With each and every Chinese New Year welcoming a particular animal in the Chinese zodiac calendar there is bound to be extensive exploitation by pet shops or theme parks and private zoos on the reigning animal of the year.
    
Last year theme parks and private zoos were quick to make a fast buck with their tigers for photographic sessions only to cause an outcry by animal welfare groups.

This year being the Year of the Rabbit, individually owned rabbit farms and pet shops have been quick to cash in on the furry creatures.
 
Foreign breeds are being imported in huge numbers by pet stores and farms to meet the demands of their clientele. Web retailers have also jumped on the bunny bandwagon, posting rabbits by regular mail to online customers regardless of the deaths of rabbits on arrival, having suffocated or frozen to death in their cardboard confines. But deaths have not deterred a proliferation of orders.  

To make matters worse pet shops often provide wrong or false information to the unkowning first-time owners that rabbits are cute and easy to maintain, plus the added myth that rabbits are supposed to be lucky for those born under the rabbit zodiac sign. New Year celebrators fail to realise that rabbits have frail bones and require a significant amount of attention and veterinary care.          

Such surging demand has caught Sahabat Alam Malaysia’s (SAM) attention and we are extremely concerned over the inevitable outcome once the novelty wears off and the cost and trouble of keeping the animals kick in.

They are either abandoned, neglected or stuffed into a cage for life. When released into the wild there will be a problem with controlling their population especially if they are a species alien to our habitat.

In spite of their reputation as prolific breeders, a far more ominous warning from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) stressed that nearly one in four rabbits, hares and pikas from the order known as Lagomorphs are classified as threatened.

An IUCN report states that several Asian species are under serious siege and elsewhere they have become victims of over-hunting, habitat loss, invasive feral animals and viral diseases. Declines have been rapid and dramatic which has been catastrophic to their natural predators like eagles and lynxes.

In view of the widespread abuse and neglect to animals in this country, SAM believes that customers and buyers should not follow the egregious trend of purchasing rabbits or any forthcoming zodiac animal in the ensuing years ahead.

People should definitely not be picking up a pet because of cuteness or luck. The purchase of pets for the wrong reasons can have detrimental effects on the animal and there is no better time to help them than by refusing to support the pet trade that causes suffering to so many animals.

A stuffed toy animal or figurines is a more humane option.

 
The writer is president of Sahabat Alam Malaysia.