The Niabi Zoo is offering a haven to exotic animals in need. By working with the Wildlife Confiscation Network, they’re able to rehome trafficked and confiscated animals.
Zoo Director Lee Jackson says smuggling animals is a problem. “We have taken in over 200 animals in the time that we’ve been involved with the confiscation network and have had to turn down requests for help for some animals just because we didn’t have a place to put them.”
The Niabi Zoo can serve as a temporary shelter, but it has welcomed animals into their permanent care. The zoo has taken Ibera tortoises, cane toads, Anthony’s poison dart frogs, red-handed tamarins, Central American red-backed squirrel monkeys, fennec foxes, and blue and gold macaws into their permanent care.
Jackson explains how an exotic animal can enter the U.S. “A tourist will pick up a cute little turtle or something while they’re on vacation, and they don’t know that there are regulations involved in bringing them into the country, and they’re found when they come home.”
He says that animals will also be shipped for the pet trade, or are misidentified on their paperwork.
The Niabi Zoo joined the network about a year and a half ago and is the first zoo in Illinois to be accepted into the network.
The Wildlife Confiscation Network is a national nonprofit led by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to provide trafficked animals with proper care.