{"id":131716,"date":"2025-07-08T23:50:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T23:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/2025\/07\/08\/bc-looking-at-banning-new-ownership-of-exotic-wildcats\/"},"modified":"2025-07-08T23:50:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T23:50:00","slug":"bc-looking-at-banning-new-ownership-of-exotic-wildcats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/2025\/07\/08\/bc-looking-at-banning-new-ownership-of-exotic-wildcats\/","title":{"rendered":"B.C. looking at banning new ownership of exotic wildcats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>B.C. residents may no longer be able to buy exotic&nbsp;pet wildcats.<\/p>\n<p>The province announced on Tuesday (July 8) that it is&nbsp;considering a ban on the sale, breeding and future ownership of&nbsp;all non-native and non-domestic cat species.<\/p>\n<p>The B.C. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (BC SPCA) has long advocated for this rule change.<\/p>\n<div class=\"embed embed-jwplayer\" id=\"file-9344592\"><iframe allowfullscreen=\"\" class=\"embed-item\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/blackpress.tv\/embed\/57040\/BC_looking_at_banning_new_ownership_of_exotic_wildcats\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Sara&nbsp;Dubois, the BC SPCA&#39;s senior director for standards, science and policy, told Black Press Media the organization has seen issues with animals such as Asian leopard cats and caracals&nbsp;result in animal cruelty investigations and seizures.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;These are not pets, and they have to be placed in very unique sanctuaries in the U.S.,&quot; she said.<\/p>\n<p>The&nbsp;Vancouver Humane Society&nbsp;wants&nbsp;new regulations&nbsp;to go a step further and&nbsp;ban all exotic pets, saying non-domesticated animals have complex needs they retain from the wild.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#39;s incredibly difficult to meet their needs when they&#39;re kept captive,&quot; said Emily&nbsp;Pickett, the campaign director for the Humane Society.<\/p>\n<p>But one&nbsp;Vancouver Island breeder of African serval cats tells Black Press Media that problems arise from poor owners.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#39;s sad for people who really take care of them,&quot; said Catherine Joyal of Savannah Canada in Sooke.<\/p>\n<p>The province already limits ownership of tigers, lions, jaguars, leopards and cheetahs. These proposed&nbsp;regulations would add servals, caracals, ocelots, European and African wildcats, Asian golden cats, fishing cats, jungle cats and marbled cats to the list.<\/p>\n<p>B.C. instituted the ban on large cat ownership in 2010, becoming the first province in Canada to create this sort of&nbsp;regulation.&nbsp;This included cats and large snakes such as anacondas. The&nbsp;rules were&nbsp;a&nbsp;response to&nbsp;the 2007 killing of&nbsp;a woman by a Siberian tiger at an exotic animal farm&nbsp;in 100 Mile House. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>To regulate these animals, B.C. added them to the Controlled Alien Species Regulation, which lists&nbsp;species that are not permitted to be pets in the province without a permit under the Wildlife Act. Owners were able to apply for a permit to keep the animals they currently owned as long as certain conditions for care were met. The sale, breeding and importing of large cats was&nbsp;banned.<\/p>\n<p>If the province decides to move forward with the new regulations, the same criteria would be applied to the smaller wildcats.<\/p>\n<p>The BC SPCA led the push for the first regulations and is continuing to promote the expansion to include all exotic wildcats.<\/p>\n<p>Dubois&nbsp;said the list created in 2010 was too limited.<\/p>\n<p>As those 100-pound animals were prohibited, people switched to other, smaller wildcats.&nbsp;Dubois said&nbsp;the BC SPCA still finds many of these animals in poor health, and they can&nbsp;still pose a threat to small children&nbsp;or other pets.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I would still consider a 40-pound wild serval from the plains of Africa a dangerous cat,&quot; she said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A breeder&#39;s perspective<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While there have been multiple&nbsp;incidents of escaped servals on Vancouver Island, Joyal&nbsp;blames improper&nbsp;care. She said&nbsp;there&nbsp;needs to be indoor and outdoor enclosures, and the animals can&#39;t be left to roam around a home.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Those cats can destroy a house in half an hour if they are not trained properly,&quot; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Joyal has owned and bred her cats for about 10 years, and owns two pairs of servals.<\/p>\n<p>She said she did have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vicnews.com\/news\/escaped-exotic-cat-spotted-roaming-sooke-neighbourhood-108828\">one cat escape<\/a> in 2022 after an issue with a door. That cat was loose for a couple of days, and she said no people or pets were hurt.<\/p>\n<p>There was a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vicnews.com\/local-news\/african-serval-cat-suspected-of-killing-sooke-couples-beloved-feral-pet-7739229\">more recent report<\/a> from Sooke&nbsp;last New Year&#39;s Day of a serval attacking and killing a stray cat and possibly killing someone&#39;s pet cat. Joyal said none of her cats were missing at that time, and she disputes the evidence that a serval was responsible in those cases.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Joyal sells about four serval kittens&nbsp;per year, and also breeds them with domestic cats. Those domestic mixes she calls &quot;Savannah cats,&quot; which she said are more like normal house cats.&nbsp;The hybrids would not be banned under the proposed regulation changes, though breeding with servals&nbsp;would be.<\/p>\n<p>Some of her cats are already generations apart from the servals, so these would be allowed to continue being bred.<\/p>\n<p>If the new regulations prevent her from breeding more&nbsp;servals, she said she hopes&nbsp;to be grandfathered in so she can at least keep the ones she already has&nbsp;as pets.<\/p>\n<p>Joyal called the new rules unfortunate, but added that ultimately, &quot;it is what it is.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Animal&nbsp;rights groups want to go further<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The humane society&#39;s Pickett said that while she hopes the new regulations are adopted, she thinks they are&nbsp;too focused on animals that can be a threat and ought to be expanded to all exotic species.<\/p>\n<p>Many types of animals are unable to have their social, behavioural and psychological needs met in captivity, she said.<\/p>\n<p>She advocated for the use of a scoring system that uses evidence-based criteria to determine what kinds of animals have been proven to thrive in human care, such as domesticated rabbits, and which have not, such as iguanas.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#39;s almost impossible to replicate their natural habitat when they&#39;re kept captive as pets; they&#39;re unable to engage in those natural behaviours that are instinctive for them,&quot; she said.<\/p>\n<p>The Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship is still engaging with the public on the proposed changes and is accepting comments and questions at&nbsp;controlledalienspecies@gov.bc.ca. The ministry has not yet decided on a&nbsp;timeline for the engagement process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Current owners would be able to apply for permits to keep their current pets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":130,"featured_media":131723,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6,5,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-regional-news","category-top-news","category-video"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>B.C. looking at banning new ownership of exotic wildcats - The Interior News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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