Learn all about the #NotAPet campaign in this Bitesize Bonus episode of the Sedgwick County ZooCast.
READ AUDIO TRANSCRIPT
VIGNETTE (00:00)
EMILY BISHOP: July 5 2018 – Buffalo New York
A squad of federal and state law enforcement agents armed with guns and bulletproof vests enter the single-story brick home of one Christopher Casacci.
This isn’t Casacci’s first run in with the law- he’s served probation for felony forgery in the past. But this run in with the law will have much more dire consequences.
Agents enter the home, making their way to a sunroom. They can smell it before they enter the room- a pungent ammonia smell that hangs in the air. Experts trained in handling dangerous exotic animals follow the agents inside.
The sunroom holds six exotic cats- two caracals and four servals.
A few weeks prior, on June 22, an inspector from the United States Department of Agriculture visited Casacci’s home following his application for a license that would allow him to possess African cats. Casacci withdrew the application before it could be properly processed.
Upon arriving at the home, the inspector found eight caracal and serval kittens. One in a crate and so sick and thin that its hip bones and ribs protruded from its skin.
A depressing and disgusting situation.
In 2021, Casacci was sentenced to 18 months in prison for trafficking exotic African cats. Through his website “ExoticCubs.com” he sold dozens of African cats, advertising them as “excellent pets” that will “cuddle and love the people around them.”
While Casacci’s sale of exotic pets might have been shut down, this is a story that’s too often echoed in other exotic pet busts. And these illegal sales aren’t happening through back-alley channels and the dark web, they’re happening on websites that I can almost guarantee- you, dear listener of this podcast, have an account on.
INTRO (01:59)
BISHOP: Hello, and welcome to the Sedgwick County ZooCast Bitesize Bonus.
I’m your host, Emily Bishop, and this mini episode we’re giving you the Zoo Scoop on the #NotAPet campaign.
ANIMAL TRAFFICKING (02:18)
BISHOP: Let’s say you’re in the market for a new pet. Goldfish? Boring. Dog? Been there, done that. No, you want something more exciting, something that no one else you know has. You want something exotic. What about a tiger? Doesn’t get more exotic than that.
So where do you start to go about obtaining this tiger? Well, you go to, of all places, Facebook.
In a 2022 article, VICE reported that it took their team less than 24 hours to order a tiger on Facebook.
24 hours and half a dozen messages, and they were able to find a seller through a public Facebook group. “If the price is right, you get it,” the seller said in a voice note. The sale was set to take place in Yangon, the capital of Myanmar. “We will make payment in cash. If you confirm and we have the tiger, I will call you.”
When perusing Facebook market for a lightly used car or treadmill, there’s a pretty high chance you’ll also scroll by a listing for some kind of exotic animal being sold through pet trafficking.
And Facebook knows this is happening. They announced that they would be cracking down on wildlife trafficking and partnering with conservation groups to help remove animal sales from their site. And they’ve begun banning accounts connected to animal trafficking. A few years ago, Facebook and Instagram joined the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online, taking a pledge to cut online animal trafficking by 80% by 2021.
This would be great, if Facebook actually followed through. A 2021 report by the World Wildlife Fund found that the number of wildlife items for sale on Facebook actually increased by 74%.
“Well, at least Facebook is banning known traffickers” you might be thinking. The thing about a Facebook account is that you can always create a new one, and the deletion of accounts actually makes it more difficult for organizations, like the WWF, to track known traffickers.
Additionally, that same report from the WWF found that in 2021 the number of traders on Facebook increased by 69%
Part of this increase is due to the Facebook algorithm. Facebook notices you follow a lot of wildlife pages, so it will continue to recommend wildlife pages to you because the algorithm notices an increase in engagement when you come across these pages. But some of these wildlife pages might actually be wildlife trafficking pages.
Over the span of a few weeks, researchers noted that Facebook made 95 wildlife-focused recommendations to them through notifications and the “suggested groups” feature. Of these posts, 76% were posts about selling or buying live animals.
This is pretty heinous, and you might be thinking, “why would someone do something like this.” For the sellers, the answer is obvious enough- money. An Asiatic black bear cub can go for $1,000; a leopard cub can be sold for $280. Reptiles, amphibians, and birds are smaller than most mammals, and therefore easier to transport and more likely to be trafficked. Some turtle species can go for $1500 each. It’s a lucrative business.
But for the buyers, it’s a little more complicated.
The people buying these animals are, for the most part, not some Cruella de Vil heinous villains. While many buyers are purchasing animals, or animal parts, for use in quote unquote “traditional medicine” which side note, has no scientific backing or benefits, or for decorations in their homes as a status symbol.
Many people are buying these animals because, well, they love animals. Or they at least say they do. They don’t see anything wrong with buying one- they might not even know that in most cases owning a wild animal is illegal.
These people see no difference between having an African gray parrot and a canary- in their eyes caring for a serval should be as easy as caring for a tabby cat. And they see themselves as good pet owners, they aren’t purposefully mistreating their animals.
But they are mistreating their animals. Because exotic animals are not pets.
THE #NOTAPET CAMPAIGN (06:50)
BISHOP: The #NotAPet campaign is working to end the illegal pet trade.
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums have partnered with the Wildlife Trafficking Alliance and International Fund for Animal Welfare to help educate the public on why exotic animals are not pets.
While there are numerous reasons that you shouldn’t have an exotic pet, we’re going to focus on two main reasons that go hand in hand.
First is the animal’s journey.
Often, the animals being trafficked are captured and taken from their homes in the wild. They’re mistreated on the journey from their natural habitat to wherever they’re being sold, often being injured or becoming sick in the process.
A series of texts intercepted from a 2021 animal trafficking case show a conversation between two traffickers. The first trafficker is complaining about six adult toucans he’s transporting that won’t stop squawking. The response from his partner? “Tape their beaks so they do not make noise and tie them up very well.”
These animals are mishandled and abused when being trafficked.
Second, is zoonotic disease.
A zoonotic disease is any infection or disease that is naturally able to transmit from animals to humans.
The way that animals are often transported during trafficking- in tight cramped quarters- increases the spread of zoonotic diseases between animals, and therefore to humans.
75% of new diseases discovered in the last decade are zoonotic, and more than half of all human diseases have zoonotic origins.
The HIV and AIDS epidemic of the 1980s was zoonotic from chimps to humans. 2003’s Monkeypox outbreak was transmitted, not from monkeys, but rodents and prairie dogs to humans. And the West African Ebola epidemic of the mid 2010s was the result of sustained contact between humans and bats.
There are a myriad of other reasons you should not own an exotic pet.
All of this can be overwhelming, and it’s easy to feel helpless when confronting an issue as big as animal trafficking. But there are things you can do that make a difference.
One of the easiest things you can do is being conscious of the social media content you’re engaging with. The next time you see a Reel or a Tik Tok of an exotic animal, ask yourself who is posting this and why? What does the caption say? What is the goal of the user who uploaded it?
By being smart about how we’re engaging with content online, we can ensure that we aren’t promoting illegal or harmful activities.
You can also be an advocate for wildlife. Talk to your friends and family about why certain animals don’t make good pets. If your friend is telling you about how they want to buy a lemur or macaw, start a dialogue with them about why that isn’t in their best interest, or the best interest of the animals.
If you’re craving more information on this issue, or if you want to take the pledge to be an animal ally, visit notapet.net.
By just being more educated on the issue of animal trafficking and the illegal pet trade, you’re already taking strides to help end the problem.
LEARN ABOUT HOLIDAY GIFT MEMBERSHIP (10:15)
BISHOP: That’s what’s new at Zoo with the #NotAPet campaign. But keep listening after a brief message about how the Zoo makes holiday shopping easy to learn about the most heavily trafficked mammal.
Trying to find the perfect gift for a loved one can be tough. Shopping during the holiday season is stressful.
So why not make things easy and get your loved one a gift they’ll never forget?
When you purchase the Sedgwick County Zoo’s Holiday Gift Membership, you not only get two additional guest passes, but 15 months of membership for the cost of 12.
Enjoy unlimited visits to the Zoo, early entry, discounts on special events, and early access to the Sedgwick County ZooCast.
Visit scz.org/membership and select the Holiday Gift Membership option to get started.
This year, take the stress out of holiday shopping and give the gift of membership.
THE MOST HEAVILY TRAFFICKED MAMMAL (11:27)
BISHOP: I’m going to give you a moment to think about what the most heavily trafficked mammal is…. okay, got your guess?
It’s the pangolin.
Pangolins, also called scaly anteaters are found in Asia and Africa. Their bodies are covered in keratin scales that protect them from predators.
These protective scales are part of the reason they’re in such high demand- they’re used in many traditional medicines, despite there being no medical benefits to such practices. But also, in some countries their meat is considered a delicacy.
Pangolins also potentially played a role in the coronavirus pandemic of 2020.
When researchers used genomic sequencing to compare the DNA of the coronavirus in humans to that in animals, they found a 99% match with pangolins.
Now, researchers stressed that this does not mean that pangolins are confirmed as intermediate hosts of Covid, but they can’t rule it out either. It all boils down to: pangolins should be considered possible hosts for future coronavirus strands.
So, if we all want to avoid another lockdown in the future, it wouldn’t hurt to end animal trafficking.
OUTRO (12:51)
BISHOP: Thanks for listening to this Bitesize Bonus episode of the Sedgwick County ZooCast.
For more information on the #NotAPet campaign, be sure to follow us on social media, which is linked in the description of this episode. And check out our website: scz.org
I’ve been Emily Bishop, and we hope you enjoyed this mini episode of the Sedgwick County ZooCast.
