Ohio legislators outlaw new ownership of dangerous exotic animals

COLUMBUS, OH – The Ohio Leg­is­la­ture passed the Dan­ger­ous Wild Ani­mal Act, which Gov­er­nor John Kasich has promised to sign, out­law­ing new own­er­ship of dan­ger­ous wild ani­mals after more than 100,000 peo­ple joined a pop­u­lar cam­paign on Change.org, the world’s fastest-growing plat­form for social change.

Liz Dum­ler, an Ohio native and recent Ohio Uni­ver­sity grad­u­ate, started the peti­tion after more than 50 exotic ani­mals — includ­ing tigers, lions, wolves and bears — escaped from a pri­vate farm in Zanesville, Ohio, last Octo­ber. 49 of the ani­mals were killed by local author­i­ties. Within a week, more than 100,000 peo­ple joined Liz’s cam­paign, which received cov­er­age from Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can, CBS, and news out­lets across Ohio.

“I am beyond ecsta­tic that Ohio leg­is­la­tors and Gov­er­nor Kasich have come to this deci­sion that sig­nif­i­cantly improves the lives and safety of both humans and ani­mals in the state of Ohio,” said Dum­ler, who launched the cam­paign on Change.org. “This event closes an ugly chap­ter in Ohio’s ani­mal wel­fare his­tory. I hope that the mem­o­ries of the Zanesville ani­mals who lost their lives in Octo­ber will not be for­got­ten, and that they will con­tinue to be remem­bered through this legislation.”

The Zanesville inci­dent drew atten­tion to Ohio’s exotic ani­mal reg­u­la­tions, which had been among the weak­est in the nation. Gov­er­nor Kasich released a state­ment last week after the leg­is­la­ture passed the Dan­ger­ous Wild Ani­mal Act, say­ing that he was “proud to be sign­ing this bill into law.”

“Between classes, Liz used her cam­paign on Change.org to gather sup­port from peo­ple from all over the world,” said Change.org Senior Cam­paigner Stephanie Feld­stein. “Change.org empow­ers any­one, any­where to do just what Liz did–start, join and win cam­paigns on issues that mat­ter to them. It has been incred­i­ble to watch ordi­nary peo­ple tak­ing action to pre­vent another inci­dent like Zanesville.”

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jun 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.