What Exotic Animals Can You Own In Tennessee
On a misty Sat forenoon outside of Burlington, a small tour group walks down a gravel pathway through the exotic beast enclosures at the Creature Park at the Conservator'south Center, a nonprofit zoo.
Between two lion enclosures, the tour guide yells a deafening guttural sound and the lions join in presently after. It's chosen "oofing" and it'southward how lions cheque in with each other.
North Carolina is ane of only iv states in the country that has no state-broad laws on private ownership of exotic animals. Instead, private counties are left to regulate lions, pythons, or whatever exotic animate being someone may want to own.
And while some of those counties take placed restrictions on animal buying, others have no laws at all.
"The opportunity is there for the ownership of pretty much anything," says Tara Harrison, an banana professor and veterinarian with the NC Land School of Veterinary Medicine.
Harrison says that she does not know of anyone in the country with a large true cat as a pet, but she can't be certain. She often treats smaller exotic animals, like servals, a type of wild cat native to sub-Saharan Africa.
"And they get it because it'southward pretty, information technology looks cool," Harrison explains. "And they don't know how to accept care of it. And then we take seen some instances where these animals are fed an inappropriate diet, and then they have poor bone quality and or fractures. Or they're not vaccinated properly. And so then they become sick, and they have to be put to sleep."
Harrison also works with private zoos – both for-profit and non-profit. She says information technology's hard to know which is improve for the welfare of animals.
In Caswell County, where the Conservator's Center is located, the exotic animal ordinance limits buying but to those who can properly restrain their animal with an enclosure or leash and muzzle.
The Middle opened to the public in 2007, later taking in a number of large cats from a shuttered zoo in Ohio three years before. They are a 501(c)(3) non-turn a profit with a budget that comes primarily from donations and bout ticket sales. About 20 big cats live there, forth with 20 other species of animals including servals, fennec foxes, lemurs, binturongs, bobcats and wolves.
Credit Josie Taris / WUNC
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"People demand to understand why these animals are important," says Mindy Stinner, the Conservator'due south Eye executive managing director and co-founder. "It's non only most 'I have a cool collection.' Information technology's not simply about the ego of an private. It's not only about maintaining them for our pleasure. I experience like they need to serve a higher purpose."
Visitors can only walk through the grounds and meet the animals on the weekend, when staff and volunteers lead guided tours. Animals land at the Conservator's Eye afterwards coming from other zoos every bit a donation or rescue, and sometimes they are donated by private owners who tin can no longer accept proper care of their animal.
"In each case, for all of those things, none of the animals were ever abased, or always left hanging - these animals were not going to be put down," says Stinner. "They were people looking for a placement, the right place for that animal to live out its life."
The conclusion not to breed the big cats at the Conservator's Eye is largely fiscal. The park sits on 10 developed acres of a 45-acre holding. With such little infinite, convenance large cats would be impractical. But they exercise breed some of their smaller, underrepresented animals as part of a broader conservation effort.
A few hundred miles away, northward of Charlotte in Iredell County, is Zootastic Park. They are i of the state's largest, individual, for-profit zoos. They operate on most 200 acres of land and have hundreds of animals.
At the entrance of the zoo is a massive befouled with a "Zootastic Park" sign hanging over the doorway and billboards for local businesses on the walls. After going through a gift shop, visitors can walk around the park at volition. Interspersed between the big cat enclosures are a carousel, picnic expanse and petting zoos.
Scottie Brown owns the place. He's a general contractor by merchandise, but he'south endemic zebra and elk for most of his life. Chocolate-brown decided to open Zootastic because he wanted to aggrandize his collection.
"I wanted a giraffe," he says. "And to buy a giraffe for fifty-thousand bucks to sit in your backyard and look at information technology, you lot got to be rich and I wasn't rich."
Credit Josie Taris / WUNC
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Apart from ticket sales, Zootastic funds its business by breeding some of their animals. Sometimes they sell the newborns, other times they include the young in their animal see package. Guests can pay for more intimate, interactive encounters with animals like lemurs, kangaroos, or large-cat cubs.
The The states Department of Agriculture allows for public handling of cubs, but only for the few weeks when a cub is big enough to exist away from its mother but modest enough that information technology can't seriously injure someone.
A license from the USDA is required to trade or showroom exotic animals. Both Zootastic and the Conservators Center are field of study to USDA regulation. In the exotic animate being community, the USDA serves every bit a kind of entry-level accreditation to operate a zoo. It sets standards similar the size of the enclosure, veterinary care, and basic animal welfare and public safety.
Stinner respects the USDA's part in maintaining standards, only thinks the organisation might be too big for its own expert.
"The standards are solid, the concepts are solid, the implementation is where the challenge ever occurs," she says. "And it's a challenge on both sides, it's hard for us sometimes to know what they're looking for. It's hard sometimes for them to be consistent and how they enforce it."
Co-ordinate to USDA records, the Beast Park at the Conservator's Heart, which until recently was known just as the Conservator's Center, has not had whatsoever recent citations.
Brown, with Zootastic, says USDA inspectors are tough, merely fair. USDA records show since 2014 they've had a few citations ranging from torn feed bags to a bloody tiger tail. All were corrected by the follow-up inspections.
In line with recent moves relaxing regulation on ownership of exotic animals, the Trump administration is considering having USDA inspections occur only every iii years instead of annually. Brownish says that is a threat to his business organization and to other private zoos.
"Nosotros need to do it every year," he says. "Information technology'south to protect the states all."
Both owners believe that the country of Due north Carolina should farther regulate ownership of exotic animals.
Before this year, ii land representatives from Iredell County introduced a bill to limit exotic animal ownership to USDA licensed facilities, but it stalled in the Senate.
Versions of a regulatory beak are offered upward every few years, sometimes later on a tragedy. That'due south what happened in 2018, when a lion killed an intern at the Conservator's Heart.
None of the bills ever received a vote in the Full general Associates.
Source: https://www.wunc.org/law/2019-11-22/only-four-states-have-no-rules-for-owning-an-exotic-animal-north-carolina-is-one
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