Big Cat Public Safety Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASE. Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1256, I call up the bill (H.R. 263) to amend the Lacey Act Amendments of 1981 to clarify provisions enacted by the Captive Wildlife Safety Act, to further the conservation of certain wildlife species, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

The Clerk read the title of the bill.

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Mr. CASE. 263.

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Mr. CASE.

Mr. Speaker, the question that this bill addresses is whether the private, unregistered ownership and exploitation of big cats, meaning lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, cougars, and hybrids of them should continue considering significant and real animal welfare, public safety, and law enforcement safety concerns.

H.R. 263, the Big Cat Public Safety Act says no, and would end the ownership of big cats as private pets and prohibit exhibitors from allowing public contact with big cats, including cubs.

This bill is a culmination of over a decade of bipartisan effort. The Big Cat Public Safety Act, in one form or another, has been introduced by, cosponsored by, and generally supported by Republicans and Democrats alike for well over a decade. Since the 112th Congress, Big Cats have garnered 933 bipartisan cosponsors. It was initially introduced by three different Republicans over a number of Congresses, as well as the current Democratic sponsor.

We have continued to refine the bill in the decade since its first introduction. We passed it by suspension last Congress, and I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support it again now.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act is endorsed not only by numerous environmental, animal welfare, and other organizations, but by countless law enforcement agencies and associations, including the National Sheriffs' Association, the Fraternal Order of Police, State- specific sheriffs' associations, and individual law enforcement officers.

We need to look no further than the compelling testimony from Sheriff Matt Lutz before our Natural Resources Committee to understand the broad concerns with the status quo.

In 2011, specifically, more than 50 exotic animals, including 38 lions, tigers, and cougars were released into the public from a private residence in Zanesville, Ohio, shutting down a highway and terrifying the neighbors.

Sheriff Lutz led the law enforcement response to the crisis. He testified at our hearing this year that his department didn't have any inventory of how many animals there were, they barely even knew that they were there to start with, and his officers weren't trained, obviously, to deal with big cats and other exotic animals released into a public setting en masse.

Incredibly, no one was killed or seriously injured in Zanesville that day, but as Sheriff Lutz testified: ``The outcome could have been much worse if any single condition had been just slightly different, and it could be far worse the next time.''

Precisely because private ownership is unregulated and largely unknown, we don't know how many big cats are currently kept in private ownership in the U.S., but estimates are as high as 20,000.

Privately owned big cats are often purchased or bred as cubs for photo ops, and as they grow larger, they are sold into the exotic pet trade or on the black market for wildlife parts. Adult big cats in private ownership typically live in inhumane conditions that threaten public safety.

Since 1990, around 300 dangerous incidents involving big cats have resulted in human injuries, mauling, and death. In many cases, the animals are shot and killed, as first responders are not equipped for these situations.

In 2003, Congress unanimously passed the Captive Wildlife Safety Act, which amended the Lacey Act to prohibit importing, exporting, buying, selling, transporting, receiving, or acquiring big cats across States and the U.S. border.

Though State laws vary, there is no Federal policy regarding the private possession or use of big cats, and one is critically needed.

This bill narrowly focuses on privately owned animals. It includes exemptions for exhibitors with U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, Class C licenses, and current owners are grandfathered in as long as they register with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and abide by listed regulations.

H.R. 263 will protect first responders and the public, as well as the animals themselves.

In addition to public safety concerns, the exotic cat trade fuels other criminal behavior that we in Congress should not be supporting.

As just one example, the TV series ``Tiger King'' showed us that there is a dark and dangerous side to keeping lions, tigers, and other big cats in captivity. In fact, Joe Exotic from that series is in jail for violating the Lacey Act and the Endangered Species Act.

Now, some opponents of this bill argue that we need to make changes to the bill to help small zoos stay in business. This bill would not affect small zoos. The reality is that most zoos, whether they are big or small, already have policies in place that reflect the Big Cat Public Safety Act standards. They are not going to be asked to do anything that they are not doing already. They don't allow public contact or cub petting, and they already keep cats at a safe distance away from the public. There are only a small few who still allow it, and they shouldn't.

Now, we may hear claims from my colleague on the other side this is a USDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture issue, not a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issue. The fact is that the USDA does not regulate private ownership of animals like big cats.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has long been responsible for regulating big cats' interstate transfer and commerce under the Lacey Act and has the authority to regulate the possession and breeding of endangered species, including big cats.

While the USDA provides basic requirements for preventing cruelty to exhibited animals, the Fish and Wildlife Service is the one that must provide stringent standards to ensure that threatened and endangered species are managed to actively promote conservation, regardless of whether the animals are exhibited to the public.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act merely strengthens and expands an already existing framework under the Lacey Act. It is a commonsense, and, again, uniquely bipartisan solution to address public safety and animal abuse concerns.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a July 26, 2022, letter from the Congressional Budget Office. Congressional Budget Office, U.S. Congress, Washington, DC, July 26, 2022. Hon. Raul M. Grijalva, Chairman, Committee on Natural Resources, House of Representatives, Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Chairman: The Congressional Budget Office has prepared the enclosed cost estimate for H.R. 263, the Big Cat Public Safety Act.

If you wish further details on this estimate, we will be pleased to provide them. The CBO staff contact is Lilia Ledezma. Sincerely, Phillip L. Swagel.

Enclosure. H.R. 263, Big Cat Public Safety Act--July 22, 2022 [By fiscal year, millions of dollars] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2022 2022-2027 2022-2032 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Direct Spending (Outlays)........... 0 * * Revenues............................ 0 * * Increase or Decrease (-) in the 0 * * Deficit............................ Spending Subject to Appropriation * 3 ** (Outlays).......................... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ * = between -$500,000 and $500,000. ** = not estimated.

Statutory pay-as-you-go procedures apply? Yes.

Increases on-budget deficits in any of the four consecutive 10-year periods beginning in 2033? No.

Mandate Effects:

Contains intergovernmental mandate? Yes, Under Threshold.

Contains private-sector mandate? Yes, Under Threshold.

Current law prohibits the import, export, purchase, sale, transport, or acquisition of big cats, such as lions and tigers, across state lines or the national border. H.R. 263 would generally prohibit the breeding and possession of those animals, although wildlife sanctuaries, veterinarians, colleges and universities, zoos, exhibitions, and other entities that meet certain requirements would be exempt. In addition, people who already own such animals would be permitted to keep them if they register with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).

For this estimate, CBO assumes that H.R. 263 will be enacted late in fiscal year 2022. The bill would direct USFWS to issue regulations to implement the prohibition on breeding and possession. In addition, CBO expects that under the bill, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) could revise existing regulations on the licensing of entities that possess, exhibit, and breed big cats. Based on the costs of similar tasks, we estimate that developing those regulations would cost $1 million over the 2022-2023 period.

Many states already prohibit ownership of the affected species and CBO expects that people who currently own such animals would register with USFWS. Thus, violations under the bill would probably occur infrequently. On that basis, CBO estimates that USFWS would incur costs of less than $500,000 annually after 2023 to maintain the registry and conduct enforcement. In total, we estimate that implementing H.R. 263 would cost about $3 million over the 2022-2027 period; such spending would be subject to the availability of appropriated funds.

Under H.R. 263, violators would be subject to criminal and civil penalties, which are recorded in the budget as revenues; some of those penalties could be spent without further appropriation. Thus, enacting the bill would increase revenues and direct spending, but CBO estimates that those increases would be insignificant over the 2022-2032 period because we expect the number of violations would be small.

Because H.R. 263 would either prohibit the possession and breeding of big cats or require owners, exhibitors, and breeders to take actions that would exempt them from the prohibitions, the bill contains intergovernmental and private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA).

Although CBO cannot estimate the cost to comply with some of the bill's mandates, we expect the aggregate cost of the mandates, which would include both lost income and additional expenses to comply with the bill's requirements, would not exceed the annual threshold established in UMRA for intergovernmental and private-sector mandates ($92 million and $184 million respectively, in 2022, adjusted annually for inflation).

The bill would establish different requirements for entities licensed by USDA to possess, exhibit, and breed big cats; for wildlife sanctuaries; and for all other owners to be eligible for an exemption from the prohibitions. Approximately 340 facilities, both public and private, are licensed by USDA to possess, exhibit, and breed big cats.

To qualify for an exemption from the bill's prohibitions, exhibitors would be required to:

Prohibit public contact, with limited exceptions, with the big cats; and

Maintain a 15-foot gap between the public and the animals or erect a permanent barrier.

Approximately 30 exhibitors, including public zoos, allow physical contact with big cats through seasonal encounters with the animals, and about 150 mostly privately-owned facilities host or participate in special fundraising events that allow some form of encounter with the animals.

CBO expects that prohibiting contact with the cats (or keeping the 15-foot gap) would decrease the financial success of these events. Using information provided by conservation groups and industry sources, CBO estimates that the cost of prohibiting or limiting these activities, in the form of foregone income, would be about $80 million each year.

CBO has no data about the physical characteristics of exhibition settings or the ability of licensed exhibitors who wish to continue public exposure to the big cats to meet the new setback and barrier requirements. Thus, CBO cannot estimate the cost to comply with the exemption.

H.R. 263 would prohibit wildlife sanctuaries from transporting and displaying their big cats off site. CBO has no data on the number of sanctuaries that transport and display big cats, or the income stemming from that activity, and thus cannot estimate the cost of this prohibition.

The bill would require all other entities that possess big cats born before enactment to register the animals with USFWS if they want to be exempted from the bill's prohibitions. CBO cannot precisely estimate the cost of this mandate because regulations implementing the bill, including the cost to register the animals, have not been developed and the number of animals that would need to be registered is unknown. But based on information from animal welfare organizations, CBO expects the aggregate costs to be small.

Finally, to be eligible for the exemption, those owners also would be prohibited from breeding or selling their cats. Approximately 200 cubs are traded or sold each year at value of roughly $8,000 per animal, according to industry sources; many of those cubs are born in facilities that would be unable to continue breeding big cats. CBO estimates the cost of the breeding prohibition would be less than $1.6 million per year.

The CBO staff contacts for this estimate are Lilia Ledezma (for federal costs) and Fiona Forrester (for mandates). The estimate was reviewed by H. Samuel Papenfuss, Deputy Director of Budget Analysis.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, to my colleague's initial comments as to energy and the economy, nobody denies the critical importance of those issues, and, yes, of course, we all should be working collectively on those particular issues.

But by that measure, frankly, I would have wished that more of my colleagues on the other side would have voted for the bill immediately prior to this, which is a major issue and initiative to solve our supply chains and to take care of our national defense in terms of our chips. Also, by the measure that he outlines, we should not have addressed other critical issues in our country--for example, gun violence, women's rights, and civil rights. Of course, we should have done that.

The fact of the matter is that this Congress must and can address the many challenges of our country, and, yes, those challenges include, for this particular hour, the danger posed to our public and our law enforcement communities by unregulated big cats.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, to the comments of my colleague and friend from California, he says that this situation of private possession of big cats is already covered by current law. That is incorrect. They are not regulated under Federal law. The private possession is not regulated, nor is the private utilization and exploitation covered by current law.

He complains that this would set up a duplicative environment. Neither USDA nor the Fish and Wildlife Service is regulating in this area right now.

So, it is a question, if one accepts the premise of which way you go in terms of who is best to regulate it, it is not going to duplicate anything that either of them does, but it will complement more accurately what the Fish and Wildlife Service is responsible for, which is, number one, enforcement of the Lacey Act, which this is a natural extension of, in which we focus on the trade and endangered species and the impact of that trade not only on the public safety but on the survival of those species around the world.

Number one, the Fish and Wildlife Service does, in fact, deal with endangered species. In fact, it is our primary agency for doing so. So this is a judgment that the Fish and Wildlife Service is the appropriate agency as opposed to the USDA which has a different direction that it takes.

Mr. Speaker, in response to my friend and colleague from Georgia, I simply want to read a list of some of the endorsers of this particular legislation.

These are all members of law enforcement: The National Sheriffs' Association, the Fraternal Order of Police, the Sheriffs' Association of Texas, the Maine Sheriffs' Association, the West Virginia Sheriffs' Association, the Arkansas Sheriffs' Association, the Kansas Sheriffs' Association, the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association, the Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association of Ohio, the Vermont Sheriffs' Association, and the Iowa State Sheriffs' Association.

I have gotten to four lines of a whole bunch of other endorsements from law enforcement.

Clearly, they regard this as one of the areas that we should address for this country out of the many challenges that we face. So I do think it is appropriate that we devote just a little bit of time to what is concerning them.

Castor).

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Mr. CASE. Mr. Speaker, first of all, to the ranking member's comments, this is an informed judgment about which of two existing Federal agencies is more appropriate to manage and administer what, I believe, if I hear the ranking member correctly, is our common goal, our common goal of ending the status quo as to the private possession and exploitation of big cats.

So this is a judgment that we disagree on. I have articulated our reasons why Fish and Wildlife is the better one. He has his view of USDA. It is a policy call for us to make. But we are not disagreeing with the overall goal, I don't believe.

His amendment, by the way, not only--his proposed amendment not only proposed to put it in USDA, but also to essentially preempt the preemption of Federal law. So, in other words, there is a jumble of State laws out there, ranging from good, solid State laws, to no State laws; and that creates a real complicated and very confusing puzzle for all kinds of people, again, including law enforcement.

So you cannot apply a Federal standard across the country with one sentence, and then, in the next sentence say, oh, by the way, any State can do anything it wants. That doesn't make any sense at all.

So either we go in with the Federal standard, or we don't go there at all. Our judgment under this law is that we need to go there with a Federal standard.

As to my colleague's comments on priorities, I would, again, refer to my earlier comments. Those are critical priorities that we are all trying to address.

Certainly, I haven't checked the roll call vote on the bill that we just passed, CHIPS, but I hope, if they are truly interested and focused on inflation, on energy, on self-sufficiency in our country, then I would hope that I saw a ``yes'' vote for them on one of the most major pieces of legislation that we will be passing and the President will be signing shortly to end our supply chain reliance on places like China.

My colleague also knows that we have coming up a major wildfire bill to address that challenge that we all agree is a critical challenge for our country, and I certainly hope that he will view that bill favorably as well, if, in fact, we all have that shared goal.

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Mr. CASE. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time. I am prepared to close.

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Mr. CASE. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

First of all, I do want to thank my colleague, the ranking member of the full committee. He is a very good ranking member and a very good person to work with on many challenges on our Natural Resources Committee.

I appreciate his comments at the outset of this debate which, I believe, reflected an agreement as to the problem and as to the goal. We may be sitting here debating some of the implementation, but in this Congress, if we can agree on the problem and the goal, that is a step forward, and I appreciate at least that we have that common agreement.

Yes, we do have disagreements in terms of the exact way to approach this; specifically, which Federal agency should actually have the con on this. We have outlined our arguments here and elsewhere, and we have a disagreement, and that is part of the democratic process. We believe we have the better view of that, given the Fish and Wildlife Service's focus.

I do want to take issue with his comment that it took 2 days to debate this bill in the Natural Resources Committee. Actually, the debate having to do with this particular issue in the Natural Resources Committee was far less than 2 days. In fact, I didn't add it up. It probably amounted to 2 hours of those 2 days. The rest of it was really debating other issues in the context of this bill.

So this is not a particularly complicated problem to grasp from the law enforcement, from public safety, from an animal welfare perspective, and it is not a particularly difficult problem to identify very concise options and to make a decision on those. Those things were vetted in the Natural Resources Committee and are being vetted on the floor here. But to say that this took 2 days, in all due respect, is not accurate.

I do want to comment briefly on the comment having to do with State laws are already handling this. Yes, of course, this is always an issue that we have in determining whether, in the context of our work here, we should have the Federal Government apply standards or leave it to the States.

In this particular case, we have the worst of all worlds. We have differing State laws in terms of the private ownership and exploitation of big cats; and we also have both Federal and State laws that both preempt and leave it to the States.

But I would submit that the Captive Wildlife Safety Act, which is where we started on this almost 20 years ago, a Federal law that said that we were going to, as a country, state that you can no longer import these big cats from their homes; thus, decimating their populations where they came from, and encouraging a trade that has led them to the brink of extinction in most cases. We said that that is a Federal matter, and that is what we are trying to follow.

This is only an extension of that particular act. So I think it is a particularly worthwhile area for us to develop Federal standards and end a lot of doubt among the States and among the Federal Government and the States collectively and get on with the goal of protecting our people, protecting our animals, and protecting our law enforcement.

I urge adoption of this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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