"At first, all that can be seen of Subira, a 2 1/2-year-old lioness, are
her amber eyes and a tuft of golden hair. Peering out from behind a
shed at Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary, 300 km north of Toronto, the
big cat stands completely still, her head tilted and her gaze set on two
people walking towards her pen. When the couple gets about 10 m
away, Subira springs forward, closing the gap in huge bounds.
Stopped by the wall of her cage, she paces back and forth, curiously
sizing up the newcomers. When she recognizes her keeper, she
turns kitten-like, languidly rubbing her back and side against the
cage's steel meshing.

Such a cute image. Such a sordid story. Subira means "endurance"
in Swahili, and the big cat has needed that quality in her initially
miserable life. She was dumped into the exotic pet trade as a month-
old cub -- likely, authorities say, from an overstocked zoo. She was
purchased at an auction in Alberta by a 17-year-old Vancouver girl,
who soon realized she could not care for the growing lion and just
locked it in a garage. She eventually sold Subira to two Penticton,
B.C., men, but they, too, found lion ownership taxing. They couldn't
find another buyer, however, and considered having the lion put down
before Aspen Valley agreed to take the cat in.

When Subira arrived at the sanctuary, she was severely
malnourished -- at nine months of age, she weighed only 25 lb., the
average size of a two-month-old cub. As well, the pads on her feet
were cut, her nose was badly scratched and blood oozed from two
large wounds on her forehead. She was in such a pathetic state that
sanctuary founder Audrey Tournay felt compelled to take care of the
lion even though her facility usually only rehabilitates animals native
to Ontario. "I have seen many tragedies because of the wildlife
trade," Tournay told Maclean's, "but I never get used to it."

A lion as a pet? It might sound outrageous, but there are few
restrictions on ownership of wildlife, so the trade flourishes legally
through classified advertisements in newspapers or trade magazines,
at auctions and on the Internet. The majority of those exotic animals
are imported birds and lizards that are sold by local shops to good
homes. But more rare -- and dangerous -- imports are streaming into
Canada, so the folks next door might someday acquire a wild cat, or
a venomous snake or a rare monkey. That doesn't necessarily pose a
problem if the animals are housed in enclosures that protect public
safety, and if their owners are capable of caring for them. But too
often, the animals suffer at the hands of ignorant or abusive owners.
Lucky ones such as Subira are rescued and rehabilitated, but others
end up dying prematurely from living in deplorable conditions, being
killed for their body parts or sold to shooting ranches."

....

"Officers say far more escapes their notice, and last year,
Environment Canada asked the federal Treasury Board to boost its
wildlife staff to 165. The request was denied. "It's ludicrous," says
Gary Colgan, Ontario chief of Environment Canada's wildlife
enforcement division in Guelph, Ont. "Right now, we are not even
scratching the surface. We just don't have the resources."

And so the trade thrives. It is sometimes easier to buy poisonous
reptiles, primates and wild cats than it is to buy some pedigreed dogs
or cats. There are Web sites that list exotic-animal associations, chat
groups and forthcoming wildlife auctions in the United States and
Canada. In last November's issue of Animal Finders Guide, an
American trade magazine, there were advertisements offering silver
foxes for $150 each, tiger cubs and coyote pups for $450 each, a pair
of Himalayan bears were listed at $3,750 each and giant zebras were
going for $6,750.

Even protected animals are easy to acquire. When a Maclean's
reporter, posing as a buyer, asked a Newfoundland-based dealer
over the Internet last month about purchasing a Canadian lynx, the
dealer claimed he had access to 190 suppliers, 23 of them in
Canada, and as many as 25,000 cats. He was willing to sell one for
as little as $300, even though the trade in wild Canadian lynx is
regulated under CITES. Collectors are not surprised. Matthew Todd
Paproski, a film producer in Maple Ridge who keeps cougars for use
in his TV work, doubts that legislation can regulate the pet trade. "It
will just create a black market," Paproski says. "The animals will
continue to be sold."

Zoos have often been suppliers to the trade. They turn over older
animals, or excess animals from breeding programs, to brokers who
then sell to stores, auctions and even hunting ranches in Canada and
the United States. As part of being accredited by the Canadian
Association of Zoos and Aquariums, larger zoos are not supposed to
sell to dealers who are known suppliers of the pet trade. Yet animals
from esteemed operations still end up in the pet trade. "None of this
is illegal, which makes it pretty damn hard to control," says Calvin
White, chief executive officer of the Toronto Zoo, which has sold
thousands of mammals, birds and reptiles. "We can do all the things
we can to control where our animals go, but that's a small piece of
the whole puzzle."