Five Dollar Ferret Friday

The Countdown Begins

And now we're officially in countdown mode.

October 2 is the big day — our hearing in Sacramento Superior Court.

To back up a little (and this could be a very long story), in March 2025 we filed Petition 2025-003 with the California Fish and Game Commission asking for a regulatory change that would remove domestic ferrets from California's prohibited species list.

We put an enormous amount of work into that petition. We researched the previous rejections. We tried to answer every objection that had been raised over the years.

And then something happened that surprised us.

At the time, I thought that meant exactly what it sounded like — they were actually going to consider it.

But looking back, I believe that turned out to be a ruse.

The Commission voted 5-0, without any real discussion, to accept our petition for further consideration.

More than a year later, there is still no final decision.

And now the State argues that the act of accepting it for “further consideration” may itself have satisfied the Commission's obligation under California's Administrative Procedure Act.

A citizen petitions the government. The government accepts the petition for further consideration. And then, according to the State's argument, it may be able to leave it there without ever reaching a final decision.

In other words, the very vote that looked like progress is now being used to argue that they didn't have to give us a final answer.

That's why I call it a ruse.

So we sued.

October 2 is the hearing on the State's attempt to have our case dismissed at the pleading stage.

We are not asking the judge to legalize ferrets. We are asking for the opportunity to make our case that the Fish and Game Commission cannot simply leave Petition 2025-003 hanging indefinitely.

I'll go into more detail in Sunday's CLIFFNotes.

For now, we're counting down to October 2.

And, as always, thank you for supporting us.

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