SUFFOLK CLOSEUP Bill on Restricting Use of Exotic Animals in "Traveling

It’s a bipartisan initiative on the Suffolk County Legislature to deal with an unusual issue for the county’s governing body—“A Local Law to Restrict the Use of Exotic Animals in Traveling Performances,” it’s titled. The measure has been on the legislative table for seven months. One of its co-sponsors, Jason Richberg, said last week that his hope is that it will pass “by the end of the summer.”

Richberg, a West Babylon Democrat and former chief of staff and also clerk of the legislature, says “we’re working on the right language—making sure that all the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed.”

The Republican co-sponsor of the bill is Trish Bergin of East Islip, a reporter and anchor for News 12 Long Island, elected to the Islip Town Board on which she served for 12 years and then elected to the Suffolk Legislature. She says she is especially concerned about such animals brought to birthday parties. “It is important that children attending birthday parties are kept out of harm's way,” she said. “These encounters with exotic animals that have large claws and large teeth, and may also carry diseases, pose a hazard to small children."

The measure begins by declaring that “this legislature hereby finds and determines that for profit traveling performances, shows or zoos that involve exotic, wild and/or non- domesticated animals are detrimental to animal welfare due to the adverse effect of severe confinement, lack of free exercise, physical coercion and the restriction of natural behaviors.”

It adds “this legislature further finds and determines that exotic, wild and/ or non-domesticated animals pose an additional risk to public safety because such animals have wild instincts and needs and have demonstrated unpredictability.”

Further, these “traveling performances increase the possibility of escaping exotic, wild and/or nondomesticated animals which can wreak havoc, seriously harm workers and the public.” And, to justify the Suffolk Legislature approving the measure, it says that “county government has broad powers to enact legislation relating to the health, safety and welfare of citizens.”

At one of the public hearings on the bill, John DiLeonardo, president of Humane Long Island, a wildlife rehabilitator and a Riverhead resident, testified: “My organization has long opposed the abuse of wild and exotic animals and traveling acts” and has been involved in “convincing Suffolk County venues to stop allowing exhibitors to”—as an example— strapping “toothless monkeys to the backs of dogs.”

Moreover, said DiLeonardo, with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum &