What pets are considered legal in Boise

For a long time, a staple relationship in most people’s lives is that of an animal. Mankind has fallen in love with the animal kingdom and most people just do not feel complete without a pet to take care of and be comforted by. This is not just limited to dogs and cats, though they are fantastic pets and lots of people consider them the ideal animal to bring home and into your family. If you can think of an animal, someone has if for a pet and makes it work. While mankind has been domesticating the dog, the wolf has been thriving as a wild animal, but people still keep them as pets and consider them incredible animal friends. If a dog, cat or other traditional domesticated animal is not going to satisfy your pet needs, that is fine, and even admirable, but you need to understand what is acceptable and what is not if you live in Boise and what a unique pet. While any animal might make a good pet, there are quite a few that are illegal to keep.

You might wonder why the state of Idaho and the city of Boise would care what animal you buy and keep, but there are several very good reasons your local government wants to regulate your interests. Some animals are not something a single owner can control, and it special circumstances they can threaten the environment at large if they get loose or start to interact with habitats outside your home. You are never allowed to own an invasive species. The risk of destroying the lives and behaviors of other animals in the area is too great.

Imagine you want to import a certain kind of ant to breed in an ant farm. This kind of ant does not exist where you live, which is why you want it in the first place. It is possible that, with or without your knowledge, some or all of the ants might escape from the closed habitat you have made for them and survive to thrive among the other species of ant around your home. But it does not stop there. Your pet ants and the local ants do not interact correctly, as your ants are special, and the local ants have no idea what they are or how to deal with them. As a consequence, your special ants have an unnatural advantage and they start to outperform the other ants, special ant colonies popping up and thriving where the natural ant colonies die and wither away. Suddenly, the only ants in the local ecosystem are the ones you introduced and the environment has been irreparably damaged, with more damage to come as the presence of these ants continues to impact every other plant and animal in the area. There are a lot of species that can have this kind of effect when they come into a foreign ecosystem. It is always possible that what you bring just dies when it enters the wild, but that is not necessarily the likely outcome.

The more common reason an animal is restricted from regular pet ownership is that it will be a nuisance to your neighbors. You may decide you want to raise chickens or maybe even rabbits, but the natural course of the lives of these animals means unhealthy and obnoxious byproducts are going to spread around your community. If you are raising chickens, you are probably going to want or need at least one rooster, and that little guy is going to be going off like an alarm every morning, and probably not the time of the morning that people actually want to wake up for. You might be able to stand it, but your neighbors may complain, and because the local government is experienced with dealing with this kind of thing, they are most likely going to side with your neighbor. Similarly, a lot of animals are really smelly, and while one rabbit is perfectly fine to own, if you have a lot of them or a lot of different kinds of animal it is going to smell and dirty up your home and the homes around you.

The other reasons you might not be allowed to keep an animal usually get more specific to the animal. You probably are not going to be able to own and raise any endangered animal unless you are a part of some effort to replenish that animal’s population and raising it at home is part of the process, but this is a very niche and unlikely situation. Certain animals are also just not possible to adequately take care of without very special equipment and care, and sometimes even that is not enough. Take for example, the great white shark. Even well-funded aquariums find it nearly impossible to keep great white sharks in captivity. Almost every shark that is captured and put in an artificial tank is dead in a matter of days, no matter how hard the aquarium works to keep it alive. The animal is just not meant live in captivity and needs miles and miles of open ocean to live properly. You probably are not considering a great white shark as a pet, but it still serves as an excellent example of an animal species that just cannot be kept by anyone. It is not right, and it is not legal.

There are other restrictions, and there are even exceptions to these rules. If you are considering a unique or exotic pet, make sure the Idaho government is going to be okay with it, otherwise, you are going to have a real problem on your hands.