Senate passes Big Cat Public Safety Act, restricting private ownership of lions and tigers
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The Big Cat Public Safety Act, H.R. 263, is headed to President Joe Biden's desk after the US Senate passed the measure Tuesday night.
The legislation − which restricts private ownership of big cats such as lions and tigers − came about after Terry Thompson released dozens of exotic animals from their pens just west of Zanesville before killing himself in 2011. The Muskingum County Sheriff's Office was forced to kill many of the animals to keep the public safe. Muskingum County Sheriff Lutz has since lobbied on Capital Hill numerous times to advance the legislation.
“We applaud Sens. Portman and Brown for helping secure the passage of the Big Cat Public Safety Act, which will keep families in Ohio safe from dangerous tigers, lions, and other big cats,” said Marty Irby, executive director at Animal Wellness Action in a news release.“After a decade of legislative work on the bill and tremendous publicity for the issue, this legislation will help prevent another event like the Zanesville massacre from occurring in the U.S.”
“I’m elated to see the U.S. Congress step up to help those of us in law enforcement prevent unnecessary risk to our lives by addressing this issue and passing the Big Cat Public Safety Act,” Lutz said in the news release. “I applaud the senators who backed this measure and my own Ohio senators Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown for cosponsoring the bill, as well as Rep. Troy Balderson for his co-sponsorship and vote in support of the measure.”
Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Reps. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) introduced the legislation in the 117th Congress, and Sens. Portman and Brown as well as Reps. Balderson, Joyce Beatty, Shontel Brown, Mike Carey, Steve Chabot, Bill Johnson, Dave Joyce, Marcy Kaptur, Tim Ryan, and Michael Turner voted in support of the measure in July, when it passed in the U.S. House.
“For me, this fight for the big cats was never personal,” said Carole Baskin, president and founder of Big Cat Rescue, in a news release. “This was always about developing a national policy to shut down the trade in these animals as props in commercial cub handling operations and as pets in people’s backyards and basements.”
The bill builds on the Captive Wildlife Safety Act, passed unanimously in 2003, which sought to ban the trade in big cats as pets. That original measure had a drafting flaw, and the Big Cat Public Safety Act aims to correct that problem and ban breeding big cats for the pet trade.
This article originally appeared on Zanesville Times Recorder: U.S. Senate passes Big Cat Public Safety Act
