Ontario Man Ordered to Remove Pet Tigers from Property

Summary:

ONTARIO, CANADA – A south­ern Ontario man has been ordered to remove two tigers from a res­id­en­tial prop­erty after local offi­cials refused to grant an exemp­tion to the town’s exotic animal bylaw. Zohaib Masood has been keep­ing the two sub-adult tigers on a former mush­room farm in Wain­fleet, Ont., in the Niagara Region since last fall. The town­ship’s coun­cil voted this week to deny his request to keep the anim­als, and Masood has been told the tigers must be relo­cated by Monday.

Mayor Brian Grant said the decision was based on pub­lic safety con­cerns. “The obvi­ous fear is what hap­pens if these anim­als escape,” Grant said Fri­day. “He’s in a res­id­en­tial area. We’re talk­ing homes every­where, so that’s obvi­ously our No. 1 con­cern.” Grant said the town­ship does not have the resources to deal with a situ­ation involving escaped tigers. Masood said the anim­als were kept behind mul­tiple lay­ers of fen­cing designed to pre­vent them from get­ting out. Some of the bar­ri­ers reach 16 feet high, while oth­ers are 13 feet high with an inward-lean­ing sec­tion and steel rein­force­ment driven into the ground.

The two tigers, named Jag­ger and Aspen, are hybrids of Bengal and Siberian tigers. Jag­ger weighs about 350 pounds and Aspen about 250 pounds, accord­ing to Masood. Both anim­als are about a year old and could even­tu­ally grow to 500 or 600 pounds. Masood said he res­cued the anim­als from own­ers in Ontario who obtained them as pets but later could not man­age them. Masood said he is now work­ing to find another loc­a­tion for the anim­als but had not final­ized a des­tin­a­tion as of Sat­urday.

Town offi­cials said the bylaw ban­ning tigers and other dan­ger­ous anim­als was adop­ted in 2018 after pre­vi­ous incid­ents involving escaped anim­als at a facil­ity known as Ring­tail Ranch and Res­cue.

The situ­ation is also tied to a sep­ar­ate legal dis­pute involving other anim­als kept at the prop­erty. A white tiger cub named Atlas and a spot­ted hyena named Mar­ilyn were seized from the site last Novem­ber by Ontario Animal Wel­fare Ser­vices. Author­it­ies said the anim­als were not receiv­ing proper care. The anim­als are cur­rently being held at Safari Niagara Zoolo­gical Park while the case pro­ceeds. Masood said he plans to chal­lenge the decision in pro­vin­cial court.

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