I can almost never read the comments to my SFGate.com pet columns anymore, because it seems like half the people who respond just want to spew hate and violence at pets, and I can't take it. They also tend to act like the existence of a pet column is some sort of plot by the SF Chronicle against them.
But still, I write the darn things. I must be a masochist. And this week is probably one of my most masochistic efforts, as I deliberately step on the third rail of California pet politics, the issue of ferret legalization.
Let me say right now that I think the current state policy on ferrets is idiotic, a blunt statement my editor saw fit to jettison but that I affirm here. I'm a columnist, so I get to have opinions. It's what they pay me for.
But that doesn't mean my opinions are plucked out of the air. I have reasons for them, and that is, of course, what the article is all about:
They're cute, affectionate, furry and playful. There are tens of thousands of them in California, and they're allowed as pets in most countries and every state except Hawaii.
So why are ferrets illegal in California?
It's an old story, characterized by battling sets of statistics and interpretations of natural history. To the California Department of Fish and Game and some environmentalists, ferrets are wild animals with the potential to establish feral colonies and wreak havoc on native species if they escape from captivity.
But as Jeanne Carley of Californians for Ferret Legalization has pointed out, the ferret has been classified "as domesticated by the United States Department of Agriculture, Smithsonian Institute, Museum of Natural History, the Humane Society of the United States and 150 zoos, zoological societies and other authorities."
I interviewed David Gaines of the legal and legislative affairs committee of the American Ferret Association for the piece, and he was terrific:
"The bottom line, from what I've been able to determine is that it's just a very fierce environmental debate," said Dave Gaines, of the legal and legislative committee of the American Ferret Association, "But ferrets are thoroughly domesticated. There are no feral colonies that are going to form in California and destroy endangered species. There's no evidence of that ever happening in the United States."
Then I take on what I call the Godwin's Law of the ferret legalization battle, the New Zealand experience with feral ferrets, after which I get into the double standard ferrets face in California:
In fact, the CDFG document also points out that cats cause more environmental harm than ferrets do, and the Sierra Club said in 1997 that the only reason they were opposed to pet ferrets but not pet dogs and cats was that "dogs and cats are already legal." What kind of backward logic is that? If ferrets are illegal, shouldn't dogs and cats be, too? Their waste contaminates the soil and water. Dogs bite and bark. Cats poop in vegetable gardens and eat birds. No one can deny any of that.
The problem is, when you start down that road, there are a heck of a lot of species that need to be banned, and the one that most deserves it is good old homo sapiens. There's never been an animal yet — not even rabbits in Australia — that's done more damage to the environment than we have.
So where do you draw the line?
Apparently in California we draw it at a little, pointy-faced, whiskered furry creature that rarely lives even a decade, doesn't make noise, doesn't use public parks, cannot run free, doesn't poop on the sidewalk, has a hard time surviving unaided in the wild and, compared to many other pets, isn't that popular even where legal. (The APPMA says there are 1.9 million ferrets in the United States; compare that to 88.3 million cats and 44.3 million dogs.)
There's a lot more, including an update on the next step in the battle to liberate the state's pet ferrets, here.
I am gravely disappointed as a military wife knowing that I cannot take our ferrets with us when we get restationed to california...
Posted by: | 02 October 2008 at 04:29 PM