Are exotic pets like lemurs legal in the Ozarks? Here's what to know about local laws
A ring-tailed lemur was seen roaming the streets of Springfield on Tuesday evening. As Springfield Police Department responded to the call, body camera footage revealed the gray primate skipping and dashing away from the officer chasing it with a towel until another police officer finally caught the animal.
Posts on social media by SPD attracted plenty of community responses, including a recurring question: "You can own a lemur?"
Missouri has some of the looser regulations in the country about owning exotic animals, including lemurs. One of the largest exotic pet auctions in the country take place in Macon, Mo.
State law prohibits anyone to keep an exotic pet, including large cats, wolfs, bears and nonhuman primates. That is "unless he or she has registered such animals with the local law enforcement agency in the county in which the animal is kept." The state does have a separate Large Carnivore Act that regulates and requires a permit for the possession of lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards and other large animals. Division of Animal Health issues the permits, which are required for each large carnivore and include a variety of eligibility factors.
While there was an attempt to also regulate non-human primate ownership in the state with a permit process in 2011, it ultimately failed to pass the state legislature.
Local exotic pets
While the state law is permissive, local governments can set their own, stricter rules for exotic animals. In the city of Springfield, owning any exotic animal is illegal, according to municipal ordinance revised in 2007, even smaller animals like lemurs and spider monkeys which have often made popular, if untraditional pets.
Andee Elmore, administrator of Environmental Health at the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, said this is because of zoonotic diseases that these animals may carry and could transmit to humans and other animals.
"It is a public health concern for us to ensure that the public is not unnecessarily exposed to any zoonotic diseases," she said.
It has been fairly rare for animal control to come in contact with exotic pets thus far. When they do, as they did with this lemur, Elmore said the department works with zoos and wildlife sanctuaries to find the animals a new home to live a fulfilling life. In this case, the owner was being cooperative and surrendered the animal. Other times, when the owner is not as responsive, the department could issue a citation and send the case to municipal court.
But outside city limits, these regulations no longer apply. Sydney Allen, planning director for Greene County Resource Management, said county zoning regulations allow residents in unincorporated Greene County to own up to two exotic animals. While any enclosures must be 50 feet from property lines, the owners are not required to notify the county about owning the animals. Any additional exotic animals do require the owner to get approval for a conditional use permit. Nearby cities like Nixa and Ozark mimic state language in their ordinances.
Just outside of city limits, at the Springfield Livestock Market Center, an auction of small and alternative animals takes place three times a year. A flyer on Facebook advertises animals from monkeys and lemurs to capybaras, zebras and emus.
Logan Burks is one of the people who started the auction last June after noticing a high demand for the animals but no existing marketplace in the area. He said it has seen an average of 400-500 attendees per auction so far.
The auction provides local and out-of-state sellers to offer their animals up for sale. Some protected animals cannot cross state lines. In order to breed, sell or exhibit animals, exotic or otherwise, a license is required through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Burks said these are required in order for sellers to partake in the auction.
Burks sells his own exotic animals like zebras and camels and said he has a USDA dealer license to do so. However, there is no active license issued in his name in the USDA database, which was last updated Aug. 28. When asked by the News-Leader whether his license could be under an entity or business name, Burks did not answer and became defensive.
When it comes to buyers, including both commercial buyers and those looking for pets, Burks said about half to three-fourths of attendees of the auction walk out with a new animal. There is no process for verifying that buyers know how to care for the animals they buy, though Burks said a majority of buyers are not first-time owners.
"People don't buy a $7,000-$10,000 animal and not take care of it 99% of the time," he said. "It's kind of one of those deals, we're not going to do a background check. Usually, if you can afford $10,000-$15,000, you usually have a way to take care of them."
Education necessary for responsible ownership
Laiken Bradshaw owns multiple exotic animals near Bolivar, including two lemurs, one of which she has owned for three years. She said most of the time she advises people to not get a lemur as a pet.
"There's plenty of exotics that are great for people to own," Bradshaw said. "But people just see a cute lemur, and they think they want one. They just don't know what they're getting into."
While she supports the ability to own exotic animals — she has several — she said the decision should be based on a lot of research and education on the care and nature of the animals. As people buy baby lemurs, they are often not aware of how their behavior can change as they mature.
"A lot of people don't know when they reach maturity from two to four years old, they can become very aggressive towards humans, because they have troops," she said. "If they don't see you as part of the troop, then they will attack you and it could happen at any time."
Like Burks, she said that the often-steep price tag an exotic animal forces most people to consider and learn more about the animals they wish to have as pets prior to purchase.
Ethical concerns of the practice
The Duke Lemur Center at Duke University advises people against keeping lemurs as pets even in states where that can seem easy and legal to do. They echo Bradshaw's points about aggression and need for other lemurs.
There is also a difference between domestication and habituation. While common pets like cats and dogs have been domesticated throughout history and natural selection, wild animals that can be seen interacting with humans are habituated — they have grown accustomed to humans, but still have their wild instincts intact. According to the lemur center, this can make pet wild animals unpredictable and dangerous.
More: MO Humane Society raids SWMO unlicensed breeder — rescues 19 dogs, including week-old puppies
The Association of Zoos & Aquariums, which provides accreditation for zoo facilities across the nation and overseas, has formed a Wildlife Trafficking Alliance that runs a "Not A Pet" campaign aimed at reducing consumer demand for wild and exotic animals as pets that often are brought into the U.S. through illegal trade practices.
The Not A Pet campaign focuses on the dangers that exotic pet ownership contributes to the extinction of already endangered species. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species, the ring-tailed lemur is listed as an endangered species with the population continuing to decline.
This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Exotic pet ordinances vary by municipality, legal in Missouri
