Surrey ban on exotic pets bylaw update

[Pia]

I attended the Surrey bylaw meeting on the ban of exotic animals tonight and thought I would give an update for anyone that is interested. Nothing was finalized, it was just a forum for those to speak for or against it. About 1/4-1/3 were for the ban, the rest were against it. It went well as there was no direct debate involved, people just addressed the council, said their piece and then the next person would speak. There were no rants or personal attacks and everone conducted themselves well. The overall consensus was that the bylaw is badly drafted and needs revisions and most of the people who spoke against the ban were in favor of proper education and restrictions on very large or dangerous animals. The main arguments made by people for the ban were that exotics (this includes a whole list of things, such as elephants, marsupials, non human primates (that's how it was worded :-), hyenas, bats, all reptiles and many more obscure things) were wild creatures by nature even if they were cb and their habitat and natural instinct needs could never be properly met in captivity. The other big issue was neglect/abuse.

One thing that struck me was that out of a city with a population of about 360,000 there were roughly 60 people in attendance and at least 3 of us were from other towns. I really expected more. Granted, not all 360,000 are going to be exotic pet owners, but my feeling is that this proposed ban was purposely not made well known so it could be slipped through with little oposition. For this reason, we should all do our best to keep informed of such goings on and try to rally as much support as possible. I will post the address of the site so anyone that is interested can have a look.