From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000--


Editorial: When Noah has to sail or sink

Superior Court Judge Floyd V. Baxter on September 21 appointed
American Humane Association western regional office director Gini Barrett
special master to supervise the ongoing strained relationship between
Wildlife Waystation, one of the biggest, oldest, and best-respected
sanctuaries for captive wild animals in the U.S., and a cluster of hostile
regulatory agencies--particularly the California Department of Fish and
Game.
A special master is a person of expertise designated by a court to
insure that an institution meets conditions of law. A special master may
be likened to a parole officer, a social worker, or in this case an
ombudsman, whose most important job may be finding her way around deep
mutual mistrust and failures of communication.
According to the regulators, especially the California DFG,
Wildlife Waystation is a perennial scofflaw. But Waystation defenders,
including the founders and directors of many of the other best-known and
best regarded sanctuaries of similar kind, praise Waystation founder
Martine Colette for daring to innovate on behalf of the many special-needs
animals in her care, for standing up against senseless and capricious
applications of rules written to govern very different kinds of
institutions, and for withstanding a DFG publicity offensive that included
an April 7 raid by personnel wearing quasi-space suits from fear that
purportedly HIV-infected chimpanzees might fling feces.
Feces flew--but none of the 50 Waystation chimps are HIV-positive.
Rationalizing the raid to media, the DFG released a denunciatory
report on the Waystation by consultant Diane Grenados, consisting largely
of leading questions which she had not voiced to Waystation staff, for
which reason she did not receive the usually simple answers. Grenados'
chief qualification to write the report seemed to be that she formerly
managed a "pet lending library" for the Lindsay Wildlife Museum, in Walnut
Creek, California.
As the case evolved, the central issues shifted from allegations
about animal care to runoff water quality and the condition of employee
housing. Both matters are almost entirely outside DFG jurisdiction, but
the DFG kept the Waystation totally closed for 110 days, and at this
writing continues to allow it to take in only furbearing mammals and
nongame birds.
Said Colette of the appointment of special master Barrett, "I'm
thrilled to death, because this lady is qualified."
Barrett, who supervises animal use in the screen industry for AHA,
was in fact at the head of Colette's short list of choices as special
master, as ANIMAL PEOPLE reported in September 2000. Barrett, as a
former longtime member of the Los Angeles Board of Animal Regulation,
knows the regulatory bureaucracy inside and out. Barrett also knows and
understands the work of the Waystation, the last refuge for more than
1,200 animals.
Contrary to common belief, most Waystation animals are not former
stars of entertainment. Like the majority of animals at hundreds of other
sanctuaries, most arrived through actions of law enforcement. Many were
actually delivered by the California DFG. Most were at one time
inappropriately kept as pets.
Some were snatched as infants from nests and dens, often at cost
of the lives of their frantic parents. Some were seized by U.S. Customs
and Immigration, or by the USDA, after ruthless entrepreneurs tried to
bootleg them into the U.S. in violation of the Endangered Species Act and
Wild Caught Bird Protection Act. Others were nabbed in Lacey Act cases,
involving illegal interstate commerce, or through enforcement of the
Animal Welfare Act--sometimes against dealers, but more often against
unaccredited roadside zoos, which all too often inherit exotic pets when
the petkeepers can no longer cope with the cost and difficulty of keeping
them.
Though the roadside zoos charge admission and sell souvenirs, they
too typically struggle to feed their animals and staff. Exceptions are
mostly those that breed and sell animals, as "exotic pets" or "alternative
livestock," frequently as part of speculation pyramids, or to supply
canned hunts, which also dispose of castoff exotic pets.
The greatest numbers of sanctuary animals come either from animal
control agencies or private citizens who acquired exotic pets or
"alternative livestock," ran into trouble with neighbors, and were warned
by animal control agencies that keeping the exotic cat, primate, or
whatever in their yard was prohibited by ordinance. Some manage to sell
their problematic animals, or give them away. The rest--and most
confiscating animal control agencies--burn up the telephone lines and the
Internet trying to find sanctuary placement.
The best sanctuaries provide quality care-for-life to animals who
mostly should never have been bred. Inevitably, they also quite
unintentionally allow exotic petkeepers to dispose of animals with
relatively little sense of guilt or continuing obligation. In addition,
sanctuaries enable law enforcement to protect the public from potentially
dangerous species without killing those whose popularity and scarcity in
the wild might raise an outcry.
Ironically, some of the species in question, such as tigers and
African lions, have become markedly more abundant in captivity than in the
wild, and now are so many generations removed from the wild that
successful reintroduction to wild habitat would be problematic even if
suitable habitat existed and global conservation treaties allowed the
effort.
No matter: people still breed tigers, lions, et al in the
misguided belief, promoted by dealers, that they are preserving
endangered species. Law enforcement has filled many sanctuaries with the
offspring, yet paradoxically has done little or nothing to suppress the
breeding which is the foundation of the exotic wildlife and "alternative
livestock" industries.
Some observers now estimate the total value of the exotic wildlife
and "alternative livestock" traffic at $6 billion per year: three times
larger than the U.S. retail fur industry ever was. Whatever the size of
it, the exotic animal trade is--like the gun and tobacco industries --both
constitutionally protected and politically very well-connected. There is
no Second Amendment guaranteeing Americans the right to maintain bears,
army ants, or whatever, but the Ninth Amendment "commerce clause"
suffices to keep Congressional attempts to deter exotic animal breeding,
such as the so-called Shambala Act advanced by sanctuarian and actress
Tippi Hedren, permanently dormant in committee.
Overriding the "commerce clause" to ban a legal and traditional
trade by constitutional amendment has only been done once, by the Volstead
Act of 1919, which for 12 years barred the traffic in alcohol for human
consumption, and is remembered as probably the worst regulatory failure in
U.S. history.
Meanwhile, some of the same people who defend guns and tobacco
defend the exotic animal trade too, including Republican Presidential
candidate George W. Bush, who as governor of Texas was the Safari Club
International's "Governor of the Year" in 1999 for his successful
obstruction of state bills to restrict exotic animal breeding and canned
hunts.
Having pushed the Shambala Act for more than a year without getting
much from it but an initial burst of publicity, the American Sanctuary
Association on August 29 appealed directly to Agriculture Secretary Daniel
Glickman for a combination of regulatory and material help to enable
sanctuarians to cope with the ever-increasing demand for their services.
"I am pleased that the USDA has seen fit to step up its prosecution
of offenders," began ASA president Carol Azvestas, "but I am also
extremely alarmed at the number of animals who are displaced by these
prosecutions. The USDA prosecutes offenders," Azvestas charged, "without
applying any control as to the future of the animals concerned, other than
a time period given to the offender in which to rehome them. Often, these
animals are recycled back into the breeding and exotic pet industry, thus
potentially creating additional problems.
"If the USDA is issuing permits to persons who desire to breed,
sell, or exhibit [exotic] animals for profit," Azvestas said, "and then
prosecutes offenders in this area, then surely it would make sense that
the USDA should be responsible for the final disposition of the animals in
question. At this time the USDA does not seem to care about the fate of
these animals, and it is evident that the USDA is taking advantage of the
kindness of nonprofit sanctuaries, such as ours. The humane alternatives
are limited: sanctuary or euthanasia."
Azvestas might have added from experience that no good deed goes
unpunished. As founder of the Wild Animal Orphanage sanctuary near San
Antonio, Texas, Azvestas was herself penalized by the USDA for a botched
1997 attempt to rescue three big cats from a defunct roadside zoo. Two
died in transport from alleged oversedation--but overdosing the animals
intentionally, to kill them, would have been okay.

Sanctuaries pay the price for all

Azvestas asked the USDA to refrain from "licensing people [to
possess exotic species] who are in no position to comply with the legal
requirements for the care of however many animals they are handling"; to
double all permit fees and use the revenue plus fines for permit violations
to create a fund to underwrite the appropriate relocation of confiscated
animals; and to oversee and follow up on all relocations accomplished due
to regulatory action.
"The continual stream of unwanted and neglected animals and the
financial burden created by the USDA should not fall on the heads of
sanctuaries and other related nonprofit agencies," Azvestas concluded.
Glickman could pursue the requested regulatory amendments and any
necessary enabling legislation not only as Agriculture Secretary but also
in his capacity as one of the three members of the cabinet-level Invasive
Species Council, which President Bill Clinton created in February 1999
expressly to deal with problematic exotic animals and plants.
Azvestas appended to her letter to Glickman a list of more than 100
large carnivores who arrived at ASA member sanctuaries within the past two
years as result of USDA actions, whose care will cumulatively cost upward
of $500,000 per year--and those animals are only a few of the
ever-expanding menagerie entering sanctuary care.
Altogether, there may be several dozen federal, state, and local
law enforcement agencies seeking sanctuary space for exotic species for
every quality care facility. For each law enforcement agency, there may
be dozens of individual owners who must give up exotic animals, or choose
to do so--sometimes by the hundred.
For that reason, as PIGS: A Sanctuary cofounder Dale Riffle told
would-be sanctuarians at the recent No-Kill Conference in Tucson, PIGS and
most other well-reputed sanctuaries long ago began actively attempting to
dissuade exotic pet acquistion.
Summarized Riffle, "Acquisition leads to fads, fads lead to
breeding, breeding leads to thoughtless acquisition and eventual
abandonment. We cannot build sanctuaries fast enough to keep up with the
surplus, even of potbellied pigs, and what we are dealing with is equally
true of reptiles, wolf hybrids, exotic cats, prairie dogs, hedgehogs,
flying squirrels, and whatever else is the exotic pet fad of the month."
The sanctuary community has expanded exponentially over the past
decade, and continues to grow. Hundreds of concerned individuals are now
dedicating their lives, like members of a new religious order, to the
often semi-monastic demands of caring for species who typically must be
kept well away from most people. Thousands of sympathetic donors fund such
efforts. But finding suitable space for sanctuaries is becoming ever
harder, and countless other causes compete for altruistic support.
Animals cannot march two by two aboard Noah's Ark forever. In the
19th century, the humane community made the mistake of shielding lawmakers
and the public from the consequences of unrestrained dog and cat
reproduction by quietly killing the surplus, lest the animals meet
crueller ends at large. Humane societies spent most of the 20th century
coping with the consequences of that mistake, and are only just beginning
to return the full fiscal and psychological burden of the killing to the
city, county, and state governments which let it continue for decades in
near-complete indifference.
Sanctuarians must likewise learn when and how to say no, if that
is what it takes to knock the legal props and hidden subsidies out from
under the exotic animal traffic.
This will not be easy. We fully endorse the spirit of the Wildlife
Waystation motto, "Where no animal is ever turned away."
Unfortunately, lawmakers and enforcement agencies have exploited
sanctuarians' generosity toward animals as a quasi-underwrite of breeding,
dealing, and speculating in captive wildlife. The breeders, dealers,
and speculators' taxes and license fees don't even begin to compensate
society, let alone sanctuaries, for the harm they cause. Yet in part
because sanctuaries are much more visible than most animal breeders and
dealers, sanctuarians take the heat whenever the number of animals needing
care far exceeds anyone's ability to cope.
The cruel and exploitive captive wildlife traffic could not prosper
any more than could the makers of handguns and tobacco, if the profiteers
were consistently made to pay the full cost of what they do--which might
happen if the public realized how high that cost is.