Cub Petting Ban Petition on Federal Register

This morning USDA published the Big Cat Coalition’s petition in the Federal Register – http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-08-05/pdf/2013-18874.pdf

We are asking all of our supporters to comment THAT THERE IS NO CIRCUMSTANCE UNDER WHICH THE PUBLIC SHOULD BE ALLOWED CONTACT WITH CUBS.

The rule will already allow that if a cub truly needs to be hand raised it would be by a vet or staff, but not the general public. Please don’t give the bad guys a single loophole to exploit.

Work on this petition began July 2011. The 72 page petition was presented to USDA in Oct 2012 and finally posted for public comment today.

Note: I just posted my comment here:

http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=APHIS_FRDOC_0001-1477

There is NO reason why any member of the public should ever come in contact with wild animals and their cubs. There should be a distance of no less than three feet between wild animals, including their young, and the public, so that the animals and the public are both kept safe. Anyone in possession of wild animals should be required, at all times, to have available birth and acquisition records along with proof positive identification, such as a microchip. The possessors of wild animals should also be required to keep accurate records of disposition and ALL of these records should be available for public inspection.

Lions Should Be Protected, Not on the Menu

http://www.elitetampabay.com/ Pages 30-31

Protect Jaguar Habitat in the U.S.

A lone jaguar has been popping up in images from remote cameras in Arizona’s Santa Rita Mountains — the first confirmed spotting of these great cats in the Southwest since the jaguar known as Macho B was killed in 2009.

That means there’s hope for jaguars’ return to the United States, and a new federal proposal seeks to protect key jaguar habitat in southern Arizona and New Mexico to make it possible. But the plan doesn’t go far enough.

Jaguars once roamed much of the Southwest — as far north as the Mogollon Rim near the Grand Canyon and west to include all of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. The agency’s current proposal, however, limits critical habitat to portions of southern Arizona and a tiny area of New Mexico — all south of I-10.

Thankfully the proposal does include at-risk land that is targeted for a huge open-pit copper mine in the Santa Rita’s. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should expand the critical habitat to include the rugged Gila National Forest in New Mexico and pine-clad Mogollon Rim of Arizona — where the last female jaguar seen in the United States was shot 50 years ago. With abundant prey and cover, these areas are the best U.S. habitat for jaguars.

Please take action now — tell the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect all of the lands jaguars need to recover.

Click here to take action and get more information.

If you can’t open the link, go to http://action.biologicaldiversity.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=14059.