[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The Fish and Game Commission voted very quickly to adopt staff’s recommendation and deny our petition to remove ferrets from the prohibited species list.
There were two reasons for the recommendation to Deny. As stated in their report.
Any change to the regulation would require coordination with CDFA (California Department of Food and Agriculture) and the proposed action would effectively eliminate the Commission’s authority to regulate ferrets, with the exception of escaped individuals to the extent those individuals could be shown to have reverted to a wild state.
Because ferrets are admittedly domestic animals.
Secondly, right from the environmental report we provided them:
Regarding potential impacts to wildlife populations, the report finds that while the establishment of feral colonies is improbable, there is a possibility that escaped ferrets might do significant damage to wildlife, such as ground-nesting birds or listed species, during a period up to a few weeks of survival.
We merely hoped the Commission would grant further consideration so the issue could be studied further and these legitimate concerns could be investigated. We offered to pay for additional study. I was very surprised they voted to kill the petition with out question or discussion.
Five people spoke in favor of our position and one person, Mark Hennelly, Vice President of Legislative Affairs and Public Policy for the California Waterfowl Association spoke of the danger of introducing or legalizing exotic species in California, that New Zealand has a severe problem with ferrets (which aren’t ferrets, but polecat or polecat-ferret hybrids) and feral populations of ferrets in England.
Where do we go from here?
My feeling is to still proceed with the Fish and Game Commission. Do they have the authority to regulate domestic animal?
We can easily refute what Mr. Hennelly told them. But we need to deal with the issue of ferrets and ground nesting birds. They haven’t been a problem anywhere else – let’s gather up the info and present more data.
We also have an election coming up and new legislators. We haven’t had any success with legislators for ten years. But we did make new friends up there who said they would help.
So Fish and Game Commission – we’ll be back!
We will have the video of our portion of the meeting up shortly.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]