Activist Groups Try to Tame Booming Trade in Exotic Wildlife

A classified ad in a Pittsburgh newspaper: “Celebese Ape, 14-week-old baby, diaper-trained, sucks finger; also cougar & bobcat babies & other exotic animals.”

The man placing the ad said he had plenty of animals to sell, and what he didn’t have at the time, he could get.

“There’s nothing God put breath into I can’t get,” said Jim Ledbetter, who until recently ran an exotic animal business in Uniontown, Pa. “If you want a zebra, elephant or whatever, no problem.”

Ledbetter went on to say he could get a black panther, an endangered animal, for $2,000, but added they don’t make good pets. “In Florida, there’s a guy who sells them for $6,000 a pop,” he said.

Young elephants go for $20,000 each, old ones for about $15,000, he said. White tigers are about $50,000 each, $90,000 for a pair. Cougars are $975; bobcats, $875.

“Everything I sell is cheap,” he said.

In the United States, the world’s largest consumer of wildlife, trading in exotic animals is entirely legal, as is ownership in most places, subject to some state and local restrictions. That has spurred animal rights groups into intensifying efforts to regulate the industry.

David Herbet, captive wildlife specialist for the Humane Society of the United States in Washington, believes private ownership is a “total misuse of wild animals.”

90% Mortality Rate

About 90% of all wild animals die within the first two years of captivity, regardless of whether they were captively bred, he said.

“Wild animals should be left in the wild,” agreed Doug Inkley of the National Wildlife Federation in Washington.

Faced with increasingly vocal criticism and the hostility of animal rights groups, dealers generally have become wary of publicity. At an auction in western Ohio, a sign prohibited use of cameras and recording equipment and a non-uniformed guard carrying a holstered gun searched one visitor’s handbag. People with cameras were escorted off the grounds.

The exotic animal business is booming, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

An estimated 30,000 to 50,000 people in this country own, breed, exhibit or sell wild and exotic animals, said Pat Hoctor of Prairie Creek, Ind., publisher of the Animal Finders’ Guide, one of the largest publications in the country devoted to the trade.

“The vast majority are people who have them as a hobby,” he said. Of that number, about 300 could be considered professional animal dealers, many of whom sell their wares through guides like Hoctor’s or at several auctions held regularly throughout the country, particularly the Midwest.

Among their customers:

- A Minnesota couple who keeps a chimpanzee, lion and tiger in their basement, a boa constrictor in the bathroom and a baby skunk in their living room.

- A private game ranch in Wallisville, Tex., where would-be big-game hunters who don’t have the time or money to travel to Africa can stalk captive-bred lions for $3,500 a crack--”a better trophy at half the price,” said owner Larry Wilburn.

- Meat wholesalers who sell big-game meat, including lions, hippopotamus, reindeer and eland, to restaurants eager to satisfy the latest national fad for low-cholesterol, not to mention exotic, meats.

- A Florida farm that raises ostrich, emu and rhea for hides--the latest trend in cowboy-boot leather.

- A roadside menagerie in Pennsylvania where children can pet everything from mice to elephants.

- A tavern in Ohio where the owner’s pet chimpanzee smokes cigarettes and swigs six-packs of beer to the delight of patrons.

Lion on a Leash

In many places, a private owner is free to lead a lion on a leash or keep a baboon in his back yard. He also is free to treat, feed and house the animal as he pleases.

Certain groups think such practices should be outlawed because many species pose a danger to public safety and the environment.

They also cite the case of a lioness called Abby, crippled at 6 months because her Ohio owners fed her improperly, to make a point that too few people know enough to properly care for an exotic animal.

Animals that have to be taken from an owner because of abuse or neglect or that grow too big or unmanageable face an uncertain future.

“The problem with those animals is that when they do become mean and can’t be handled, the first thing people do is call the zoo to donate it,” said Charles Wickenhauser, director of the Pittsburgh Zoo. “We certainly don’t want an animal like that. They have psychological problems and need special treatment to get them back into a particular group of animals.”

Hoctor gets upset on hearing about people abusing their animals, either willfully or from ignorance. But he said the follies of some shouldn’t tarnish the entire group of owners and breeders who truly enjoy their animals and know more about them and care for them better than many zoos.

“Just because zoos are the commonly accepted places for animals doesn’t mean they’re the authorities. Zoos are living museums. Breeders know what animals need,” he said.

“People see us holding things in cages. They misconceive that we are raping the wild. We are actually the experts on the wild,” said Hoctor, who raises lions, tigers, waterfowl and assorted other animals and birds. “While do-gooders are making a big stink about how they love the wild, we’re actually saving the wild” through breeding efforts.

Few Safeguards

Animal dealer Bob Troumbly of Grand Rapids, Minn., concedes there are considerable abuses and few safeguards.

“A lot of people buy this stuff for macho stuff,” said Troumbly, 31, who operates Northland Wildlife. “This is America. There are a lot of injustices in this world and that’s just one of them. There’s always somebody out there willing to sell to somebody they may not feel is qualified.

“There’s nothing to protect the animal from being exploited. The common Joe off the street could get a black panther from somebody. Generally most dealers are a lot more careful now than they used to be. Most of the people in this business truly enjoy animals and don’t want anything to go to a place where they know it’s going to be abused. But it does happen,” Troumbly said.

There are no federal laws prohibiting ownership of exotics--even if the animal is endangered. A 1986 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the zoological animal industry said many states either have inadequate restrictions or none at all.

The Animal Welfare Act, the main body of federal laws dealing with the care and handling of all animals--domestic or wild--only applies to animals used for research, teaching, exhibition and those sold in the wholesale pet trade or transported in interstate commerce.

The act does not cover animals kept strictly as pets. It also does not cover birds, reptiles and amphibians--which the USDA report called a “major shortcoming.”

“It’s a gray area out there,” said Dr. Richard Crawford, senior staff veterinarian at the USDA.

Farms that raise exotic animals for meat or game ranches where hunters pay to shoot a particular animal also are not under the USDA’s jurisdiction.

A few states, such as Alaska, California, Georgia, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Hawaii, and some cities, including New York; Columbus, Ohio; and Austin, Tex., have enacted comprehensive measures restricting the ownership of most wild or exotic animals.

Require Permits

States such as Florida, Arkansas, Colorado, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Texas restrict or require permits for certain animals, but allow ownership of others. Just about any animal can be owned in Alabama, Louisiana, Kansas, Maryland, Washington, Oregon and Iowa.

“In most states,” said Herbet, “it’s easier to own exotic animals than it is to own a pit bulldog.”

Usually states prohibit people from taking native birds and animals from the wild. It’s illegal to go out in the woods and capture a raccoon or crow, for instance.

But in many states it is legal to own groundhogs, white-tailed deer, Canada geese and other indigenous animals and birds--as long as they were bred in captivity. And though it’s not legal, there are no checks to ensure a raccoon sold at an animal auction in Ohio wasn’t trapped by someone in Pennsylvania.

Even endangered animals--the most highly protected under the law--can be bought and sold if they have been bred in captivity by a USDA-licensed dealer and if the buyer plans to breed the animal and use it “for educational purposes.”

The USDA has minimal authority even when the animal has injured someone, as in the case of a 2-year-old boy who was mauled last March while posing for a photograph with Fluffy the bear at a Mansfield, Ohio, mall. Authorities believe the same bear bit a 4-year-old boy in Florida less than a month before.

The bear’s owner had his license to display animals suspended for 21 days, the most severe penalty the USDA can impose.

Last spring, the 2-year-old daughter of rock singer Joe Savage was killed by a 7-year-old leopard that escaped briefly with four other cats he kept, with state permission, at his place in Nashville. Savage has used leopards and snakes in his act.

Restrictions alone don’t eliminate private ownership of exotic and wild animals and the public’s growing fascination with the hobby. Despite New York City’s tough laws restricting ownership of exotic animals, 5,304 such animals were seized in the city last year. They ranged from a sea turtle in a Manhattan bathtub to a Burmese python guarding a drug dealer’s apartment in Queens.

Black Market

“There’s a considerable black market in exotic animals, and a lot of people keep them without permits,” said Gordon Robertson, legislative counsel with the International Assn. of Fish and Wildlife Agencies in Washington. Perhaps in no other part of the business, animal welfare specialists say, is there more subterfuge and suffering than in the international bird trade.

The United States imports about 800,000 birds a year, more than any other country, said Susan Lieberman, import specialist with the Humane Society. Smuggling is extensive, in car trunks or concealed in baggage from countries such as Mexico, which have banned export of their native wildlife. Birds are also smuggled to avoid a mandatory 30-day quarantine in this country.

For every bird sold in a pet shop, Lieberman said, five to 10 have died because of methods use to capture and ship them, legally or otherwise.

Steve King, a spokesman for the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council in Washington, said: “We feel those figures are not backed up by evidence. While these claims continue to be made, they have yet to substantiate those charges.”

He said an estimated 20% to 25% of imported birds die from the point of capture to arrival at a pet store.

No one keeps numbers on the total number of captive exotic and wild animals in this country, but according to a study sponsored in 1986 by the USDA, the volume of trade in the zoological animal industry has increased dramatically since 1976.