Exotic pets: Big cats and pigeons and snakeheads. Oh, my.
Editor:
Thanks for covering this important issue. There are thousands of reasons why wild animals shouldn’t be caged and not one justifiable reason for trying to make a pet of a wild animal.
Up until 2003 the number of big cats we had to turn away from Big Cat Rescue was doubling every year due to the virtually unregulated pet trade. By 2003 we had to turn away 312 big cats (mostly tigers) in a single year. We had been working hard with others who care about animals to pass a bill that made it illegal to sell a big cat across state lines as a pet. That bill passed in December 2003.
The following year, the number of big cats we had to turn away dropped, for the first time ever, to 110. As we pass better state laws, that number is continuing to drop but another thing happened in 2003 as well. The number of cougar sightings, in places where they had not lived in the wild in over 100 years, skyrocketed. Since there is no one overseeing most of these places that have captive cats, most of the time, there is a huge propensity for irresponsibility.
There are 90 or so USDA inspectors who are responsible for overseeing some 30,000 facilities with dangerous exotics. USDA doesn’t require positive identification, so if you are inspected and have 100 big cats this year and 100 big cats next year, then there is no further look into where cats came from or went.
Most of these places with big cats are breeding them because babies bring in an income. There is no way to prevent births by separating cats while they are in heat, which is what almost all of these places tell you they do. The only way to prevent births is to sterilize the cats, or house them in groups of same sex only.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare hopes to re-introduce Haley’s Act this year. It would solve more than 90 per cent of the problem by banning contact with big cats AND their cubs, which is the main reason these cats are bred.
The following is a partial listing (794) of incidents involving captive big cats since 1990. These incidents have resulted in the killing or deaths of 234 big cats, 68 human deaths, more than 243 human maulings, 214 exotic cat escapes and 363 confiscations.
The Journal of Internal Medicine in 2006 estimated that 50 million people worldwide have been infected with zoonotic diseases since 2000 and as many as 78,000 have died.
The U.S. represents less than 5 per cent of the entire global population, but 67 per cent of ALL captive cat incidents occur in the U.S. Likewise, Florida represents less than 6 per cent of the U.S. population while 13 per cent of all U.S. incidents occur in Florida. California and Florida boast the most comprehensive sets of regulations allowing private ownership of exotic cats while ranking #3 and #1 respectively in the highest numbers of big cat killings, maulings and escapes.
Carole Baskin
Baskin is the CEO of Big Cat Rescue, an educational sanctuary to large cats in Tampa, FL. Information is available at www.BigCatRescue.org
Editor:
I would urge the Health Department not to restrict ownership of pigeons within Baltimore city limits. Pigeons have been adored by mankind for 10,000 years, and have served us loyally for all those years. More than one million pigeons served in the two world wars, saving thousands of our boys through the delivery of critical messages. These birds were celebrated and honored veterans.
Just decades later, the gentle Rock Dove suffers from a miserable barrage of smears. Let me be clear: pigeons are not disease-infested vermin (so-called “rats with wings”). They carry no more diseases than you or I; and they are highly resistant, if not immune to Avian Flu and West Nile Virus. Let’s give this little bird a break, and extend that break to the knowledgeable and sporting fanciers who race these unparalleled athletes.
Their birds are kept extraordinarily healthy and clean as befitting of their thoroughbred status. While the very best Preakness winner may sprint at about 40 m.p.h. around a closed track for slightly more than a mile, these pigeon athletes routinely fly 600-mile races, averaging 60 m.p.h. They don’t stop for food, water or rest, and they are flying back from a place they have never been before.
Please consider this bird’s brilliant history, gentle nature and astounding physical feats before threatening the generations-old hobbyists who race and care for them with an unnecessary pigeon-husbandry limit. The Queen of England races pigeons; shouldn’t we allow humble Baltimore fanciers to do so as well?
Andrew D. Blechman
Great Barrington, MA
Blechman is the author of the recently released Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird
Editor:
Most of this article is quite sensible, with the glaring exception of a needless mention of snakeheads. Maryland journalists and envirocrats apparently just can’t get enough of the snakehead story, even though by all accounts (popular, official, and academic) snakeheads still have had no measurable effect (negative or positive) on any North American ecosystem. It is as though everyone believes that the snakehead peril can be made real by constant repetition. Well, I suppose it worked for WMDs in Iraq. But the power of a cautionary tale is lost when it lacks demonstrable consequences. Someday, perhaps, this walking fish story may have real legs. Given the number of variously comparable piscine predators competing with snakeheads in the Potomac drainage, the outlook for near-term gratification of press and political appetites for “bleeding leaders” is pretty dim. For the time being, the snakehead threat in Maryland is pure hyperbole.
Matt Chew
Submitted via the Times-Herald Web site
Response to Mr. Chew:
The snakehead example is just that—an example. However, it is a real episode that Marylanders remember, and it began with someone purchasing non-native animals and then later setting them loose in a local pond. The result for the ecosystem of that particular pond was, by all accounts, disastrous. The entire pond—a place where community members enjoyed recreational fishing—had to be poisoned in order to kill just one species—an animal that should not have been there in the first place. Even today, the snakehead (which, make no mistake, is not native to the U.S.) is occasionally being caught in Maryland waters—which should serve as a warning to anyone who thinks that turning loose a non-native species is the right thing, or the kind thing, to do.
To draw a parallel between weapons of mass destruction and the snakehead is to overlook completely the basic principle of the issue —setting loose a non-native animal can have an unexpectedly large (and negative) impact on an ecosystem.
The fact that the incident everyone remembers from 2002 was a local pond in Crofton does not negate the seriousness of the issue; if anything, it underlines it. A ripple effect starts with the throw of the smallest stone.
Other snakehead have been reported in North Carolina, Virginia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New York. And while it is certainly unlikely that the same pair of snakeheads sent its spawn across six other states, it certainly proves that a non-native species can thrive where it should not be.
The snakehead is far from the only exotic species to be turned loose, and to be able to thrive in its new environment to the detriment of native species. A spectacular example occurred in October of 2005 when a Burmese python (again, not native to the U.S.) tried to swallow an alligator in the Florida Everglades. Both animals died. The python, according to reports, was 13 feet in length at the time of its death. The only explanation for its presence in the Everglades, according to biologists, was that it had been turned loose by someone who had bought it as a pet and could no longer care for it.
For the past 20 years, according to the same scientists, Burmese pythons (which can grow to be 20 feet long) have been able to thrive in Florida after their owners released them once they grew too large to contain and feed. (This in itself should have raised a red flag that would have caused any intelligent person to surrender the unwanted animal to a sanctuary where it stood no chance of breeding, or of hurting others—or if that failed, to visit an exotic animal vet who could humanely perform euthanasia).
It is far too easy to say that people pick on snakeheads as an example. It is much more accurate to say that uninformed people make exotic pets a problem by releasing them into an environment where nature never intended them to be.
Mary Helen Sprecher
Reporter, The Baltimore Guide
February 17th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Dear Editor.
Private owners of wild and exotic animals in the USA have been coming under ever increasing attack from the animal rights (AR) activists groups. Under the guise of pretending to care for public safety and using well meaning, but uninformed grieving relatives of the exotic animal attack victims as their pawns, they hide their real agenda: to end the captive keeping of all animals.
“According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) website and various news sources, 17 people were fatally mauled by big cats between 1990 and 2007, which is one death per year.(This is US number, please ignore the numbers in previous post which are worldwide).
Your lifetime Odds of Dying by a captive big cats are 1-in-4,000,000,” says Zuzana Kukol, a Nevada tiger trainer and co-founder of “Responsible Exotic Animal Ownership”, www.REXANO.org, a new free web resource designed to give much needed tools and statistics based research material to private owners of exotic and wild animals to fight unfair legislation. “For captive reptiles, the fatality rate is one and a half death per year.”
(PETA is an animal rights group opposed to captive keeping of all animals.)
“Nobody has ever been killed in the USA since 1990 as a result of a captive big cat or reptile at large” adds Scott Shoemaker of REXANO.
Yet despite the facts disproving the claims of exotic animals being a public safety issue, there are still enough uninformed government officials introducing and passing these ridiculous taxpayer’s money wasting bills.
Ohio’s Representative George Distel is about to introduce another unnecessary piece of legislation severely restricting private possession and ownership of wild and exotic animals in his state.
The Ohio Association of Animal Owners (www.OAAO.us) President Victoria Galle’ states: “All incidents/accidents involving any animal need to be addressed through the existing laws of that area.”
“Animals are personal property; and we oppose legislation that restricts the private ownership or use of animals, or that inhibits free trade of any animal provided it meets Ohio Department of Agriculture testing and import requirements” adds Polly Britton, OAAO secretary.
Indiana State Senator Connie Sipes already introduced a bill restricting private ownership of exotic and wild animals. The bill is written by two animal rights (AR) groups, HSUS and API. Sipes is quoted in HSUS press release: “Wild animals belong in the wild, not in our backyards.”
“While Senator Sipes is entitled to her opinion, it is not very feasible in the real world as most of the wild habitat is disappearing and the only chance to save many animals such as tigers from extinction is captive breeding with the private sector having the majority of available habitat” says Scott Shoemaker of REXANO.
“Wild animals kept in untrained hands in our communities pose a serious threat to Indiana residents,” said Senator Sipes.
“Making such blanket uninformed and factless statements like these is a clear red flag to question the real motives behind these bills, since the majority of fatalities are handlers/owners themselves, or people voluntarily on the property where the animals are being kept, not uninvolved public” says Kukol.
“The best method to avoid being killed by a captive exotic animal is to simply avoid the properties where they are being kept “says Shoemaker.
Indiana and Ohio are not the only state under the attack. North Carolina is expected to have their anti exotic animal ownership bill introduced soon, and West Virginia and Washington states are already having hearings on theirs.
“As a former Washington state resident, I know first hand exotic animals are not a major problem there”, says Zuzana Kukol. “If I was still living there, I would hope the government officials were more worried about the potential of Mount St. Helen’s erupting again instead of what animal WA residents keep as personal pets.”
REXANO is committed to protect the rights of animal owners and supports responsible private ownership of exotic animals in any form, be it non commercial pet or sanctuary, as well as commercial breeder or exhibitor.
As long as animal welfare and public safety laws are being followed, the private (non governmental) ownership of exotic and wild animals should be legal and protected in the USA.
Current focus of REXANO is to reverse the trend in over regulation, with the desire that in the near future to work on repealing excessive regulations and bans on private ownership of exotics.
February 17th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
http://www.rexano.org//ARFalseDataFrame.htm
AR Fanatic Falsifies Data
By Bart Culver
Carole Baskin (formerly Carole Lewis) has done an exhaustive key word search of news archives throughout the world for anything that might help her portray private ownership of exotic felines as unacceptably dangerous. In her own words she summarizes 400 news stories from the years 1990 to 2006 under the heading ‘Feline Attacks’. She claims it is only a partial listing of the highest profile cases that made the news. Then she claims to have used this data to generate a chart, which ‘shows the alarming increase in feline attacks’.
Newspaper accounts are notoriously unreliable data sets. Such data is worthless unless it is objectively reported, collected and analyzed by someone who is not a propagandist bent on deception. Analysis of Baskin’s work reveals that invalid data and deceitful methodology led to unwarranted conclusions.
Of 400 news stories, 140 came from other countries, where laws and customs differ from our own. They reflect conditions that do not affect us and cannot be addressed by US legislation. These stories are irrelevant to any proposed US legislation and were included only for sensationalism. Therefore we exclude them.
Of the 260 news reports from this country, 120 of them had nothing whatever to do with any attacks on anyone. They were every imaginable story with any mention of exotic cat species, i.e., animal welfare inspectors charging people with animal welfare violations, or confiscating cats without permits, zoos having to close for lack of interest, etc, etc. These stories are irrelevant to a study of feline attacks and should have been omitted. So we omit them.
Baskin was obviously eager to fatten up her database and scraped the bottom of the barrel. We note that all big cat attacks are high profile, because fear sells newspapers. Journalists never ignore these stories and neither does Baskin. Except for three.
1. A report from September 11, 1998, in the St Petersburg Times where a worker was mauled by a leopard at Baskin’s own facility and Baskin “was charged with 26 violations of the animal welfare act, including failure to provide veterinary care to animals in need, unsanitary water, unsafe storage of food, shoddy records, shabby housing for animals and trashy grounds.”
2. In August 1996, the St. Petersburg Times reported two cougars escaped from Baskin’s facility. As Carol stated in her defense, “These animals posed no danger to the public because they were pets”. And this proved to be the case.
3. In December 1997 the St. Petersburg Times reported a man who was bitten on the arm by a cougar on Baskin’s property was suing Baskin.
Having eliminated the irrelevant data we are left with 140 incidents in the US in 17 years, which resulted in injuries ranging from scratches up to 16 deaths. Plotting the results, we get a chart that looks nothing like the one presented by Baskin. As you can see, since 1995 there have only been 2 years when the incident rate was lower then it is now.
Baskin’s ‘alarming increase’ does not exist. It is a lie, concocted by padding 140 valid data points with 249 invalid ones. Baskin is hoping people will be too stupid to examine her data and simply accept her colorful chart with the picture of the snarling cat as the horrifying truth. This is not science; it is an insult to science and to your intelligence.
Baskin asserts that pet tigers kept in basements and backyards are an unacceptable danger to the public requiring us to eliminate the largest gene pool of tigers, the majority of tigers in the world. Again, her own data proves this is another lie. Of 16 deaths in 17 years, pet tigers caused 4; none of the victims were members of the public. The other 12 deaths are attributed to USDA licensed professionals.
Only two members of the public have been killed by captive felines in 17 years. The first death was a woman who climbed into a lion enclosure at the National Zoo in Washington DC in 1995. The second was a young woman who climbed on the back of a full-grown male tiger at a USDA facility to have her picture taken, in violation of USDA regulations. The other 15 deaths were trainers, handlers, keepers, staff, owners or their family or friends, voluntarily involved and not in public venues and not innocent bystanders.
Of 124 injuries in 17 years, 33 were inflicted by pets, involving three members of the public. The other 91 injuries happened at USDA licensed professional facilities and venues involving 20 members of the public. 36 of these were at zoos, many of which were AZA accredited, involving 11 members of the public.
Risk assessment
There are about 450 tigers in US municipal zoos and Baskin claims there are 10,000 tigers in private hands. For the moment lets accept Baskin’s ludicrous claim that the USDA licensees are all closet pet owners – part of the private sector.
Deaths
Zoos had 3 deaths per 450 cats.
The entire Baskin defined private sector had 13 deaths per 9,550 (10,000-450) cats
Private sector death rate = 13/9,550 = 1/734.6
Zoo death rate = 3/450 = 1/150 or Zoo/ private sector ratio = 4.897
Injuries
Zoos had 36 injuries per 450 cats.
Private sector had 124 – 36 = 88 injuries per 9,550 cats.
Zoo rate – 1/12.5 private sector = 1/108.5 ratio =8.68
Conclusions:
1. Zoo cats are 5 times more likely to kill you, and 9 times more likely to injure you then private sector cats.
2. Baskin’s claim of 10,000 tigers is a baseless fabrication. Let’s adopt conclusion 2 and look at this more directly. Let’s not suppose anything. What has actually happened to the public in the last 17 years?
Deaths to the PUBLIC Injuries to the PUBLIC
From Pets = 0
3
From USDA = 1
20
From Zoos = 1
11
Escapes:
There were 59 reports of escaped exotic cats in 17 years. 31 were pets; these were 6 tigers, one lion, five cougars, 3 bobcats, and 16 servals. Of these, one lion caused an injury. Three tigers escaped from circuses causing one injury. Five tigers escaped from sanctuaries. Four tigers, one lion, one ocelot, one caracal, and one cheetah escaped from zoos. One tiger caused an injury. Three tigers, one lion, one cougar, and one lynx escaped from other USDA facilities, the cougar caused one injury. All USDA licensed professionals combined had 27 cats escape causing 2 injuries, while pet owners had 31 escapes causing only one injury.
In 17 years in the US, escaped exotic cats have caused 2/124 = 1.6% of injuries and 0/16 = no deaths. Escaped pet exotics have caused 1/124 = 0.8% of all injuries, and no deaths. No harm has been done to members of the public by escaped exotics. Since pet owners have many times the number of cats that zoos and sanctuaries have, their escape record is clearly superior to both. Pet exotics also show fewer propensities for aggression when they do escape.
Conclusion:
1. Pet exotic owners have a better safety record then professionals.
2. Baskin’s characterization of pet exotic felines as a threat to the public is totally unfounded and the opposite of the truth. It is a lie.
Comments: While any deaths and injuries are regrettable they can never been entirely eliminated. No matter how hard you try to make the world perfectly safe, you will never defeat the incredible capacity of some humans for self-destruction. Ten injuries and the one death at zoos, 3 pet injuries and 2 USDA injuries were entirely the fault of the victim. People broke and entered, climbed fences, ignored warnings, and climbed into cages, or stuck their hands into cages. You cannot make the world safe for daredevils and lunatics.
Anyway you slice it, pet ownership poses very little danger to the public compared to zoos. There are reasons for this:
1. A loving, one-on-one relationship is the best way to raise a calm, tractable animal of any species.
2. Pet owners do not invite the public to interact and demand that their cats perform on schedule. These are acts of dominance and big cats don’t always agree to be dominated by strangers of a physically inferior species.
Baskin is trying to hoodwink legislators because she is an animal rights fanatic. They want to outlaw all animal ownership. She is targeting pet owners first because they are least able to defend themselves. But zoos, farms, and domestic pets are on the agenda and hysteria is the tactic that has proved most effective. So we are confronting the absurdity of charlatans and hypocrites deliberately infecting our culture with irrational fear and loathing of animals in the name of animal welfare.
To put the danger of exotic feline husbandry into rational perspective we use death statistics. It is impossible to assess the relative severity of injuries, but all deaths are equally severe. All captive exotic cats combined have killed an average of 1 person per year in the US in the past 17 years.
In the same time period an average of over 20,000 people are attacked and killed by one species of animal every year in the United States. They have recently begun to run in packs, killing thousands of people solely for the pleasure of it. This animal is the most dangerous animal in the world - Homo sapiens.
It is clearly absurd to be afraid of being killed by captive felines when that danger is entirely avoidable and your chances of being killed by free roaming humans are 20,000 times greater and largely unavoidable.
The bottom line is this; big cats are not roaming your neighborhood looking for people to kill. Humans are. If you are still afraid that big cats will harm you or your children, simply make sure that you and your children stay away from the private property where the big cats are. Don’t break and enter, don’t climb the fence, don’t volunteer and you will be 100% safe from big cats.
Comments on deaths and injuries to children:
I do not include children of the owners or their friends as members of the public, when there is no public venue. This is in accord with court rulings. As an analogy, if a parent makes a minor child shingle the roof, the child on the roof is not a member of the public. The parent may be guilty of child endangerment; but has not subjected the public to danger. Child endangerment is a serious crime. Human services are the most powerful agencies in state government. They can, and have taken people’s children simply because they owned a cub of a large feline species.
If you wish to prevent all child endangerment by outlawing all potentially dangerous activity by anyone, then you will have to outlaw almost everything people do and you might as well just imprison the entire population preemptively.
Important note: This analysis was done on the good faith assumption that Baskin did not alter the material facts in the individual news reports. We have now made a disturbing discovery. Aside from her deceitful methodology, Baskin has laced the news reports with her own biased editorial remarks and has deceitfully described a number of USDA licensed facilities as pet owners. It is far more difficult to ferret out lies then it is to tell them, so we are not certain what percentage of Baskin’s data is falsified. We are certain that the only thing Baskin’s corrupted data proves conclusively is that Baskin is a liar.
Efforts to sway legislators with lies deserve to be punished as perjury. Certainly they should never be rewarded with success.
Bart Culver has over twenty years experience living with dozens of exotic felines. Contact him at Klandaga@yahoo.com
Copyright 2007 © Bart Culver & REXANO
Published January 2007
www.REXANO.org
March 19th, 2007 at 2:24 am
Carole Baskin leaves something out. The reason that she has to turn so many animals away from her sanctuary is because of the laws that she and others in her business have succeeded in getting passed. These laws even hurt other sanctuaries because the laws that they actually suggest often make it impossible for sanctuaries to stay in business. This creates a false impression that there are too many tigers and other big cats when the fact is that there are too many bans driving those animals out of their homes. The bans are passed using bad reasoning, bad statistics, the wrong kind of emotional appeal, and by taking unfair advantage of county commissioners who often simply don’t want the responsibility of regulating what animals people may own. States pass this responsibility to the counties to keep from facing it and I think that part of this is because they know that it is wrong and they want to look like they are being “reasonable.”
March 19th, 2007 at 2:57 am
Mary Sprecher:
So you are saying that a whole pond “had” to be poisoned to rid it of the snakehead, and now the snakehead is occasionally caught in Maryland waters? Wouldn’t the fact that fishermen are still catching the fish tell you that the poisoning of the pond was useless, that a viable population of snakeheads exists, and that, if it doesn’t seem to be a big problem now, it never was and never will be?