Where I Stand — Wayne Pacelle: Unnecessary danger

Thursday, Aug. 21, 2003 | 8:24 a.m.

Editor's note: In August the Where I Stand column is written by guest writers. Today's columnist, Wayne Pacelle, is a senior vice president of the Humane Society of the United States. The organization is based in Washington, D.C.

IN THE PAST five years at least nine people have been mauled to death by tigers, scores have been attacked and many have suffered grievous injuries. In separate incidents in Texas, thought to hold perhaps half of the nation's 10,000 to 15,000 pet tigers and other big cats, a 10-year-old girl helping her stepfather groom the animal died after the tiger clamped her head in its jaws; a 4-year-old girl's arm was torn off; and a 3-year-old boy posing for a photograph inside the cage was fatally savaged by his grandfather's pet.

This is the harsh reality of the threat posed to humans by backyard tigers. The Captive Wildlife Safety Act, sponsored by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., will prohibit the interstate transportation of big cats and put a serious crimp in the mania for exotic animal bragging rights that drives many of these tiger owners. The Declaration of Independence guarantees every American the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not to ownership of a 500-pound Bengal tiger hard-wired to attack and kill.

Tigers are not only a danger to people. They are also victims. Kept as backyard pets or held in abysmal roadside menageries, they invariably suffer from abuse, ignorance, poor diet, lack of veterinary care and painful physical ailments from random inbreeding. Most end up being dumped into so-called shelters when their owners tire of caring for them.

A recent raid on one substandard operation, called Tiger Rescue in Southern California, turned up 90 dead tigers, including 58 cubs, in a freezer along with 60 other big cats living in atrocious squalor. Most of these survivors, including cubs, face euthanasia. Accredited zoos and sanctuaries are packed to the limit and there is simply no good place to house them to assure adequate and humane lifelong care.

A veterinarian with a stellar record of support for animal protection issues, Senator Ensign has also sponsored legislation to impose felony-level penalties for cockfighting and dogfighting, two cruel and reprehensible underground activities that are spreading rapidly nationwide.

Nationwide, animal fighting is big business. Hundreds of thousands of game fowl, for example, are exported to Puerto Rico, Guam, Mexico and several Asian nations where cockfighting is legal. American pit bull breeders are now selling their animals to Japan, Russia, Eastern Europe and Italy, where dogfighting has become popular.

The Nevada Humane Society says dogfighting is prevalent in Tonopah and other towns in the central part of the state, while cockfighting is on the increase in Washoe County and other northern areas, particularly in Hispanic and Filipino neighborhoods where it is ingrained in the culture.

In a development related to cockfighting, the state poultry industry has been adversely affected by Exotic Newcastle Disease, which broke out among gamecocks in Southern California last fall, and was spread to Nevada and elsewhere by infected birds carried to fights in other states.

Thousands of chickens and turkeys in Nevada flocks were among the roughly 3.5 million birds ordered killed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as it fought the spread of the avian virus. Newcastle disease was recently declared under control after the government had spent $188 million to contain it.

Ironically, the cockfighters who spread the disease throughout the Southwest were paid more than $11 million in taxpayer dollars as compensation when their game fowl were ordered killed. While chicken farmers got $3 a bird from the government, cockfighters received as much as $350 for their fowl.

Senator Ensign's bill to authorize felony penalties for animal fighting, and his Captive Wildlife Safety Act, co-sponsored by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and recently approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, are sensible and timely pieces of legislation.

Pet tigers condemned to lives of deprivation and misery in squalid backyard cages, and pit bulls and gamecocks forced to fight to the death before cheering spectators, are but two glaring examples of inhumane treatment and vicious abuse heaped upon the animal kingdom. The legislation will protect both people and animals and both bills deserve passage.