Thursday 20 October 2011

The right to own and the need to kill

Yesterday a 62 year old man, Terry Thompson, turned 56 exotic animals loose on his Ohio neighbourhood and then killed himself. At the time of writing the animals - apart from a single monkey - are no longer a danger to the public. 48 of them have been shot dead.


The slaughtered animals include 18 Bengal tigers and 17 lions. Numbers of tigers have been reduced by 95% since 1900; every sub-species of tiger is on the critically endangered list. The combined actions of Terry Thompson and the Ohio police have, in 24 hours, significantly added to the waste of a dying species.

The police have defended their shoot-to-kill policy: the animals had been abused and underfed; they were dangerous and aggressive and were roaming in a domestic area. One unspecified 300.lb animal was shot with a tranquiliser dart and subsequently "went crazy" and had to be killed anyway.

The rights and wrongs of the mission to destroy a menagerie of exotic mammals could be debated; the police have a duty to defend the public and feel no such obligation to value the lives of wild animals. The unbelievably weak restrictions on exotic pet ownership in Ohio - among the weakest in the United States, which is saying something - are indisputably to blame for this episode, which is not exactly unprecedented: Thompson had been in trouble before about animal escapes, and a neighbour was quoted as saying she had been living in fear for her family's safety. Besides, Ohio has one of the highest rates of injuries and deaths caused by exotic pets.

Once again, the price to pay for our lack of respect for animals, and their right to live a natural life in a safe and protected habitat, has been paid by the animals themselves. Their deaths reward our stubbornness and stupidity, and the misguided sense of a human right to ownership that was encoded in Ohio's very lack of legal restrictions.

The last monkey, by the way? It has "a herpes related disease". So when it is found, as a safety measure, it will probably be shot.