For eighty years, a law has banned the ownership of ferrets in California. Currently California and Hawaii are the only two states where ferrets remain illegal. Some reports indicate that despite the ban, there may be more ferrets in California than any other states.

Ferret owners have to remain underground, fearful that any day their ferrets can be taken away from them. These otherwise law-abiding citizens have been fighting for at least twenty years to change the law but their cause continues to fall on deaf ears.

In 2004, Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed a ferret amnesty bill, stating that he wanted an Environmental Impact Report completed first. No other pet has required such high standards. The California Fish and Game Commission is the only agency able to complete the report.

Unwilling to do so, the organization LegalizeFerrets.org paid to have an EIR produced. The report found that pet ferrets are not a threat to wildlife and agriculture. In the other 48 states where they are legal there has not been one report of a ferret colony, despite the Commission's fears that escaped ferrets will breed to out-of-control numbers.

Ferret owners of California simply want to own their pets legally. Such a simple request has been met with overly high resistance for many years. The time has come for California's new administration to allow legal ferret ownership.