One photo shows a
young man sticking his head inside his pet lion’s mouth. Another one
shows two young men taking their cheetah with them on a speedboat. Other
men are shown riding their lion’s back or wrestling with the beast in
their backyard.
Many
pictures of young men with their big cats have been posted on Instagram,
a social media website, in recent months. There are also videos of
these men with their cheetah, lion and tiger pets, taken inside their
homes or cars and even at swimming pools.
This Instagram trend has
shed light on an important issue: the apparently increasingly popular
practice of keeping exotic pets in households in the UAE, Kuwait and
Qatar.
The question is not just how many of these pets are legal,
it is also why having such animals can be permitted, despite all the
potentially negative consequences for both the animals and their owners.
Experts warn that the practice affects the well-being and
conservation of wild animals and it poses health risks to their owners.
These powerful animals can cause serious injuries and also transmit some
diseases.
Despite this, the ownership of exotic animals is
growing in popularity in the UAE, according to an article in the Abu
Dhabi Police’s 999 Magazine, which recently highlighted the issue. The
magazine’s cover story gave details about various wild animals, the
threats they pose to the public and the ways in which these animals are
acquired and kept as pets.
Most people who buy such animals have
no idea how to take care of them, the report stated. Many of these
animals do not even have medical records, suggesting that they were
initially taken from their mothers and sold on the black market.
The
article said that endangered and wild animals are easily available for
purchase in the UAE for between Dh15,000 and Dh50,000. Local and
international websites advertise many kinds of exotic animals, including
cheetahs, cougars, jaguars, leopards, black panthers, lions and yellow
and white tiger cubs.
A quick search on Google confirms this is the case.
Many
advertisers do not offer official papers. A recent survey by the
International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw), conducted over four weeks,
found about 800 exotic-pet advertisements posted on 11 websites.
None
of those advertisements involved proof of the animals’ legality, and
only one in five of them mentioned that the necessary documents were
available.
In the UAE, it is legal to own exotic animals if you
hold a licence to do so, and there are legal ways of bringing them into
the country. But a specialist in wildlife and zoo management at Dubai
Municipality’s Public Parks and Horticulture Department, Dr Reza Khan,
was quoted in the article as saying that owners often bypassed the law
and kept dangerous animals to show off that “they can have such a pet
without a legal permit”.
Authorities have been warning against
questionable pet ownership in recent years. In 2010, more than 200
illegal animals were confiscated in the UAE, according to the Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna
(Cites), which the UAE signed in 1990.
The Cites treaty prohibits
endangered animals from being exported from their native countries
unless it is for scientific or conservation purposes. The UAE has
enacted a law to regulate the animal trade and tasked its enforcement to
the Federal Environment Agency for Abu Dhabi Emirate and the Ministry
of Environment and Water for the Northern Emirates.
Since last
year, another draft law has been in the works, setting fines of as much
as Dh50,000 and imprisonment of up to six months for illegal traders,
whether they are sellers or buyers.
The Ministry of Environment’s
rules prohibit individuals and commercial dealers from importing big
cats. This is only permitted for breeding centres, universities, zoos
and authorities licensed by the ministry, and then only when certain
other requirements are met. However, these rules are often broken.
Stricter
laws could be underway. Last year, legislators in Abu Dhabi said they
were weighing up a further law to make endangered exotic pet ownership
illegal. The issue came up for discussion at the Ministerial Council for
Services’s meeting, which has given directives to the Ministry of
Environment to draft necessary laws to prevent this practice.
These
rules should be implemented and strictly enforced by authorities to
tackle the capture and sale of wild animals as pets. It is also time for
people to realize that having a big cat in their household does not
make them “cool”. Rather, they risk being called animal abusers and are
putting their own lives at risk.
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