Ohio is derelict in failing to regulate wild animals

The initial reaction last October to the carnage that resulted when Terry Thompson released 50 wild animals into the countryside near Zanesville before killing himself was horror.

Faced with the oncoming night and the danger that roaming big cats and bears represented, the Muskingum County sheriff gave the only order he could: shoot to kill. And so authorities killed 48 of Thompson’s animals. Six animals found in the cages inside Thompson’s compound were turned over to the Columbus Zoo. One, a leopard, was subsequently killed by a descending door between cages at the zoo.

In the immediate aftermath, Gov. John Kasich took some fire for having allowed to expire an executive order issued by former Gov. Ted Strickland banning the private ownership of big cats, bears and wolves in Ohio. Kasich said Strickland’s executive order was unenforceable, and he may have been right. Unfortunately he was wrong when he predicted that Ohio would have strict and workable legislation governing wild animal ownership in place by the end of the year. Seven months after Muskingum and five months after Kasich’s target, legislation has passed the Senate, but not the House.

And here’s the most distressing part: The delay in getting a bill through the Senate was caused by multiple amendments, virtually all of them weakening the law. Time and again Ohio’s legislators have worried more about protecting the presumed rights of wild-animal fanciers and breeders than the neighbors of wild-animal owners who might fall prey to escaped predators. And scant attention was paid to the welfare of the animals themselves.

And here’s the ultimate irony: In less time than it has taken the Legislature to pass a bill limiting the ownership of wild animals, the Ohio Department of Agriculture, which is responsible — to the extent that any state agency is actually responsible — for protecting the public, has decided that the five animals that survived the Muskingum disaster should be returned to the widow of the man who put the whole tragedy in motion.

Marian Thompson retrieved her animals and took them back to Muskingum, and nothing in Ohio law allows state officials to check on their safekeeping. In ordering the release of the animals, the state shifted the burden for monitoring the Muskingum County Animal Farm to local authorities.

But local authorities are virtually powerless. Ron Welch, the county’s assistant prosecuting attorney, told the Associated Press his office made several attempts to persuade Thompson’s attorney to allow an inspector, the sheriff and a humane officer to see the cages at the property before the animals returned. They were denied. The cages could be large enough. Or not. They could be secure enough. Or not.

“Ohio has done everything in its power to keep local officials informed throughout this process to ensure they had as much information as possible in advance of this threat returning to their backyard,” said David Daniels, the state’s agriculture director. Unfortunately, the Legislature did absolutely nothing in its power to give state or local authorities the tools necessary to respond to the threat.

Hanna reacts

In February, Jack Hanna director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo, who has traveled the world introducing live and TV audiences to exotic animals, expressed shock over the Legislature’s delay in taking action and in attempts to water down a state working group’s recommendations for a reasonable law protecting both the public and animals.

“If you knew someone was building a bomb in his basement, wouldn’t you pass a bill to stop him?” Hanna asked editors attending a convention of the Ohio Newspaper Association. There are 200 tigers and lions in Ohio, he said, and some people are buying more, to take advantage of what they rightly presumed would be a grandfather clause allowing anyone owning a wild animal when the law finally passed to keep it.

The answer to Hanna’s bomb question would be no. In Ohio, apparently, the people’s representatives would want to first make sure they protected the rights of the sellers of bomb-making materials and the builders of the bombs.

The General Assembly has been paralyzed by misplaced priorities. People who make up a tiny minority managed to convince legislators that their desire to indulge in an extravagant hobby is more important than common-sense limits on the private ownership of animals that can be accurately described as killing machines.