DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE (Rochester, New York) 08 August 07 Sharper state laws sting critter lovers - Rules aim to be humane, but do they go too far? (Erica Bryant)
Steven Jones, an East Rochester resident, has a pet cat, Margo, and a 7-foot-long, red-tailed boa constrictor named Jane. Of the two, he says the cat is more aggressive.
If his boa constrictor grows three feet longer, Jones will be expected to register her with the East Rochester town clerk because of a 2002 state law concerning such animals.
State Department of Environmental Conservation officials, town clerks and animal workers are trying to raise awareness of a series of recent laws that regulate the possession of wild and exotic animals in New York.
Meanwhile, pet owners such as Jones use their animals to show people that unusual creatures are not necessarily dangerous.
Over the past two years, the state has outlawed a number of species as pets. Now it is illegal to possess all primates and prosimians, bears, most wild cats, wild canines, crocodiles, poisonous snakes, and the largest species of constricting snakes and monitor lizards without a special permit.
"Until recently, the possession of a lot of exotic animals was relatively unregulated, except for specific cases such as venomous reptiles," said DEC police investigator Richard Thomas.
Before 2005, even permits for poisonous snakes were relatively easy to get, says Gary Oechsle, who owned his first pet store when he was 17 and now helps his son Scott with his reptile store, Captive Life Forms. "We would have novices coming in who didn't even keep regular snakes walk in with a permit for poisonous snakes," he said.
Now the only way New Yorkers can legally obtain such animals is to get a permit to use the creatures for educational, research or scientific purposes.
Tom Hudak, owner of the wildlife education company Scales and Tails, trains DEC officers in how to handle snakes, assists in the confiscation of illegal animals and helped write the language for the law that banned dangerous reptiles. He successfully lobbied for more leniency for harmless species of snakes and lizards.
Originally, legislators wanted to ban all snakes in the boa family and all monitor lizards, which would have hurt reptile lovers by banning a number of small harmless pets. "It would have been like using an elephant gun to shoot a mosquito," said Hudak.
In 2000, Rochester City Council passed a law banning all constrictor snakes and snapping turtles. This was later repealed after an outcry from reptile owners.
Some snake lovers think the state's regulations are still too restrictive.
"It came from some innate fear people have, not knowing better," said Oechsle.
Oechsle says his son's store used to sell 50 to 75 of the larger variety of snakes each year before they were banned. He notes that pet dogs hurt and kill many more people than snakes do. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that about 368,000 people end up in American hospitals because of dog bites each year. The figure is less than 10,000 for snake bites.
Jones takes his snake to visit his mother's classes at Corpus Christi School so that children will get a chance to see a snake up close before they can develop a fear.
"She's been a wonderful animal," Jones, a lifelong reptile lover, said of his snake. He takes her outside on the porch for exercise, where neighbors can interact with her.
"A lot of them think she's real cool," he said. "She's really friendly so when people see her, they get used to friendly snakes."
Red-tailed boas, which are legal and not poisonous, do not approach the size of the snakes that are now banned in New York. The reticulated python, for example, can reach 33 feet. African rock pythons have grown to 25 feet.
Oechsle says that the new laws banning the sale of larger snakes may not have been needed to protect humans, but they will prevent snakes from being neglected. "Consumers do not listen to us when we warn them that in just six or seven years, (these snakes) can be 12 or 14 feet," he said.
High-maintenance pets
Karin Fires, the executive director of Wayne County-based World of Wild Life Education Encounters, agrees that the laws banning wild animals as pets should help prevent much suffering. "Most exotic animals that are bought as pets don't make it to their first birthday," she said. "They're much more high maintenance than a cat or a dog." She says exotic animals are easily bought on the Internet by people who don't understand the animals' complex nutrition, exercise and social needs.
Some people think wolves, for example, make good watchdogs. They later learn that the animals instinctually avoid people and can't be house-broken. One person put a halter on his South American raccoon when the animal was a baby and never took it off. When Fires' group, which assists in the rescue of animals that are illegally kept or abused, took possession of this animal, the halter had grown into the animal's skin.
Fires says that the illegal animals that the group helps rehabilitate — from wolf hybrids to monkeys — are usually in bad shape when they are reported or discovered by the DEC.
New laws have motivated more people to turn in wild animals. However, many such animals are still being kept in captivity, which is a hazard to the animals and the public.
Hudak estimates that he helps the DEC confiscate about 50 illegal animals annually.
Sometimes neighbors report people who possess illegal animals. Other times hospitals alert the DEC when people come for treatment after having been bitten by outlawed animals.
People who have a legal reason to possess potentially dangerous animals must register them with the town clerk of their city or suburb to protect emergency personnel.
"If the fire department goes to your house and there's a poisonous snake in a cage, they need to know," said Webster Town Clerk Barbara Ottenschot. She posted signs alerting people to the notification law when it was updated in 2005, but no one has come forward to report any such animals.
Town clerks or animal control officials in Rochester, Perinton, Irondequoit, Brighton and Penfield also say no such animals are on record in their offices.
That may mean there are none or, as Thomas suspects, that people are unaware of the law.
No skunks allowed
There are also new laws concerning not-so-exotic animals, such as New York's native turtles.
As of 2006, all of New York's native reptiles and amphibians were made "game species" to protect them from commercialization, the second leading cause of species destruction, after habitat loss.
Nearly all these animals have no open season, which means that it is never legal to capture them and take them home. New York's native mammals and birds are protected in a similar fashion, which means no skunks or raccoons as pets.
These laws are intended to stop people from capturing and selling native species, not to discourage children from going out in wetlands and collecting frogs, a behavior Thomas says he would like to see. He believes that children who interact with wildlife develop a lasting connection to the Earth and will be more likely to conserve land and resources.
The state differentiates between a child who catches a little turtle and the person who has a 6-foot alligator and five venomous rattlesnakes, he said.
Sometimes misguided amateur conservationists have been caught trying to breed endangered species to strengthen their numbers.
Thomas says that's not helping the problem.
"I wish they would take some of that drive and turn it into conservation efforts," he said. "You should not be raising and breeding exotic venomous reptiles in your basement. ... Their habitat needs to be protected and they need to be left in the wild."
Sharper state laws sting critter lovers