Inside the scandal of Britain's exotic animal trade

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28-03-2025

Last month wildlife expert Steve Nichols was offered eight panthers from four different private collectors. One call was from a divorcing couple who were subsequently disbanding their collection of exotic animals. Without the space or funds to take on the cats, Nichols was forced to say no thank you. He doesn't know where they have since ended up.
Such cold calls are not unusual in his line of work. Thirty years ago he founded Lincolnshire Wildlife Park after rescuing parrots from owners who no longer wanted to care for them. Today he is said to have the largest collection of African Grey parrots outside Africa. The park, which operates on a zoo licence, has always been more of a sanctuary, says Nichols; all of its animals come from individuals who can no longer look after their exotic pets. He currently has two lions, four tigers, a puma and a jaguar: the thousands of pounds needed to feed them human-grade food each year is raised through donations, tickets, annual passes and fundraisers.
His reputation for taking on unwanted exotic animals has brought him into contact with some of the shadier corners of pet ownership. It would seem sensible to presume that purchasing a big cat in the UK went out with Christian the lion and the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976. The story of the lion cub born in captivity, purchased from Harrods in 1969 by Australian John Rendall and his friend Anthony 'Ace' Bourke, and brought up in a Chelsea flat, is known to millions as a cavalier tale of a bygone era.
What is less well known is that 50 years on from the DWA Act being introduced to discourage the fashion for interesting pets, it is perfectly legal for private collectors to own a cat as big as a lion. All you need is the approval of your local council. 'I think people will be shocked that environmental health officers from the local council carry out Dangerous Wild Animal inspections. One day they're looking at a kebab shop, then next they're looking at someone who keeps cougars and lynx. It's the same person,' says Paul O'Donoghue, director of the Lynx UK Trust.
While the UK boasts some of the most rigorous zoo licensing in the world, it is a different case for private collectors. The British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA) defines a zoo as any organisation that keeps exotic animals, is open to the public for more than seven days a year, and demonstrates a commitment to conservation, education and research.
If you're not planning on displaying them then theoretically, anyone who wants to keep a wild cat – such as a bobcat, caracal, cheetah, jaguar, leopard, lion, lynx, ocelot, puma, serval or tiger – only needs a licence under the UK DWA Act. To secure a two-year Dangerous and Wild Animal licence from your local council, the accommodation must be inspected by a vet prior to a licence being issued or re-issued.
'The licences are issued by the relevant local authority who must ensure that applicants provide secure, suitable accommodation that offers adequate food, drink, bedding, exercise and protection from emergencies. It focuses mainly on health and safety – not on animal welfare,' says Dr Jo Judge, CEO of BIAZA. She says there is consensus among animal welfare organisations that the DWA is rarely adequately enforced, predominantly because local authorities are massively under-resourced. 'We support calls to improve the DWA licensing system,' says Judge.
Those in the field might be painfully aware of how underregulated exotic animals are in the UK, however it was the illegal release in January of four lynx that highlighted the issue of under-the-radar species to the general public.
Credit: RZSS
In this case, the lynx were quickly captured. Three females, all believed to be less than a year old, are now thriving at Edinburgh Zoo; sadly, a fourth lynx died. Whether it was an irresponsible rewilding release or a deliberate abandonment of animals that had become too much of a burden is unknown.
According to reports at the time there were some clues to their origins, including the discovery of straw bedding with porcupine quills in it, which suggests they came from a collection with other species. In the view of experts, they were certainly too domesticated to have survived in the wild.
Derek Gow, a UK-based reintroduction expert widely credited with bringing back the beaver to our rivers, has three lynx at his conservation centre in Devon. These, he says, would be unsuitable for a guerilla rewilding release, due to being raised in captivity and the two males having been castrated. 'I keep them for education purposes really,' says Gow. In his opinion the lynx release was the result of frustration at the pace of rewilding, rather than abandonment of exotic pets. 'It's not a very clever idea, but it's the sign of a broken process.'
Conservation, rewilding, status, passion for the animals; there is no single reason why someone might be motivated to build a private collection. Often in Nichols' experience it's as simple as: they want one, and they can. He also speculates whether social media is in part responsible for popularising exotic pets.
'They are a relative fashion accessory in lots of cases. Imagine being in a nightclub and telling the person you're chatting up that you've got a tiger in your back garden? It's harder to get a left-hand-drive car than it is a tiger,' he deadpans.
Down the line, the cost of care or failing to meet standards might mean he gets a phone call asking for help. Nichols has been offered everything from a tiger in a cage from the back of a transit van, to a 6ft caiman that was kept in a drug dealer's bathtub. Often it is a local council that will get in touch with him to ask for assistance. 'I've been out with councils where I've seen medium-sized cats like cheetahs and leopards, which weigh about 50kg, in cages smaller than what you'd put dogs in, and the councils have given them licences for years.'
It is a cold morning when we meet at his 30-acre site on the Lincolnshire fens. The enclosures of colourful parrots and furry primates look lost against the large, grey sky. Nichols has just received a phone call from a local council in Essex; a private collector has died, leaving a panther (the name for a black leopard or jaguar) in his back garden. Whether they had a DWA licence is unclear. Nichols said he was unable to help. He has no idea who the council called next.
Already he has his own expensive rescues to care for and, as a charity, finances are finite. Still, no expense is spared for his charges; 17-year-old white lion brothers, Pascha and Uganda.
The pair lie languidly on a heated bed of fresh straw. Uganda is the alpha, although you wouldn't guess it from his tatty mane, the result of years of testosterone blockers. Pascha greets Nichols with a stand-up roar straight into his face; it is something he was trained to do in his years working in entertainment in Europe.
The boys, however, were British born and bred, before they were sold abroad. White lions, although extremely rare, are not on the critically endangered list, and so can be traded. It was the original breeder who called Nichols six years ago. The lions were now old and expensive ('Sedating a lion costs £15,000 very easily,' says Nichols) and the circus he had sold them to years ago no longer wanted them, and returned them to him. Having retired from the trade and with no one able to care for them in their dotage, Uganda and Pascha faced being put to sleep. Nichols took them in. 'He said they had 12 months left. We've now had them for five and a half years. They definitely can't go on for much longer,' says Nichols. Their health and happiness is closely monitored. Uganda might look a bit worse for wear, but, says Nichols, 'He's just always been less good-looking than his brother.'
It's staggering that the trade in white lions is legal. And there are also canny ways of circumventing the sale of other animals on the critically endangered list as well. It is illegal to sell a tiger, but not illegal to pay for the overheads of a tiger cub while you're waiting for it to grow up. 'So a breeder will charge them £35,000 for care. Technically they've not bought the tiger, but they've paid for its upbringing.'
None of the 130 zoos and aquariums that are members of BIAZA sells big cats. 'Animals such as big cats are not bought or sold by responsible zoos, rather coordinated through international conservation breeding programmes.'But there is no central database of the number of zoos in the UK. Previously it has been estimated that there are around 400 zoo licence holders in England and Wales. Many of these will not be calling themselves zoos, or be recognised as such by the public. So it is less clear what breeding practices occur at those 'zoos' that are not part of BIAZA's membership, and whether animals are traded.
Despite the shadowy dealings that account for the origins of many of the big cats in private collections, Nichols is keen to point out that not all private collectors are by definition, bad. 'There are some brilliant private collectors. And just because it's in a private collection doesn't mean it's going to be a bad environment,' he says. 'Many of them are very wealthy and can afford the best. But there are a lot out there that aren't as good.'
By many accounts Terrence Moore loved his big cats like they were his own children. As the director of the Cat Survival Trust in Welwyn, Moore had a reputation as an eccentric who gained media attention for his work. He worked alongside zoos to look after critically endangered species of cat, including the Amur leopard, considered by some to be the most endangered cat in the world.Last May he was sentenced to a five-year ban from keeping animals and charged with causing unnecessary suffering to an animal. A jury found he presided over a menagerie of neglect and mismanagement.
The tale didn't stop there. In November, while waiting for the cats to be rehomed, Moore, 78, dubbed 'Britain's Tiger King' by tabloids, was rushed to hospital after being mauled by a puma. One of his legs had to be amputated. Finally, in January, the cats were rehomed by Hertfordshire Zoo and The Big Cat Sanctuary in Kent. Cameron Whitnall, project lead across both organisations, as well as a wildlife TV presenter, recalls the terrible living conditions he encountered at the Cat Survival Trust. 'They hadn't been fed properly, there was faeces that had been there for months, water dishes that were green. The cats had terrible health issues, and were not vaccinated.'
Part of what was so shocking about Moore's case was that he had received all the required local authority vet checks over the years. He was considered a good owner and the issues only came to light as a result of volunteers' whistleblowing. 'It was one of the most dangerous sites we've ever worked on,' says Whitnall. 'We were lucky that nothing worse happened than Terrence being attacked and having to have his leg amputated.'
In Whitnall's opinion an urgent conversation needs to be opened up about how private collectors like Moore receive their licences. 'A DWA is simpler to obtain than a zoo licence. It's not that complex or stringent and unfortunately animals will fall into the wrong hands. Some people might have the best intentions but they're executing those intentions in the wrong way. It's a really dark world and it needs fixing quickly.'
The scale of the issue in the UK is unclear. Figures for the total number of DWA licences for big cats are not in the public domain currently and are held by individual councils around the country. Nichols personally believes the market isn't huge. 'We're not talking hundreds of people. I would say about 30 to 45 licences, and about 200 big cats. But one is probably too many, if it's not done correctly.'
Whitnall is less restrained in his appraisal of the situation: 'There are so many like Terrence out there.'
Boxing Day, 2017, and wet weather near the village of Great Treverran, south-east Cornwall, causes a particularly exotic pet to go walkabout. For six days a leopard from the private collection of Todd Dalton was on the loose. By the time it was finally trapped by a farmer it had killed one sheep and injured others that had to be put down due to their injuries. Villagers had no clue of the escape until after the leopard was captured a mile away from its enclosure.
Dalton was already a familiar figure in the world of big cats, coming to media attention in 2006 as the 'Leopard Man of Peckham' after securing a permit to breed leopards in his back garden. Until 2015 he ran the Rare Species Conservation Centre in Kent before moving to Cornwall, where he applied for a DWA licence.In the aftermath of the escape, Dalton apologised to the villagers of Great Treverran, and explained that the clouded leopard only escaped because of unforeseen flooding that liquified and washed out mud on the perimeter of the enclosure.
How often similar such escapes occur in private collections is unknown. The British Big Cats Society receives between 500 and 600 reports of big cats a year. While there has long been speculation about cats living wild in the UK, could such sightings be escaped ones?
I have reluctantly become one of the multitude of uneasy believers in wild big cats in the UK. Last year while driving along the A303 I saw what could only be described as a big cat, the colouring of a puma, slinking its way along the verge.
While Whitnall says such accounts are as provable as UFO sightings, there was an instance 15 years ago when he followed up reports of a lynx sighting and did indeed manage to find evidence of a lynx paw print. 'But overall sightings are hard to credit,' he says.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), a global non-profit organisation that works to improve the welfare of animals and people, is all too aware of the occasional stories about big cat sightings. They agree that the exotic pet trade is still a problem. 'It often happens that people realise that the cute cub they thought would be a nice pet is actually a wild animal and will display certain instincts and behaviours over time. Their care – in terms of food, enrichment and veterinary services – is expensive.
People are often unable or unwilling to invest that much money, so they feed the animal with unsuitable feed, will skip veterinary check-ups, and keep the animals in unsuitable living conditions. This seriously affects the health and well-being of the animal. When people find they can't cope any more, we hope that they will then contact a local wildlife rescue centre or sanctuary to hand over the animal, but they might try to sell it or indeed abandon it.'
The IFAW has just completed a project with Whitnall to rescue five lions from Ukraine. 'Everyone asks if they were from a zoo,' says Whitnall. 'No, they were from the illegal pet trade.'
One of the lions was being kept in a flat. Others on concrete floors. Whitnall is in no doubt that if the war had not happened it would never have been exposed. 'And they may have made their way to the UK.'
While some big cats certainly may be smuggled into this country, the majority are most likely the product of unscrupulous breeding and behind-doors sales within the UK. In Nichols' experience councils do not ask enough questions about the origins of the animals they issue licences for.
One thing is certain, the legislation needs refreshing. 'DWA needs improving. Everyone points the finger at people in Dubai with pet tigers, but it's happening on our doorstep and nobody has a clue,' says Whitnall. 'We're failing cats and animals because of it. Everyone in the industry recognises it, now we need to put our heads together and sort it out.'
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