Nosey’s Law – the new “elephant protection”
law that was just passed in the New Jersey Senate and sits on Governor Chris
Christie’s desk, awaiting his signature – has turned out to be a complete mess,
both with regard to what it actually effects as well as the political
motivations of the various advocacy groups that pushed it through. Named after
an infamous privately owned circus elephant, the Nosey’s Law
the public thought they were supporting would have simply protected elephants
from being used in traveling entertainment acts; but instead, it effectively outlaws
all mobile animal education programs in the state.
In its first incarnation, Nosey’s Law emulated
anti-circus bills previously enacted in New York and Illinois that prohibit the
use of elephants in traveling animal acts (or even any type of entertainment at
all). Instead, imprecise language about what constitutes a “traveling act” and
a “performance” in the original bill allowed an overly broad amendment to
expand the scope of the ban from just elephants to all wild and exotic animals.
The combination of the two means that
not only is using elephants in any sort of travelling exhibition illegal, but that
any mobile business utilizing exotic or wild animals for any type of
exhibition, in any way, is also in violation of the new law. While this may
seem like good news to those readers who want to see all animals removed from
traveling entertainment, this actually has much further reaching effects: any
businesses doing wildlife outreach and conservation education programs with a
live wild animal collection will be completely eliminated by the passage of
this law. These highly valuable services and
exhibitions are not the type of animal entertainment that the public expected
Nosey’s Law to prohibit. Not only do they often serve to support the continued
existence of wildlife rehabilitation facilities and exotic animal rescues, they
are also often the only access underprivileged communities have to education
about the natural world.
“Be It
Enacted by the
Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:
1. a. Notwithstanding any other law, or any rule or
regulation adopted pursuant thereto, to the contrary, no person shall use an
elephant 1or other
wild or exotic animal1 in
a traveling animal act.
b. Any person who violates this section shall be subject to
the penalties provided in section 10 of P.L.1973, c.309 (C.23:2A-10), except
that the criminal penalties provided in subsection f. of that section shall not
apply.
c. As used in this section:
“Mobile or traveling housing facility” means a vehicle, including a
truck, trailer, or railway car, used to transport or house an animal used for
performance.
“Performance” means any animal act, carnival, circus, display,
exhibition, exposition, fair, parade, petting zoo, presentation, public
showing, race, ride, trade show, or similar undertaking in which animals
perform tricks, give rides, or participate as accompaniments for the
entertainment, amusement, or benefit of a live audience.
“Traveling animal act” means any performance which requires an animal
to be transported to or from the location of the performance in a mobile or
traveling housing facility.
2. This act shall take effect immediately.”
The important parts to note are that it
applies to all wild or exotic animals in addition to elephants, and that it
prohibits any public showing of these animals for the benefit of the public. Even
when this bill just dealt with elephants, this wording still would have been
overly broad in comparison with similar extant legislation. Both the New York
and Illinois elephant-specific laws were carefully written to make sure they
didn’t accidentally prohibit legitimate educational presentations: New York
banned the use of elephants in any type of entertainment, travelling or not,
but they emphasized the entertainment part of the definition and included an
exemption for programs run by zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos and
Aquariums (AZA) and wildlife sanctuaries; Illinois (the existing law most
similar to what Nosey’s Law purported to be) chose to emphasize that they were
banning travelling elephant acts and
made sure they exempted any “non-mobile, permanent institution, or other
facility.”
If this legislation has passed as it was
originally written, the vagaries of the wording wouldn’t have affected the
actual implementation – there aren’t any facilities in the state of New Jersey
taking their elephants off-site for educational programs. So how did this bill
go from specifically restricting elephants to a disaster for educational
businesses? On 12/18/2017, the Assembly Appropriations Committee amended the
text of the bill, adding six words that changed the fundamental purpose of the
law: “or other wild or exotic animals.”
The term “exotic animal” is far broader than many people
realize, and “wild animal” is even more so. In general, both terms not only
encompass the iconic megafauna like bears and tigers, but also many species the
general public encounters regularly, such as guinea pigs and canaries. Nosey’s
Law does not define what is considered a wild or an exotic animal, and it does
not reference any other extant definitions (the text is marked as if the definition will be in a footnote, but no such footnote exists at the time of this writing). The bill, if passed, will be an
addition to Title 23 of the New Jersey State statutes.
According to the definitions found in that document, an exotic animal is “any
nongame species or mammal, bird, reptile or amphibian not indigenous to New
Jersey”. There appears to be no extant definition of a wild animal – the
closest is the definition of “wildlife,” which is “any wild mammal, bird,
reptile, amphibian, fish, mollusk, crustacean or other wild animal.” These
definitions are, in keeping with the rest of the bill, incredibly broad, but it
appears that the most likely interpretation of the bill is that it will outlaw
use of all non-domestic species of animals in any sort of mobile exhibition or
outreach.
This means that if Governor Christie signs
this bill into law, the addition of those six words will make it illegal for educational
outreach companies to help children fall in love with wild animals through
entertaining – but informative – events. It will make it illegal for wildlife
rescues to raise funding for their rehabilitation programs by doing
presentations about raptor conservation with the unreleasable animals in their
care. And, because the bill was not written with any of the normal exemptions,
there are six zoos – three of which are accredited by the “gold standard”
Associations of Zoos and Aquariums (a group that almost always has exemptions
from restrictive animal management laws) – it will also make it illegal for facilities
like the Turtleback Zoo to run the classroom programs where they teach
first-graders about the astounding diversity found in nature with the help of
specially trained ambassador animals.
While this may seem like a mistake – surely,
nobody who loves animals could purposefully attempt to do such damage to
educational programs – some of the biggest proponents of the bill indicated in
their comments this is /exactly/ what was intended to occur. The headline of
PETA’s celebratory blog post applauds New Jersey for banning “all wild-animal
acts.” PETA, an organization known for their animal liberation ethos, truly
wants to end all use of animals by humans in any capacity – even for
educational purposes that might encourage people to care about animals. They
even openly celebrated the passing of Nosey’s Law as the first step in closing
all zoos (although the reference to zoos was quickly and quietly removed from
the blog post, likely to avoid cluing in the duped supporters of Nosey’s Law to
their true intentions).
The oddest thing about all of this is that Nosey’s
Law is damaging the business practices of multiple facilities accredited by the
AZA less than six months after they very publicly teamed up with PETA’s legislation-focused
counterpart, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). The CEO of HSUS,
Wayne Pacelle, wrote publicly about the need for the two organizations “to unite to fight cruelty and promote conservation,” and yet both Pacelle and the HSUS New
Jersey State Director both widely praised the passing of a law that actively
damages the conservation efforts of multiple AZA zoos. HSUS and PETA do not frequently
present themselves to the public as flip sides of the same coin, but their VP
of wildlife affairs, Nicole Paquette, has stated publicly that the two
organizations have the same goals, simply different methods of achieving them; in
light of that, it might seem that Nosey’s Law is the first stumbling block for
the overly optimistic partnership between a zoological organization and an
animal rights advocacy group. However, the comments made by both the HSUS New
Jersey State Director and Pacelle about the law passing indicated that they believed the bill to be
entirely focused on ending circus acts using wild animals. Pacelle,
specifically, opened his blog post on the topic with a statement that the law
bans “almost all wild-animal acts” when the bill as written in fact bans every exotic animal act.
While this
slight discrepancy might not be a big deal from most authors, the HSUS CEO is a
man whose books are written in collaboration with former White House speech
writers and whose blog posts frequently include vocabulary that even well-educated
readers occasionally have to look up in a dictionary – it is utterly
uncharacteristic of him to allow anything to be published under his name to
include a mischaracterization of what he himself dubbed the “biggest win yet”
for ending the use of wild animals in circuses. So what happened – how did HSUS
end up enthusiastically supporting a bill that is so blatantly damaging to
their newest collaborator?
Given that PETA actively celebrated the damage
Nosey’s Law will do to New Jersey zoos, and both HSUS people speaking publicly
about the bill didn’t seem to realize the true scope of the bill – the HSUS New
Jersey State Director didn’t even seem to be sure about what species of animals
would be covered by the ban – maybe HSUS was caught as unaware as the general
public was by the “wild and exotic animal” language amendment. The bill was
amended very late in the legislative process – more than a year after the bill
was originally introduced to the Senate floor – and it’s possible the
additional language could have gone unnoticed by animal advocacy organizations
until it was too late.
And that’s really the take-home lessons we’ve
all learned from this Nosey’s Law debacle – whether
you’re a member of interested public or a public figure heavily involved in
animal advocacy, it’s crucial to keep a close watch on the evolution of
proposed legislation. Even the smallest changes to the wording of a bill can
have big consequences, and in this case, six little words that went unnoticed
in what was intended to be a fairly targeted piece of animal protection
legislation might destroy the majority of conservation and wildlife education
opportunities for New Jersey residents.
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