West Virginia Seeks to Prohibit All Exotic Animals

http://usherp.org/2014/01/17/west-vi...xotic-animals/

This abomination is SB371.

I hope horrendous laws like this are shot down. Unfortunately though, the exotic animal community hardly has any lobbies, except for USARK which covers reptiles. But there's no lobbyists for the bird keepers, exotic cat keepers, fish keepers or any others as far as I know, which is a pure and unfortunate shame.

Terrible. I dont even know to say

I fear that the state,county,city laws/oridinences will be worse battle than the federal has been thus far. I just cant see for the life of me how hsus and peta have survived to push the intro of these laws without being exposed as the crooked non profits that they are.

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I started copying and pasting parts of this with my response to it on here then I realized I was pretty much copying it all. What a fantastic way to start out my Sunday morning by browsing through this pile of dung.

Obviously the legislators ate not using the established definitions actually used in the field of biology, because of they were, they would realize they ate effectively banning every animal kept as a pet, including domestic livestock. Even using the very loose definition of "anything other than a dog, cat, or domesticated livestock" that leaves a broad list, possibly including rats, mice, hamsters, Guinea pigs, rabbits, all birds (besides farmed poultry), all reptiles and amphibians, fish, and more. Even livestock is open to debate, where some would consider things such as llama and alpaca as domesticated, others wouldn't, bison and some deer may be considered domestic, but others wouldn't consider them such. Even the definition of "domestic" is vague and open to some interpretation.

Unfortunately the general public doesn't seem to realize how much kool aid they are being fed.

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Originally Posted by sorraia

Even using the very loose definition of "anything other than a dog, cat, or domesticated livestock" that leaves a broad list, possibly including rats, mice, hamsters, Guinea pigs, rabbits, all birds (besides farmed poultry), all reptiles and amphibians, fish, and more. Even livestock is open to debate, where some would consider things such as llama and alpaca as domesticated, others wouldn't, bison and some deer may be considered domestic, but others wouldn't consider them such.

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Hmmmmmmm... I know two farmers in the area, old money and have lived here for generations, I bet they would have more pull with the reps than I would. I need to make some calls tomorrow. THANKS!

This is very upsetting. I really hope that we can veto it.:(

There's a group on Facebook, if you don't mind me posting the name here...

Exotic Animal Allies of West Virginia

Now, I don't live in WV, but I joined because if "they" start banning in one state and succeed, they'll be banning in all states, and I don't want that to happen! We're currently working on letters and petitions about this VERY thing.

Update from the WV Reptiles group on FB:

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Just got the ban list for SB4393 it is as follows: Retics, boas, anacondas, Indian and Rock pythons, sea snakes, vipers, all rear-fanged venomous, and alligators

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Great, we just put a retic into QT, and apparently there is no differentiation on boas.