Feral Animals in California: The Fear of Ferrets Colonizing

California and several other states already have a huge problem concerning feral animals, especially cats and dogs. According to some feline experts, approximately 70 million cats are feral in the United States alone. Accurate numbers are unknown, but some experts estimate that each year domestic and feral cats alone kill hundreds of millions of birds (including rare or endangered) and more than a billion small mammals, such as rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks.

Feral cats are usually pets that were discarded by their owners and are no longer socialized with people. These animals range from cats that have never had human contact because they are the offspring of these pets to those who were once pets and have since reverted to the wild. Often living in "colonies", feral cats have become well adapted to their territory and can live safely in backyards, parking lots, university campuses, outside of cafeterias, gas stations, grocery store load/unload areas, fast food dumpsters, and a host of other urban, suburban, and rural habitats.

Dogs develop into packs that roam throughout most urban, suburban, and rural areas seeking food and shelter. In rural areas, dogs are responsible for chasing down and killing deer, elk, chickens, goats, and even cattle. The California Department of Fish and Game biologists are not worried about bears when they go out in the field to do studies of animals, they worry about dogs. Many have discovered dogs in the process of killing wild game and domesticated livestock or have been chased and threatened by the dogs themselves. One carries bear spray, a deterrent against bear attacks, to protect himself from the dogs. Estimates claim that more than 33 million feral and free-roaming dogs running loose in the United States, according to Wildlife Services, a federal agency responsible for predator control in the United States. Many ranchers blame livestock injuries and death on wolves, coyotes and grizzly bears, but wildlife officials say feral and free roaming dogs are the main problem.

California is now home to feral breeding populations of many types of domestic animals that had been released or escaped into the wild. Of the 22 species of non-native mammals, now existing in established breeding populations in California, ONLY 9 of the 22 (and which make up over 40 percent of all feral animals in California), are from domestic stock. These are domestic rabbits, house cats, horses, burros, cattle, domestic sheep, swine, domestic goats, and dogs. It is estimated that over 5 million people are bitten each year by feral or free roaming dogs and are guilty of killing about 10 to 15 individuals each year, including small children.

A major fear in California through the California Department of Fish and Game concerning ferrets is the chance they may turn "feral". Feral means existing in a wild or untamed state or having returned to an untamed state from domestication. This is the first and foremost excuse by this California agency as to why ferrets have not been legalized in the state. However, not one colony has been found to prove this idea. What is surprising is that the ban on importation and possession of domesticated ferrets is based on a 1933 California State Law, "Chapter 76, Statutes of 1933, Section 1". Unfortunately, special interests groups have supported the claims that ferrets can and do turn feral. Even so and with a straight face, they claim they are worried about neutered and spayed ferrets escaping into the wild, breeding, forming "colonies", and then wiping out the wild fowl populations (or perhaps the ferrets joining forces to break in and eat the chicken dinner right off the special interest groups' table).

The basis and justification of the California Department of Fish and Game's opposition to lifting the ban on ferrets and for stating that ferrets can become feral is a report by the California Department of Health Services entitled "Pet European Ferrets: A Hazard to Public Health, Small Livestock and Wildlife", by Constantine, D. G., and K. W. Kizer. 1988. This paper reported on a study completed by the California Department of Health Services at the request of the California Department of Fish and Game in 1988. The findings and conclusions of this report have been used to make flawed assumptions that ferrets in the United States could establish feral colonies, that ferrets have a proclivity to bite therefore they could be serious threats to children, that ferrets could be carriers of disease, that they could harm California's wildlife and finally that ferrets could be a problem to the state's poultry and other fowl (geese and ducks) populations. Although the feral packs of dogs and colonies of cats have done so, where are the statistics to prove that ferrets have been guilty of any of these "could be'" possibilities? There are none to be found.

Not one single colony of wild ferrets has ever been discovered in the United States. None. Other than a distant relative, the Black-footed Ferret, an animal that resembles domesticated ferrets and which is on the "endangered list", there are no wild ferrets in the United States. In fact, the Black-footed ferret is as closely related to the European domesticated ferret as it is to wild wolves, so the theory has little use in the factual information on domesticated ferrets in California. There have been ferret colonies found in Europe and other countries because of special circumstances and breeding done to make sure the animals could survive as a hybrid-cross, but not domesticated ferrets.

Another California Department of Fish and Game article, titled "Ferrets in the Wild", uses articles written from 1950 to 1990 to support their claims against legalizing ferrets. One states, "Like weasels, ferrets and polecats will kill far more than they can eat if they get loose in a chicken coop." and was written by T. H. Bissonette in 1950 - long before ferrets became a popular household pet. It would seem to be imperative that the California Department of Fish and Game update their information to current findings that absolutely is in opposition to the information they are using. Most of the people who wrote these articles were those who had no business making statements about an animal they had no understanding about, held unfounded fears, and were mostly based on pre-conceived myths and not facts.

One part of the article even includes a story about an escaped ferret in 1995 in Oneida County, New York (not even in California), that was gone for approximately two weeks. After the owners got it back, it was found to have been exposed to rabies by contact with a raccoon and was killed for resting. It has been found through current studies that ferrets apparently do not typically shed the rabies virus in their saliva, the most typical method of contracting rabies in the first place. Being exposed to rabies is not the same thing as being infected with rabies.

Ferrets are legal in 48 states, with the exception of California and Hawaii. Hawaii has a ban on ferrets because they consider them to be carriers of rabies. Again, information with no basis in fact is being used to keep ferrets from becoming a companion pet. Ferrets first became popular as pets in the United States in the 1980's and several states had legal prohibitions against them, almost all of which have been overturned without opposition through various legal means. Compared with cats and dogs, ferrets have a stellar record of safety towards both the environment and public health. Today California remains the only state in the continental U.S. to prohibit ferrets. It also appears that these government agencies in the two ferret-free states use language that is flawed at best and filled with erroneous information to explain the banning of ferrets.

The California Department of Fish & Game classified the domestic ferret as a wild animal more than 60 years ago; however, pending an Environmental Impact Report (EIR), (and which has never been ordered); the California Department of Fish and Game should be able to recognize them as domestic pets. Amazingly, even Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made a statement in a CLIFFNotes - News from Legalize Ferrets email that said, "So far, no one has completed a study that proves that these little animals would be good, safe pets, and the California Environmental Quality Act requires that an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) be conducted first. An EIR evaluates the proposed project's impact on the environment. Until an EIR is conducted on the effects that ferrets have on the environment, it would be inappropriate to legalize ferrets as pets here in California."

It would seem the Governor has not taken time to investigate the matter fully (or has been living under a rock during the time of his governorship regarding wanted legislation about ferrets), since there are an approximate 10 million ferrets living in homes of ordinary citizens as companion pets in the United States alone. Over 500,000 ferrets reside in the State of California where veterinarians even disregard the ferret ban laws of the state itself. That alone should be telling insofar as these animals are not considered dangerous by the very people who take care of the physical and medical needs of the ferret. Compared to the almost negligible number of ferrets found wandering the streets of any city, every year, tens of thousands of cat and dogs in shelters are being euthanized for lack of homes. Most of these animals end up in shelters when picked up by animal control officers after a complaint has been made about them. Most ferrets live inside and do not run around the neighborhood killing small animals or terrorizing people. Most ferrets stay inside 24 hours a day and only go outside on a leash with a harness made specifically for ferrets.

The California Department of Fish and Game maintains that an Environmental Impact Report is necessary before they can remove ferrets from the list of prohibited wild animals, regardless of the fact that ferrets are known worldwide as domesticated animals and are not wild at all. However, the current excuse for California is that the EIR would help them evaluate the threat of domesticated ferrets escaping and breeding in the wild in spite of the fact that most ferrets sold in the United States are sold as neutered or spayed before being purchased. Although some private breeders do raise intact ferrets, the possibility that every one of the animals would be able travel to an isolated location, without being a victim of other predators, starvation, or being maimed in any fashion in order to form a colony is somewhat absurd.

The fact is that ferrets do not pose an environmental threat to California or any of the 50 states. In 1997, the California Department of Fish and Game conducted a survey of all fifty state wildlife departments about ferrets and the results of this survey clearly show that ferrets have never formed a feral colony or bred in the wild anywhere in the United States. Instead, the California Department of Fish and Game should explain why this report was not made public until ferret proponents uncovered it several years ago through the Freedom of Information Act. Even so, they still deny their own findings in the study they had ordered because it was not in their best interest to do so.

The only place where ferrets have formed colonies has been in New Zealand and other European countries where ferrets were purposely bred with polecats to make a hybrid animal that could survive in the wild. New Zealand needed a way to reduce the population explosion of rabbits they themselves had turned loose in the wild.

The domesticated ferret is not a wild animal nor is it in danger of becoming one. Most pet stores that sell ferrets get them already spayed or neutered from their supplier. Ferrets are not a serious problem regarding bites anymore than another animal. However, if it has been abused, scared or frightened in some way, ferrets may bite in their own defense. Ferrets do not form colonies and there are NO colonies of feral ferrets in the United States. Using these reasons as an excuse to ban this small, quiet, domesticated animal as a companion pet suitable for many people - is inexcusable.

Sources:

U.S. Faces Growing Feral Cat Problem, September 7, 2004, Maryann Mott for National Geographic News

Feral Colony Management and Control

Rural West is going to the dogs - feral dogs, Saturday, June 28, 2008, Troy Anderson

Why legalize ferrets in California?

CA.Gov Department of Fish and Game, California's Concerns