


Back to the Wildlife Act, where section 33 prohibits the private possession of wildlife without a permit or regulatory exemption. A permit can be issued under paragraph 2(j) of the Permit Regulation2 but I have no information on how that works in practice. The only regulatory exemption I’ve found for keeping wildlife in captivity is for Red-eared Sliders, the keeping of which is exempt from section 33.3 Wildlife can’t be imported, exported or trafficked in without a permit either.4 Penalties can include a fine of up to $100,000 or a year in prison for the first offence, but in practice it will never be anywhere near that high for someone keeping a pet garter snake.

Fine and good, but why are they being so heavy-handed, you ask? Garter snakes are plentiful and harmless, after all. But given what other species are being defined as wildlife (and therefore prohibited), my guess is that they’re trying to prevent people from bringing in non-native species that stand a chance of surviving in British Columbia. (Which is also more or less what Alberta law sets out to do.) They don’t want people snatching local garter snakes from the wild, but they also don’t want escaped Eastern Garter Snakes establishing themselves out there either.

People are getting confused because B.C. is trying to do both things at the same time: they expect laws about native wildlife and exotic wildlife to be separate. But other provinces do it this way as well.

Featured image: Photo of a Valley Garter Snake in Port Coquitlam, B.C. by Harold Wright. Creative Commons licence.


  1. BC Reg 168/90.
  2. BC Reg 253/2000.
  3. Wildlife Act General Regulation, BC Reg 340/82, s. 17.04.
  4. And you can’t get a permit for importing certain species, including true frogs, toads and various turtles and wall lizards: see schedule 1 of the Permit Regulation (BC Reg 253/2000).