They are too prone to stress and welfare problems when kept as pets. Available veterinary expertise specific to wildlife is limited. Seventy-nine percent of wildlife carers surveyed said wildlife should not be kept as pets. Most native species stress easily. Like pet cats and dogs, when the cute or novel pet becomes a problem, more stressful confinement, an attempt at rehoming, or abandonment is the likely outcome.
Shelters are full of unwanted domestic pets.
A moratorium on the breeding of wildlife for the pet trade and the commercial trade in pet wildlife is needed, not an expansion of the practice in other States. This should remain pending a thorough examination of the extent of welfare problems among pet wildlife, and independent assessment and public debate to gauge whether the problems can be adequately addressed. Realistically, we doubt they could. In Victoria, legislative change in 1992 enabled a total of 315 native birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals, including sugar gliders, possums and kangaroos, to be kept as pets, many of them by a public ignorant of the special needs of wildlife. Not only is there no appropriate effective welfare legislation, there is no Code of Practice specifically for native wildlife kept as pets.