When you think of wild animals like crocodiles, leopards or tigers, you might think of foreign, exotic landscapes – like the tropics of Australia, African savannahs or jungles of South Asia. You might then be surprised to learn that thousands of these wild animals exist in Canada... as pets.
New World Animal Protection data has now revealed that Canadians own millions of wild animals, also referred to as exotic animals, despite these animals being entirely unsuitable as pets.
Altogether, an estimated 1.4 million wild animals are kept as pets in Canada.
These shocking figures reveal that Canada’s lax pet ownership laws are enabling a cruel and inhumane wildlife pet trade. Many of these wild animals are poached from their natural habitats and imported directly from the wild. Others come from captive breeding operations, which have their own set of serious problems.
What you can do: Call on provincial governments to improve their wild animal ownership laws
Popular animals owned as pets such as snakes, parrots, geckos, turtles, fennec foxes, iguanas, caracals and servals are all wild animals. Unlike domesticated animals, which have been selectively bred over many generations to live with humans, wild animals suffer in captivity. There is no way to replicate the space and freedom that wild animals need in a home environment.