Fish & Game proposes new wildlife ownership rules

If you want a bison in your backyard, that’s fine with New Hampshire Fish & Game – but, please, no alligators in the atrium.

Those are the high points of proposed rule changes by the overseers of state wildlife, part of the ongoing process of tweaking New Hampshire laws and rules about which animals can be owned or brought into the state.

The proposed rules, which will be the topic of a public hearing Dec. 16, are largely “housekeeping items, to bring things into alignment with what has been reality for two years now,” said Lt. Robert Bryant of Fish & Game.

For example, it has been illegal for New Hampshire residents to own alligators and crocodiles since a new law was passed in 2007. The proposed Fish & Game rule would merely add them to the long list of creatures that individuals cannot own or bring into the state.

People who owned one of these reptiles at the time were allowed to keep it with a special permit. Bryant says New Hampshire has 3 or 4 such “grandfathered-in” crocodilians , as the biological order including alligators and crocodiles is known. Under state law, if the reptiles die, they cannot be replaced.

Places with exhibitors licenses, such as wildlife centers, can own and import crocodilians – but can’t sell them, of course.

New Hampshire, like many places, has tightened the rules on owning and important plants and animals in recent years, often fueled by fear that they will escape into the wild and become an invasive species, driving out native flora and fauna.

Fear of invasive species isn’t a concern with crocodilians, which can’t survive our winters.

The concern with them is personal safety of people running into an alligator that has been released into the wild (although there are, so far as we know, no alligators living in the Nashua sewer system).

“People buy these when they’re small: ‘I got this cute little one-foot alligator,’” he said. “But when they get big, people just let them go.”

The situation with bison is roughly the opposite. It has been legal to own them for some time, but Fish & Game hasn’t removed them from its list of controlled wildlife species.

“We feel that bison are livestock at this point in time,” said Bryant. “Even though they exist in the wild out west, here they are raised for food basically – although there’s a few people who have them just as ornamental purposes.”

At the Healthy Buffalo in Chichester, which has sold bison meat to restaurants, stores and individuals since 1993, owner Jim Kersch said he knows of “a handful” of farms in New Hampshire that raise bison for meat, a number that has stayed relatively stable in recent years.

Kersch also occasionally hears of bison that have escaped or been released into the wild.

“I’ve got one customer that has seen two of them, up by Pittsburg,” he said.

It’s not clear whether they are of different genders, which would lead to the possibility of a semi-wild bison population in the North Country. Importing bison, as with any livestock, requires permission from the state Department of Agriculture, which is concerned about keeping out various diseases.

The state has a large number of rules about which animals and plants can be possessed in various circumstances.

For example, Fish & Game says that while bullfrogs can’t be brought into the state, dead ones from outside the state can be sold as food or for educational purposes as in “biosupply companies selling frozen specimens to schools for dissection.”

It is also illegal to put reptiles and amphibians from outside New Hampshire, including tadpoles, in outdoor water gardens or ponds because of concern that they’ll escape into the wild.

On the other hand, fans of the yak can rest easy.

Like llamas, pot bellied pigs and chinchillas – and bison – yaks are an uncontrolled species.