CHARLESTON — Just how many wild beasts imported from foreign lands are prowling in the hinterlands of West Virginia is hard to say.
Getting a definite number on them is one goal of a new Senate bill.
Protecting the health and safety of humans, along with animals indigenous to West Virginia, is another goal of legislation viewed as an improvement of last year’s version that Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin vetoed.
It even bears a new name — Dangerous Wild Animals Act. A year ago, it referred to such foreign animals as “exotic.”
No decision has been reached, but one is likely soon by the Senate Natural Resources Committee, chaired by Sen. Bill Laird, D-Fayette, which took the matter up this week without ruling on it.
Senate counsel Noelle Starek explained that the bill is meant to safeguard public health and that of native animals by preventing the introduction and spread of disease and parasites.
Moreover, the move to register such animals is considered a safety issue, given the alarm that spread through Zanesville, Ohio, when some dangerous animals escaped and had to be put down by police officers.
“We’re not asking for people to euthanize their animals, or to distribute them in a way that wouldn’t be safe for humans or other animals,” says Summer Wyatt, state director of the Humane Society of the United States.
“We’re asking to know where these animals are located so they can be inspected, they know that they’re in a proper enclosure or however they’re being homed, have proper veterinary care, and, if something were to happen in an emergency type situation, local law enforcement knows where these animals are located and can either remove them or catch them to cut down on public health risks.”
Starek said the pending legislation creates a board comprised of the agriculture commissioner, director of Division of Natural Resources and secretary of Health and Human Resources.
The main function of the proposed board is to devise “a comprehensive list of dangerous, wild animals by rule,” she explained.
“If a person owns a wild animal prior to the effective date of the rules, you can request to have a permit, and the board will issue it,” Starek said.
“It bars possession of dangerous wild animals on the list after the rules go into effect.”
The bill contains a fiscal note of $150,000, but Deputy Agriculture Commissioner Bob Tabb said the figure likely will fall depending on the future owners choose for such animals.
“Will they be euthanized or transferred?” he asked.
“Some of those things get into a lot of dollars if we’re going to be holding animals and taking care of them like they have in Ohio.”
Wyatt said West Virginia is one of only half a dozen states lacking a law to deal with such animals, and their number isn’t known, since there is now no registry of them.
Nor is the type of animals known, she said.
“You can speculate,” Wyatt said.
“We do know there are people within the state of West Virginia who own large snakes, large cats. There’s probably everything under the sun that you can think of. You can have anything out there.”
Local News
March 13, 2013
W.Va. Senate Natural Resources Committee looking at possible Dangerous Wild Animals Act
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