By Richard Farinato

Allow me for a second to open my album of statistics and anecdotes, and provide you with some snapshots from the captive exotic-animal front:

• In early August 2003, I found several tiger cubs available to the public via the Internet from a dealer in Arizona. Other cats, primates, small mammals, birds, and reptiles were available for sale, too. Tigers were priced from $900 to $7,000 each, depending on sex and color type. A baby chimp, however, would cost $50,000.

• The number of individual captive tigers living in the United States is estimated between 5,000 and 7,000. About 10% of the tigers are kept in professionally run zoos and sanctuaries. The rest of these cats live in roadside menageries, circuses, traveling shows, big cat rescues, and backyards (where people keep them as pets). (By contrast, between 5,000 and 7,000 individual tigers are left in the wild, where the picture is pretty bleak for these large predators. Loss of habitat, conflicts with humans, and poaching continue to threaten the remaining populations.)

• Right now, 26 tigers in New Jersey await relocation to a sanctuary in Texas after lengthy legal proceedings against their owner. In California, 39 tigers await placement in as yet undetermined locations after the state filed 63 charges against the animals' owners, including 17 counts of felony animal cruelty.

• In the last five years, nine people have been killed by tigers. Each year, 90,000 people are treated for salmonella infection contracted from reptiles. Since 1975, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has banned the import and sale of turtles under the size of 4 inches because of the salmonella threat to small children. This July, the Department of Health and Human Services indefinitely shut down the import and sale of African rodents for the U.S. pet trade after an outbreak of monkeypox, a human health threat traced to Gambian rodents that subsequently infected native prairie dogs being sold as pets.

• A federal bill to prohibit the interstate trade in big cats for pets is making its way through Congress. The House version was approved by the Committee on Resources, while the Senate version was approved by the Environment and Public Works Committee. If enacted, the bill could slow the exotics trade since it would limit the sale of big cats to buyers within a seller's particular state.

• I recently went to a county fair near our office, and listened to a trainer tell me how wild tigers need help and how the tigers in the ring are actually contributing to saving wild tigers by jumping through hoops and rolling over on command. He called what he does conservation education. If I were an 8-year-old in the crowd, I might have wanted to have my own tiger, just like his.

And the scary part is, if I were an 8-year-old, I very likely could get one. When I grew up.

All these seemingly disconnected statements and anecdotes are anything but disconnected. The business of exotic and wild animals as pets in the United States is conservatively estimated to be worth $15 billion annually. The trade in wild animals worldwide is worth many billions of dollars; one quarter of this trade, including the poaching to tigers and elephants, is estimated to be illegal. This illegal trade in exotics and their parts is often described as the No. 2 moneymaker on the black market, behind drugs and weapons. What does this all mean?

It means that people have easy access to an amazingly diverse and dangerous array of animals who are supremely unsuited to life as a pet.

In a retail store, a rural property, a basement breeding room, or a suburban split level bedroom, you can meet the monkey of your dreams, dressed in a doll's clothes and wearing a diaper. Or you can bottle feed a cougar cub, so preciously spotted, and then see his mother and dad in the chain-link 8x8 pen in the back. Or you can buy a parrot chick, unfeathered and helpless, and walk away with a syringe and plastic bag of dry formula to reconstitute later, so you can hand feed and bond with the bird for life.

It means that exotic animals are available and visible, both in the marketplace and in the media. They are glamorized on Animal Planet, in Geico commercials, and in reality shows. They are pushed as different, alternative, and easy-care. And because there is little regulation of import, production, or sale of such animals, they're fairly easy to obtain. It's a wide open market, and the going price of the animal depends on its real or hyped rarity. Too often, the animal is an impulse purchase.

The business of exotics can be viewed as a large circular pathway on which an animal or a species travels. Spaced along this circle are institutions or entities such as zoos and other exhibits, circuses, animal trainers, pet shops, animal dealers, importers, auctions, hobby and commercial breeders, rescues, and sanctuaries.

As an example, parrots are produced at a bird breeder's facility in Florida. They are sold to an independent pet shop or to a dealer that supplies pet superstores, which then sells them to individual customers. As the bird matures and becomes noisy and perhaps bites someone, the owner is likely to dispose of the animal. It may then go back to a breeder or be resold to another private party or donated to a zoo or rescue. It could then end up with a dealer or be bred to provide more birds for the trade. Or it could simply be set free.

Tigers can follow the same kind of route and end up in a questionable rescue that fails due to money or legal issues. Such is the problem that California faces right now with the 39 big cats. These cats are destined, it appears, to be distributed to anyone who will take them. It's not far-fetched to see them as producers of more tiger cubs, setting out afresh on the pet trail.

Regardless of the species, the system operates pretty consistently. The only variable is the increase and decrease of a species' numbers in the market, which is determined by fads and aggressive marketing, which combine to create hype and therefore sales.

The whims of the marketplace are only part of the issue. Added to that are two more serious concerns. The first is rather straightforward and needs little explanation: humane care. Wild and exotic animals are difficult and demanding to care for—well beyond the abilities of the average person.

The second concern has assumed a greater role lately: public health and safety. The monkeypox outbreak originated with a shipment of imported African rodents, and then spread to American rodents (prairie dogs), all in the pet trade. SARS has been evidently tracked back to wild animals in food markets in China.

These are not events that can be ignored or treated lightly. Wild animals are notorious vectors or reservoirs for diseases and parasites, many of which are zoonotic in nature. From a legal and regulatory standpoint, the doors are wide open for the import of the majority of wild animals destined for the pet trade, including ball pythons and hedgehogs from Africa. The U.S. government mandates no quarantine, no inspection, and no tracking of movements for these animals.

The world has become a smaller place, and our backyard is getting more exotic by the minute, as non-native birds and reptiles and fish establish populations around the country, escaped or abandoned pets all. We don't seem to fully understand the threat this poses.

Interestingly, a federal bill to ban the interstate sale and transport of big cats as pets began moving through Congress as the monkeypox outbreak was unfolding. Privately owned big cats cause serious injuries and deaths in the United States, and this bill is aimed at curtailing that situation. Currently, only 19 states have either full bans or partial bans on the private ownership of large exotic animals.

What's more, in the wake of monkeypox, both state and federal lawmakers are asking questions about the larger issue of wild animals as pets, and public health officials are producing position statements on the import of wild animals as pets.

Action against the monkeypox threat came in the form of an astonishing federal ban on the import, transport, and sale of African rodents and prairie dogs nationwide. This swift action would seem to bode well for future conversations about bans and restrictions. In the past, federal agencies have banned or restricted the import of certain creatures for health, safety, and agricultural reasons.

In view of the costs to animals trapped in the exotic wildlife trade, and the dangers that they can pose, regardless of size or temperament, it may be time to enlarge the scope of bans and restrictions.

Richard Farinato is The HSUS's Director of Captive Wildlife Programs and the Wildlife Advocacy Division.