New Brunswick promised to crack down on exotic pets in 1999

The New Brunswick government committed more than a decade ago to crack down on illegal exotic animals in the province, a promise that apparently wasn’t kept.

Department of Natural Resources officials said in 1999 they would get tough with the owners of animals that were banned in the province.

That followed an attack by a pet Siberian lynx on a 71-year-old woman in Clearview, north of Florenceville.

DNR officials said at the time it did not permit exotic animals to be owned as pets.

"We've always had, over a number of years, the request to have some of these animals, exotic wildlife, for pets," Rick Monroe, the head on enforcement at DNR, told CBC News in December 1999.

"And for public safety, we have always refused to issue any permits to do such a thing."

Monroe also told a newspaper at the time that "I think we have to get tougher, yes."

DNR officials said earlier this month that the African rock python that killed Noah Barthe, 6, and his brother Connor, 4, is banned in New Brunswick. They also said Reptile Ocean, the zoo and pet store where the snake was housed, did not have a zoo licence from the provincial government.

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Premier David Alward promised on Friday a fresh look at how the rules work and whether there were what he called "gaps" that could be fixed to "reduce risk in the future."

"We certainly have a responsibility to know and understand the regulations," he said, "and are they working or not?"

The 1999 attack involved a Siberian lynx, which DNR officials said at the time was not allowed in the province.

It attacked Elva Kennedy as she carried a birthday cake from her property to her next-door neighbour, who owned the lynx.

The feline was chained to a doghouse, but it lunged so forcefully that it broke the chain and pounced on her, gouging her skull and arm with its teeth.

Kennedy managed to fight off the lynx by grabbing its collar and pinning it to the ground with her knees until a neighbour came to help.

At the time, officials with the Department of Natural Resources said the lynx’s owner, Stephen Boyle, did not have a special permit that would have exempted him from the ban on owning exotic wildlife.

Kennedy needed 18 stitches after the attack. She’s now 85 years old and lives in the same house in Clearview.

She also filed a lawsuit against Stephen Boyle. He argued at the time that she should have known to take the long way around the property to his house, avoiding the lynx. But he eventually settled the lawsuit for a small payment.

Although DNR officials at the time of the attack suggested he would be fined under the Fish and Wildlife Act, he was never charged or fined.

In brief conversations with CBC News last week, Kennedy and her daughter Joan Pelletier both questioned why the African rock python was in an apartment above Reptile Ocean in Campbellton.

They both declined an interview about the 1999 attack, saying they didn’t want to relive the incident.

Alward’s comments on Friday were the first public comment by any provincial government official about the Campbellton incident.

DNR officials have refused to discuss how the python was able to remain where it was in apparent violation of the ban.

CBC News tried to contact Boyle and spoke briefly to his wife, but he did not respond to our request for comment.