The Pet Offensive

Seventeen of 17 defendants were convicted. "These guys tapped into the excess of [pet] tigers," says Santel. "They realized that the owners didn't want to care for them anymore. Of the 19 tigers and 8 leopards illegally traded, 17 are believed to have been killed. The black market in body parts made possible by the glut of pet cats in the United States was felt by wild ones in Africa—at least two of the dead leopards were poached in Zimbabwe.

But the wild-pet industry's direct impacts on native ecosystems may be no more severe than the impacts deriving from the warped values it infuses in the public. I could see and hear these values in the actions and words of the people who sold and bought wild animals at the auction in Jackson, South Carolina. Species, behavior, habitat, and country of origin didn't matter and were scarcely mentioned, even if they were known, and usually they weren't. These wild creatures, dazed and bedraggled from tight confinement, weren't beautiful expressions of the planet's biodiversity; they weren't even sentient beings. They were merchandise—gewgaws, like the high-gloss totem poles offered for sale with them.

The wildlife-pet trade instills callousness and brutality toward nature. And when wild animals act like wild animals instead of like dogs and house cats, their owners resent them as well as their species. "They're nasty," I heard a woman say of servals because, once upon a time, her cousin had kept one as a pet.

What You Can Do

Tell your legislators to insist that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service get funding for more agents and wildlife inspectors. Also ask them to support The Captive Wildlife Safety Act of 2003, cosponsored by Senators Jim Jeffords (I-VT) and John Ensign (R-NV) and Representatives Howard McKeon (R-CA) and George Miller (D-CA), to ban commerce in wild cats for pets. Send them a copy of this article, or direct them to the magazine's website: (http://magazine.audubon.org).