A move by city council in Port Moody, B.C., to ban mobile live animal programs and petting zoos is being met with mixed reactions.
On Tuesday, council tasked city staff to develop a policy banning these programs from operating on public or private property in the city.
“This is a really novel decision. Port Moody is the first municipality to pass a vote like this,” said Nadia Xenakis, a wild animal specialist with BC SPCA.
“(The events) are usually targeted towards children and families where there are live animals present; often they’re exotic animals, wild animals from another country that are brought into Canada.”
The proposed policy is also winning approval from Vancouver Humane Society.
The society says live demonstrations present a risk to the animals’ physical and psychological well-being as well as the health and safety of the public.
“It’s incredibly hard to provide the five freedoms of animal welfare to wild animals in captivity, just generally, across the board, and then at these events, specifically, there’s risk to their physical safety,” Xenakis said.
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“They can be crawling on the floor. They can be mishandled. They’re not usually provided breaks when interacting with the public… Environments are very loud – very noisy; they’re very crowded. We don’t know what the kind of transportation conditions were to these events.”
According to the BC SPCA, research indicates there is “little positive educational value” associated with these programs.
Not everyone agrees, however.
“I am very disappointed with the whole situation. Banning education, to me, is just wrong,” said Mike Hopcraft, owner of Wild Education BC, a reptile-focused rescue centre that also offers mobile presentations and in-house tours.
“We’re not out there exploiting animals. We’re not breeding and selling animals as they think we’re doing. We are out there teaching people about the animals so that we hopefully don’t get as many resources in. That’s our big thing, education, and they want to stop that.”
Wild Education BC, based in Langley, took in more than 150 animals last year including tarantulas, tortoises, snakes and other reptiles.
Select animals in their care often interact with the public through mobile presentations and in-house tours.
“(We’re) the largest reptile rescue in Western Canada. Most of the time, we are the only option out there for these animals,” Hopcraft said. “If city council gets their way and they ban these presentations, that takes away a huge portion of our income to take care of those animals.”
Hopcraft says every animal at Wild Education BC is legal in the province without a permit, but he agrees some should not be household pets.
“There are a lot of rules that don’t make a lot of sense in this province when it comes to animals. I wish they would consult people like us more when making rules,” Hopcraft said.
“I am terrified,” he added. “There could be a time very soon where everything we do is illegal, and then there’s the source of income gone for our animals, and then this rescue is gone.”
BC SPCA hopes Port Moody’s decision encourages other local governments, and the provincial government, to make similar changes to their policies and regulations surrounding petting zoos.
