There is nothing the President could do, anyway, about ferret legality
in California. The way the powers are distributed banning any domestic
species or any private animal ownership -- that is not of an officially
recognized service animal or bans of an animal which is considered
horribly unsafe -- is a state issue on which the federal government
does not have any say at all: nada zip, zilch.

If Pat Wright created the petition to get publicity for a thoroughly
frustrating situation that affects so very many in California then it
succeeded, but the worrisome part is that publicity is about as
controllable as a wildfire. Bad publicity, some of which has happened
this time, too, has backfired on ferrets and ferret people in the past
so even with more people being used to ferrets I do worry about that
just from past experience, especially within the smaller locations like
some cities that still ban ferrets. Being realistic, though: publicity
that gets out of control and takes an ugly path is very possibly not
really as much of a concern in many locations as it used to be when
ferrets were less known. These days so many more people know some
ferrets and ferret people in their circles of friends and of family.
That helps hugely. On the other hand, within California itself, an
it being physically so large, I do not know what percentage of the
citizenry have ever known ferrets and ferret people since few would be
near areas with legal ferrets, so publicity that goes wrong maybe could
undermine efforts, which would be a sad result. That aspect worries me.
Six of one, half dozen of the other... It's a hard call.

In this post CA refers to California, not to Canada.

The history is that the CA F&G constantly raises the bar for ferret
activists. Each time one of their demands is met they have yet another.
They appear to have a strong identity fusion with their own fiction
about ferrets to the point where getting them more defensive has
historically backfired, but then again nothing has actually succeeded.

So, there are only two ways, after the decades of watching friends work
on this and helping sometimes with info help when needed in the past,
at times extensive amounts, that I can imagine that it will change.

The first is to have acceptance imposed on the F&G there.

With the way powers are split, though, the federal government has no
say on this score: none at all. Sorry, but that is the reality. So,
when signing the petition know that under law the President can not
change the legality situation; he has no way of doing so.

Any such change has to happen within California itself, and how much it
would need the California legislature involved or how much (and which
aspects) could be done just by governor's executive order will depend
on California's own Constitution, organization, and regulations.
*****For example, it might not be in the governor's powers to permit
ferrets but it may be in his powers to limit any legal action taken
against ferrets and ferret people to only the same situations in which
legal charges could be taken against cat or dog families such as
attacks. Reducing the threat posed by legal actions itself could
perhaps be useful both for immediate relief and for longer term
familiarity with ferrets among the state's citizens IF it is possible
under that state's own Constitution.*****

The second is to have the CA F&G become less emotionally invested in
banning ferrets. Not personally knowing the people who are the biggest
roadblocks the only way I can see to get to that point is to no longer
have people with strong emotional ties to the individuals who created
the barrier of lies in power at CA F&G. That may happen naturally over
time, or maybe could happen with a shake-up through the executive
branch.

Now, I do not live in CA so there are obviously going to be options,
regulations, power splits instate, or nuances of which I am totally
unaware.

Here is an illustration of one lie that I know about personally. At one
point the CA F&G ferret documents said that ferrets posed a risk for
endangered shorebirds in a NE coastal state and "credited" a F&G
biologist there. I personally contacted that biologist at that time to
aid people working on the legalization effort in California. Now, this
is not exact, but it true to the nature of what he said to me. He told
me that he recalled the conversation when they called him because it
was so weird. It went kind of like this:

CA Question (hereafter CA): "How many endangered shorebirds do you
lose to feral ferrets?"

Answer (hereafter A): "We have no feral ferrets in our state and no
reports of ever having had feral ferrets."

CA: "How many do you lose to escaped ferrets."

A: "We have no record of escaped ferrets ever killing any shorebirds."

CA: "Okay, how many shorebird nests do they attack."

A: "None, and they would not be able to do so because the colony would
probably scare them off or injure them."

CA: "Okay, but couldn't a ferret potentially do this sort of damage?"

A: "Well, if a nest was isolated or abandoned, or if a bird was too
compromised then possibly, but otherwise I can not imagine it."

CA: "Okay, so it could happen."

Like I said, those are not the exact words he said to me so long ago
but it is the drift of what he said, and he was horrified and angry
that the CA F&G actually attached his name to a statement that ferrets
posed a risk to endangered shorebirds in his state, and had plans to
contact CA F&G about that.

Remember that there have been other embarrassments for CA F&G. Remember
the time it tried to tackle one problem in a lake but its "solution"
instead killed many of the indigenous lifeforms in the lake? Remember
when a CA F&G person shot a pet Maine Coon Cat to death saying that it
appeared to be a cougar? If a folder of enough bad choices, *backed by
hard data and a bibliography of published studies* on why they were bad
choices could be put together it might be useful IF utilized in a way
that does not make backfire by being insufficient, or creating the
wrong enemies, or undermining state citizen support among people who
do not have ferrets.

I know that there was a study done on possible impacts of ferret
legalization in CA, but I do not know the list of specific points on
which the CA F&G refused to accept the info in the study. *****Which
specific points were they? Putting them on the FML may ultimately be
useful. If people here can put together an annotated bibliography of
published studies that support the legalization aspect for those
specific questions it might help. Giving the bibliography from the
study on the FML might also help people branch outward in their own
searches.***** My own free time these days is limited due to regularly
having elder human family needs take over for us meaning that I work
for ferrets and ferret people in chunks only as time allows and that
is not at all predictable, so others would have to do this but looking
things up is not terribly difficult once a person actually gets started
and i know that a lot of people, both inside and outside California
care about the issue.

Sukie (not a vet) Ferrets make the world a game.

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.miamiferret.org/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html

"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)

A nation is as free as the least within it.

[Posted in FML 7675]