By now most of you have heard the Governor Schwarzenegger has vetoed
SB 89, the ferret amnesty bill in California.  To say that we aren't
disspointed, angry, and hurt is a major understatement.
 
There has been some question about a ballot initiative for ferrets.
 
Ballot Initiative Perils
By Jeanne Carley
 
Some folks have brought up the idea of starting a ballot initiative for
ferret legalization, since the past bills have failed.  This is not a new
idea; and clearly ballot initiatives have had successes on some fronts.
But unfortunately, an initiative is a losing proposition for ferret
legalization that could actually result in some severe and unintended
consequences.
 
The Hidden Dangers of the Imitative Process
 
Successful initiatives are those that touch a majority of households and
therefore a majority of voters.  These kinds of issues also have lots of
money at stake and therefore some well healed backers in the form of
Political Action Committees or professional associations.  Taxes and
insurance are good examples the kinds of issues that ballot initiatives
often address.  The ferret issue isn't the kind of issue that is
appropriate for the initiative process because it does not affect the
majority of voters in California and there is no large money machine
behind the issue.
 
Gathering the necessary signatures is a huge undertaking, employing paid
signature collectors and costing somewhere around a million dollars.
There simply aren't enough volunteer ferret supporters to be able to
accomplish such a feat, but even if the issue did manage to qualify,
then the real nightmare would begin.
 
Our fight has always suffered from lack of funds while the opposition has
hundreds of thousands of dollars at their disposal.  Remember who our
opposition is: CA Waterfowl, Planning and Conservation League and the
Department of Fish and Game.
 
What if this coalition decided to spend some advertising dollars fighting
a ferret initiative?  Can you imagine a 30 second spot featuring a little
girl's whose face has been disfigured by the family's pet?  No doubt the
"infomercial" wouldn't let viewers know that the little girl now lives
with her grandmother, her mother was absent at the time of the attack,
and is apparently is absent now.  The father was asleep on the couch
with signs of alcohol present, according to animal control officers at
the scene who stated that is was his opinion that ferrets do not pose a
significant risk to children unless these is a gross parental neglect.
None of this would be mentioned of course.  Nor would the fact that 16-18
people each year are unable to justify the potential danger of dogs
because they have killed them.  Or maybe the Department of Fish and Game
would use one of the ferrets they keep as "research" (and feed live
animals to) in order to show the ferret's " natural" ability to kill live
prey.  Never mind the fact that these ferrets have been trained to kill
and eat live prey, something no cat needs to be taught.  Never mind that
they prey is "delivered" to the ferret, it didn't catch it in the wild,
and never mind that same ferret would be consumed by the first hungry
hawk, owl, coyote or other wild animal it encounters while it's outside
looking for it's dinner.
 
Worse yet, these ads would not be countered by a 30 second spot in
support of ferret legalization because we don't have the money to buy the
spot let alone hire an ad agency to film it.  So instead of misleading
the legislature and media, anti-ferret organizations would now spread
their lies to the public arena, In addition, should the initiative
qualify but not pass, no doubt opponents would claim that California
voters don't support legalization, when in reality California voters
were either apathetic, because they mistakenly didn' t believe the
issue affected them directly (rogue agencies affect us all), or they
were misled by a well-funded ferret media campaign.  The question of
re-classifying the ferret correctly as domesticated and legalizing it is
simply a right and is not up to the majority of California's voters.
 
The only issue here, and it's one we must not forget, is that a state
agency has overstepped its clear boundaries (wildlife) by misclassifying
the domesticated ferret as wild and banning it.  Our State Constitution
protects private property which is described as including all
domesticated pets.  And that clearly includes the domesticated ferret.
Neither the state, nor the majority of voters should be able to take
that right away.
 
Jeannie Carley
Californians for Ferret  Legalization
www.ferretnews.org
[Posted in FML issue 4653]