Is It Legal To Own A Wild Animal

By: Terry Messmer, Utah Land University Extension wildlife specialist, terry.messmer@usu.edu fox

A woman in New York paid $one,800 for a 9-week-former black leopard. She idea information technology was cute and friendly – until it attacked her.

A Pennsylvania adult female died later being attacked by her "pet," a 350-pound black behave she had raised since it was a cub.

A red play a trick on pup was turned into a shelter by a family that had kept information technology in captivity. The fox became bullheaded because it was not being fed properly.

These are examples of people who attempted to make pets out of wild animals, and the unfortunate situations are not isolated.

Also the harm that could occur to wild animals kept in homes, keeping wildlife as pets poses great danger to humans. Born Free USA, a nonprofit advancement organisation that strives to cease the ownership of wild animals, has documented over 1,500 attacks, including 75 human deaths involving wildlife pets since 1990.

In most states, private buying of wild fauna is illegal. These laws exist because wildlife have special needs, and it is difficult to keep them healthy and alive in captivity. Proper nutrition is essential for normal development, and any deficiencies may cost the creature its life.

Unlike domesticated cats and dogs, keeping a wild animal in a habitation, or raising it by hand as a newborn, does not get in a pet. Information technology remains a wild animate being.

Humans have bred dogs, cats, cattle, sheep and other livestock for equally long as the last 10,000 to xv,000 years. Domestication is a process that occurs over many generations of animals. Through domestication, over time, undesirable traits are bred out of a species. Fifty-fifty then, the animals often retain the power to maim and kill. Iv and one-half million people are nonetheless bitten by domesticated dogs each year in the Us.

Wild animals may behave zoonotic diseases that can exist transmitted to people and pets. Some of these, such equally rabies, can be lethal to humans. Wild fauna can carry the aforementioned diseases that some of our pets are susceptible to, such as distemper. Only unlike pets, wild animals are not vaccinated for diseases or dewormed, nor practice they see a veterinarian regularly. Consequently, the infectious diseases and parasites a wild brute may carry tin be harmful to both people and pets.

Given these risks, it brings to question why someone would purposely take an animal from the wild and keep it convict.

Ignorance almost the perils associated with the wild pets, curiosity about wildlife, dear of animals, ego, novelty or perhaps even profit provide some reasons. The most frequent reason is when people rescue orphans and make up one's mind to raise them. All the same, a captive wild animal is essentially a prisoner caught between its instincts and its dependence on humans to survive.

As a convict animal grows independent of its caretakers, it may become ambitious, frustrated or may bite, leading to injury or expiry. It has not had thousands of years to overcome wild instincts as domesticated animals have. The animal may escape, information technology may be let become in the wild or information technology may exist brought to a wildlife rehabilitator. By this time, it may be also late to teach it survival skills or appropriate social behavior for its species.

Some wild animals are not protected under Utah state law, meaning yous do not take to possess a valid hunting or trapping license to harvest them. Wild animals, like raccoons and coyotes, require a permit to house them in captivity. The importation, distribution, relocation, holding in captivity or possession of live coyotes and live raccoons in Utah is prohibited.

Unpermitted wild animals may be seized immediately past the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, the Section of Wellness, the Department of Agriculture and Food, animal command officers or peace officers. If you accept an illegally held wild animal, your all-time course of activity is to contact ane of the agencies mentioned or a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. They can decide if the animal can be re-socialized with its ain kind and forage for itself. A wild animal that has been raised by humans has not been properly prepared for life in the wild. To release a convict wild animate being is almost certainly dooming it to suffer starvation, unnatural predation, accident or an unfortunate contact with humans it might run into equally friendly.

If you lot want a pet consider this. Of the 3 million cats and dogs that are euthanized in shelters each year, virtually are healthy and treatable and could have been adopted into new homes.

For more data, visit https://www.wildawareutah.org/.