Call for Permanent Emergency Closure of North Carolina’s Coyote and Fox Pens 

To supply the animals for North Carolina’s coyote and fox pens, wild canines are trapped, sold and transported to enclosures where they are kept for the specific purpose of being pursued by hunters’ hounds. These pens shamelessly engage in legalized dog fighting, which is unlawful across the U.S. in all its other forms. Pitting wild canines against domestic canines, the wild canines are given little to no escape options and are often literally shredded to death by the dogs sent in to pursue them. The foxes and coyotes brought in to the pens are often transported illegally, sold illegally and housed in abusive conditions until they are, literally, thrown to the dogs.  

The contact between the wild canines and domestic dogs and the wild canines and the people who operate and utilize the pens poses a serious public health and safety issue for humans and animals alike. (Wildlife Rehabbers are not even permitted to handle these animals due to the disease risk!) Some of the animals also escape the enclosures, posing various risks to humans, wildlife, farmed animals and companion animals everywhere these pens exist. The covid pandemic, born of caged animals in an Asian market, should have opened our eyes to the dangers of caging and penning wildlife. Climate change, habitat loss and new diseases, as well as new strains and mutations to known viruses and infections, have all compounded to create strains of viral, bacterial and fungal infections in wildlife and other animals that are more apt to spread amongst other species, including humans. As we speak, Avian Flu is mutating into mammals, canine distemper is wiping out North Carolina’s Spotted Skunk population, and researchers are finding more and more cases of covid spread in wildlife and between wildlife and humans. It is for these reasons that we must immediately, and permanently, close the coyote and fox pens in North Carolina. 

Most states have already outlawed penning, and for good reason. Approximately 106 of these pens still exist in North Carolina, most of them located in the eastern part of the state, where wildlife, and especially carnivores, are already threatened with diseases like parvo, distemper, coronavirus and rabies, as well as with the other factors mentioned above that are also negatively impacting their populations. North Carolina's legislators have been reluctant to close the pens. But at what cost? When paired with the violence and abuse inflicted in the pens, the capture and containment of wild animals, the illegal dog fighting and questionable acquisition and transportation of the animals involved, the potential for disease spread via these facilities to wildlife, farmed animals, companion animals and humans alike all warrant the immediate closure of all pens in North Carolina and a permanent ban on the establishment of any such businesses in the future.

We need your voice! Complete the form below, and once we receive 2500 signatures, the petition voicing your support for wildlife and your concerns about the dangers posed by the coyote and fox pens in North Carolina will be hand-delivered to Governor Cooper, every member of the NC General Assembly, and to the NC Department of Health and Human Services. Let's put an end to these dangerous and abusive facilities, once and for all. NC, WE'RE BETTER THAN THIS!