.

Among neigh­bor­ing states, Penn­syl­va­nia per­mits exotic ani­mal own­er­ship, but only with a per­mit from the state wildlife com­mis­sion. Michi­gan bans all pri­vate own­er­ship of large cat species and bears and has strict reg­u­la­tion on the trans­porta­tion of those ani­mals into the State. Ken­tucky bans all own­er­ship of inher­ently dan­ger­ous ani­mals, includ­ing lions, tigers, bears and non-human primates.

A now expired Exec­u­tive Order in Ohio had banned the own­er­ship of exotic ani­mals, though it grand­fa­thered exist­ing ani­mals through an annual per­mit process. Offi­cials from the Ohio Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources, inter­viewed dur­ing the Musk­ingum County inci­dent, noted that they were already work­ing on devel­op­ing a new exotic ani­mal reg­u­la­tory scheme in Ohio and that they hoped to have a draft pro­posal to the state leg­is­la­ture in approx­i­mately 30 days.

ODNR says that there is no offi­cial count of the num­ber of exotic pets in the state. Any new reg­u­la­tion would there­fore either require self-reporting, manda­tory report­ing by vet­eri­nar­i­ans, or an effort to seek out exotic pets through­out the state.

David Hej­manowski is a mag­is­trate and court admin­is­tra­tor of the Delaware County Juve­nile Court and a for­mer assis­tant pros­e­cut­ing attorney.

Posted by Dave Hejmanowski on Oct 20 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.