Wildlife. Not Pets

Pictured: an African grey parrot being kept as a pet. We believe that wild animals shouldn't be kept as exotic pets. A life in captivity is a world away from a natural life. Let's keep wild animals in the wild, where they belong.

The problems we're tackling:

Animals suffer during capture and transport

The journey for a wild animal in the exotic pet trade is cruel – and often deadly. Either poached from the wild or bred in captivity on a farm, these animals suffer long before they reach our homes. Often, they’re shipped long distances, and taken to countries vastly different from their original homes. Many exotic pets suffer and die in transit before they even reach their final destination.

In our investigations, we found that up to 66% of African grey parrots who have been poached from the wild for the exotic pet trade will die in transit.

Ball pythons, boa constrictors, geckos and sugar gliders are just some of the millions of animals suffering and dying in the exotic pet trade. Some are taken from the wild, others are cruelly bred. Pictured: Exotic pets on display at the Canadian Reptile and Exotic Pets Breeders’ Expo near Toronto, September 2018.

No wild animal can have its needs entirely met when kept as an exotic pet

We know people purchase exotic pets because they’re animal lovers. Animals bring joy to our lives, so it’s understandable that we’d want them to be part of our home. But many exotic pet owners are unaware of the suffering their animals endure.

Suffering is inherent in a life of captivity for a wild animal. Captivity limits their natural behaviour and places both their mental and physical well-being at risk. Inadequate captive environments can result in chronic stress and poor physical health. Wild animals are not pets; they belong in their natural habitat.

In a home, there is no way to replicate the space and freedom that wild animals need.

In our investigations, we found numerous concerns that speak to the broader welfare issues related to the keeping of wild animals as pets, below some specific examples related to reptiles:

• Basic needs not met: a high number of snakes, lizards, tortoises, and turtles die within one year of becoming a pet.
• Insufficient nutrition: in our investigations, we found that captive green iguanas, turtles and other reptiles often suffer from soft bone disease due to poor diet.
• Unhealthy contact:  Snakes kept as pets in Canada have been linked to a salmonella outbreak, involving hospitalizations,
• Confined in tiny spaces: Snakes are often kept in undersized tanks in which they aren’t able to stretch their body in full.
• Cruel captive breeding: artificial breeding in captivity can cause ball pythons serious genetic defects

Many Indian star tortoises die during transit from causes such as spread of disease or suffocation. Pictured: Star tortoise hatchlings are sorted and packaged to be smuggled out of India. 

Risks to human health

Zoonotic diseases (diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans) pose a significant risk to human health. They cause approximately a billion cases of human illness and millions of deaths every year. At a global level, according to one estimate, the economic damage caused by emerging zoonoses are hundreds of billions US dollars in the past 20 years and in 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic have caused an estimated 5.2% contraction in the global GDP.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and most infectious disease experts agree that the origins of future human pandemics are likely to be zoonotic, with wildlife emerging as the primary source. 75% of new or emerging infectious diseases over the past decade originated from animals and principally from wildlife (e.g., SARS, MERS, Ebola, and COVID-19).

Wild animals kept as exotic pets can be a source of infectious disease and stressed animals, with compromised immune systems are more prone to contracting and shedding pathogens, increasing the likelihood of making people ill. Exposure to these pathogens can happen at pet expos, stores, or when bringing a wild animal into a home, the risk of you or your family contracting an infectious zoonotic disease is significant.

35% of zoonotic diseases in humans have been linked to an exotic pet.

What to do if you already own an exotic pet

While keeping some exotic pets may involve less suffering than others,  wild animals cannot have  their needs met entirely in captivity. Only domesticated animals, like cats and dogs, should be kept in home environments because their needs can be met.

If you already own an exotic animal and haven’t done already, please seek expert advice from a specialized veterinarian to ensure you’re meeting as many of their welfare needs as possible. We encourage you to continue to give your exotic animal the best life possible, for as long as you can.

Never release an exotic pet into the wild. Most animals cannot survive and will either die from starvation, the weather or will be killed by other predators. While most released animals will likely die, some may survive and establish themselves in a non-native environment and become an invasive species. When this occurs, it can have serious negative implications for the local, native species of animals and their ecosystems. Examples of invasive species in Canada include red-eared sliders, Italian wall lizards and American bullfrogs.

To help keep wild animals in the wild where they belong, we ask you to commit to not purchasing another exotic pet in the future and to refrain from breeding the one you own.

African grey parrots are highly social wild animals and like to nest in large groups. In the wild they would fly up to several miles a day. Pictured: An African grey parrot being kept as a pet. (Photo credit: CC0 Creative Commons)

Consider adopting a domesticated pet instead of buying an exotic animal as a pet

Don’t buy exotic pets. We encourage everyone to appreciate and respect wild animals where they belong – in the wild.

We should only share our homes with domesticated animals who have evolved over thousands of years to be our companions and whose needs, when taking care of properly, can be completely met as pets.

Pets like cats, dogs and horses are domesticated. They have been selectively bred for specific traits that appear over many generations. Because these pets are domesticated, with the right care and conditions, they are able to live with humans in captivity without suffering.

The animals you won’t believe exist as pets in Canada

In 2019, World Animal Protection commissioned research to understand the scale of this issue at a national level. The data reveals that Canadians own millions of wild animals, including lions, tigers and alligators, despite these animals being entirely unsuitable as pets. Altogether, an estimated 1.4 million wild animals are kept as pets in Canada.

Learn more about our report and what we found about exotic animal ownership in Canada.

Read the report

The legality of owning wild animals as pets in Canada

In Canada, there is a patchwork of federal, provincial, and municipal regulations governing the trade and ownership of exotic animals. While laws  do exist, they vary greatly across the country and leave many gaps and loopholes resulting in the keeping of inappropriate wild animals as pets.

At the federal level, permits are required to import or export animal species that are threatened by trade and are listed in the appendices of the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), but many animal species are not covered. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) regulates the trade of some animal species, such as turtles, which are required to have a permit when imported into Canada but, again, many animal species are not covered. Beside these two regulatory schemes no other restrictions on the trade of wild animals exists at a Federal level.

Provinces are in most cases responsible for regulated the trade, keeping and use of exotic wild animals. Not all provinces and territories have meaningful laws or regulations that adequately address these issues and a few provinces have simply downloaded all responsibilities regarding the trade, use and keeping of wild exotic animals to individual municipalities.

At a municipal level, many municipalities have animal control bylaws that include provisions for regulating the trade, use and keeping of certain kinds of exotic animals, unfortunately there is little consistency amongst them. Definitions of common terms (such as “exotic animal”) may differ from area to area; some kinds of animals may be prohibited in one jurisdiction but allowed in another; and few municipalities have robust criteria or processes for deciding which animals can be kept safely and humanely. Municipalities often lack sufficient internal expertise and resources to develop compressive regulations or to provide oversight and to meaningfully enforce their own bylaws.

At all level of government, most laws and regulations regarding the trade, use and keeping of exotic wild animals are reactive rather than preventative. Complaints, incidents or other situations have to occur in order for governments to act, which compounds an already problematic situation.

There is a desperate need for comprehensive, coordinated laws and regulations addressing the wide range of issues and problems inherent to the trade, use and keeping of exotic animals, including animal welfare, human health and safety and threats to native wildlife, natural ecosystems and biodiversity.

Visit our new campaign page to see which wild animals are permitted in your province/territory and how your province or territory compares to other areas.

Wild animal ownership laws in Canada