You might as well keep domestic cats as pets, be it an alley cat, or the more pricey imported breeds. But never keep a wild cat as pet at home, an official of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) warned on Thursday.
In an interview, Assistant Secretary Ricardo Calderon said they are now digging into old records to check whether the DENR, or any of its Regional Offices, has approved the importation of North American serval cats.
“Right now, the burden of proof is on the alleged owner. If he fail to show proper documentation for these wild animals, he is into trouble,” said Calderon, referring to businessman Don Michael Perez at Filinvest East Homes in Antipolo City.
This came after the surprise discovery of two of these rare breed kept as pets at a gated subdivision in Antipolo City last week. The serval cats, according to sources at the DENR, were being used as attraction at Perez’s coffee shop in Quezon City.
“Allegedly, the coffee shop was closed down and the cats were brought to Antipolo,” Calderon said. The official said he himself was surprised of the discovery of not just one, but two serval cats, in Philippine soil.
“If these have no import permit coming from the DENR-Biodiversity Management Bureau, or Regional Offices, then it must have been smuggled into the country,” Calderon said.
“We are conducting further investigation into this because serval cats are threatened species and they are not supposed to be kept as pets,” Calderon, the concurrent director of the DENR-BMB, said.
On Wednesday, a joint operation conducted by the Provincial Environment and Natural Resource Office (Penro) of Rizal and the DENR-BMB, seized four exotic pets, including the two serval cats.
Acting on a tip-off, a team led by the DENR-BMB’s Task Force Philippine Operations Group on Ivory and Illegal Wildlife Trade, or Task Force POGI, Rizal Penro Isidro Mercado and the local governments of Antipolo and Cainta, inspected Perez’s house and found the exotic pets—two serval cats (Leptailurus serval), one Ducorp’s cockatoo (Cacatua ducorpsii), and one Blue-and-gold macaw (Ara ararauna).
Perez failed to show the necessary permits to justify his possession of the wild animals.
DENR Undersecretary for Solid Waste Management and Local Government Units Concerns and spokesman Benny D. Antiporda, who personally received the seized animals during a simple turnover rites, commended the members of Task Force Pogi and Rizal Penro led by Mercado for carrying out the operation despite the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in Metro Manila and nearby provinces to contain the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).
“This just goes to show how serious and determined the DENR is in fighting illegal wildlife trafficking and trade that even during the ECQ, where there’s mobility restrictions, we continue and are always ready to respond to wildlife crimes and any other crimes against the environment,” Antiporda said in a news release.