Bill to regulate exotic animals introduced in Ohio

ANN SANNER

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — An Ohio law­maker is propos­ing that own­ers of exotic ani­mals be sub­jected to back­ground checks and required to fence their prop­erty — mea­sures sup­port­ers say might have saved dozens of lions, tigers, and other wild crea­tures that were shot by author­i­ties months ago after their sui­ci­dal owner let them loose.

Leg­is­la­tion intro­duced Thurs­day would ban new own­er­ship of exotic ani­mals in the state and imme­di­ately pro­hibit peo­ple from acquir­ing new or addi­tional dan­ger­ous wildlife.

Ohio has some of the nation’s weak­est restric­tions on exotic pets. Efforts to strengthen state law took on new urgency in Octo­ber when author­i­ties were forced to hunt down and kill 48 wild ani­mals — includ­ing endan­gered Ben­gal tigers — after their owner freed them from his Zanesville farm and then com­mit­ted suicide.

State Sen. Troy Balder­son, a Zanesville Repub­li­can, said owner Terry Thomp­son would not have passed the back­ground check in his bill for an own­er­ship per­mit because Thomp­son had been con­victed of a felony. Thomp­son had spent time in fed­eral prison for pos­sess­ing unreg­is­tered weapons.

If Balderson’s leg­is­la­tion becomes law, own­ers with felony con­vic­tions would be inel­i­gi­ble for spe­cial state per­mits to pos­sess wild animals.

Balder­son told The Asso­ci­ated Press that he has tried to find a bal­ance that pro­tects the pub­lic and the rights of prop­erty owners.

“There are good peo­ple out there that do this,” Balder­son said in a tele­phone inter­view. “I don’t want to have a knee-jerk reac­tion, and over­re­act to some­thing that hap­pened that was very unfortunate.”

“The ani­mals didn’t get out, they were let out,” Balder­son added.

The gov­er­nor and Colum­bus Zoo sup­port his plan.

Own­ers of lions, tigers and other large ani­mals such as ele­phants and croc­o­diles would be banned in 2014 from keep­ing the crea­tures unless they acquired a wildlife shel­ter per­mit from the state. They would have to meet new caging require­ments, obtain insur­ance, microchip the ani­mals and adhere to strict care stan­dards. Own­ers also would have to reg­is­ter their ani­mals within 60 days of the law’s effec­tive date.

Zoos, cir­cuses, sanc­tu­ar­ies and research facil­i­ties would be exempt.

The bill would let own­ers of con­strict­ing and ven­omous snakes keep their rep­tiles, but they must have safety plans in place in case the snakes got out. Own­ers could still breed and acquire new snakes.

The pro­posed care­tak­ing stan­dards would require own­ers to have an 8-foot-tall perime­ter fence around their prop­erty, just as zoos do.

Tom Stalf, the Colum­bus Zoo’s chief oper­at­ing offi­cer, said Thompson’s farm had a 3-foot-tall live­stock fence — not high enough to pre­vent the ani­mals from run­ning away once they were out of their cages.

“If there were a perime­ter fence in place around the facil­ity, we would have a bet­ter out­come,” Stalf said. “It’s very pos­si­ble they would have still been con­tained, and we would have been able to recover them alive.”

The bill also would allow state offi­cials to bet­ter grasp how many dan­ger­ous wild ani­mals and own­ers reside in Ohio, he said.

Stalf, whose input was included in the bill, said the zoo has taken issue with an exemp­tion that would allow a north­east Ohio school to dis­play a dan­ger­ous wild ani­mal as a sports mascot.

Each year, a new tiger cub serves as the mas­cot for the foot­ball team at Wash­ing­ton High School in Mas­sil­lon. “Obie” is a 43-year-tradition, said prin­ci­pal Brad Warner.

Under the leg­is­la­tion, the school would have to care for the ani­mal through­out its lifes­pan, obtain a $1 mil­lion insur­ance pol­icy that would cover any injuries or prop­erty dam­age, and con­fine the tiger to a cage that does not per­mit phys­i­cal contact.

Warner said he wasn’t imme­di­ately sure whether the school could meet the stan­dards, but the booster club that pays for the cub would do what it takes to main­tain the tradition.

Celebrity zookeeper Jack Hanna has crit­i­cized Ohio law­mak­ers for not swiftly pass­ing new regulations.

Hanna, a for­mer Colum­bus Zoo direc­tor, has bris­tled at the idea of some own­ers being allowed to keep their ani­mals because they would be grand­fa­thered into any ban. A zoo spokes­woman said Hanna is sup­port­ive of the bill overall.

The head of the Humane Soci­ety of the United States called the mea­sure “a vast improve­ment” for Ohio, but expressed con­cern that it would allow peo­ple to acquire large con­strict­ing snakes and exempt cer­tain facil­i­ties asso­ci­ated with the Zoo­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion of America.

“If we want a com­pre­hen­sive law cov­er­ing dan­ger­ous and exotic ani­mals, we must for­tify some por­tions of this pro­posal,” said Wayne Pacelle, the organization’s pres­i­dent and CEO, in a writ­ten statement.

A hear­ing on Balderson’s leg­is­la­tion is planned for next week.

The pro­posal is less strict than a frame­work sug­gested last year by a state study com­mit­tee that Gov. John Kasich con­vened in April.

The group had rec­om­mended a more strin­gent ban on the casual own­er­ship of exotic ani­mals, which called for the con­fis­ca­tion of any wildlife kept by any­one lack­ing the proper licenses or exemp­tions in 2014.

Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said Thurs­day the admin­is­tra­tion had reached an agree­ment with the Sen­ate on Balderson’s pro­posal, and the gov­er­nor is com­fort­able with it. He said in an email the new stan­dards couldn’t be met by casual own­ers of exotic wildlife, a group he said is more inclined to have prob­lems with the dan­ger­ous animals.

“It’s admit­tedly not every­thing we sought or that the work­ing group rec­om­mended, but it’s most of it and such a huge improve­ment from where Ohio has been that the gov­er­nor is com­fort­able mov­ing for­ward,” Nichols said.

Posted by AP News on Mar 8 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.