Okay, forum lawyer here.
Let’s briefly explain the Animal Health and Plant Inspection Service (APHIS) regulations around importing ruminants to the United States.
First of all, camels and cervids are basically impossible to import. Full stop. I’ll explain more once I’ve done an explanation for cattle. Antelope and other members of the bovid family are more possible, but require some willingness from European partners to cooperate.
The USDA maintains a list of countries you can import live bovines from. For this, the country must be free of all relevant diseases. Currently in Africa there are three (3) countries in the “allowed” category: Eritrea, Djibouti, and Gabon. If you can find a zoo or other facility in these countries to import from, great. If you want to import wild animals from these countries, great. You’ll still need a permit, health inspections in the country of origin, a two month quarantine in the country of origin, and a one month quarantine in an APHIS facility at your own expense. The USDA also allows some facilities (I think San Diego is on the list) to act as quarantine sites for unconventional bovids.
There are other countries that are free of disease that you cannot import from. These are listed by APHIS as “not currently allowed.” It basically just means that the United States hasn’t sat down with that country’s agricultural agency to set a list of forms and procedures for health certificates and matching import / export permits. Theoretically if you had lobbyists or other significant political leverage in the U.S. and the country of origin you could get the bureaucrats to sit down and get things worked out for you. The AZA does have a lobbyist. From what I can tell they have somewhat poor results on this front.
If you don’t have the leverage to get APHIS and a foreign government to negotiate and you aren’t importing straight from one of those three countries, you really should just check if a zoo in one of the European “allowed” countries has the animal because it’s simpler than the next step. If so, try to work things out. This is usually what the AZA does for ruminant imports as far as I can tell.
Now, let’s say your species isn’t found in a European zoo (or Gabon, Djibouti, Eritrea, etc). You should probably give up. But if you’re chasing that white whale to your grave, there are options.
APHIS doesn’t allow you to just ship at animal from South Africa to Spain and then import straight to the United States. You would need an animal born in Spain to import. But, you could potentially convince a Spanish zoo or private facility to import an animal from an African zoo or closed facility. They’re a bit more lenient on imports from zoos and the like. You will still need that facility inspected by someone the European Union deems acceptable to verify that it is free of disease, then do some quarantines at your own expense. Then wait for breeding to happen. Then import the second generation.
Okay, here’s why camels and cervids are impossible:
The only ”allowed” countries for camelids are Canada and Australia. Add New Zealand for cervids. So far as I can tell, none of these countries let you import from countries that aren’t also… Australia, New Zealand, Canada, or the United States. AZA has tried to import water deer and vicuña and couldn’t do it with their resources.
So, springbok from South Africa? No. Springbok from Spain? Sure. Southern vicuña from anywhere? In your dreams.
Usual caveat: this was intended for educational purposes, I am not taking clients at this time, take this information with a pile of salt as this field is outside my area of expertise and I am not licensed to practice law in the European Union.
EDIT: Okay, got a little deeper into the regs and I think there might be a little more leeway for non-cattle ruminants displayed for zoological purposes than I believed. However, this does require directly contacting APHIS and I’m not doing that for a hypothetical.
EDIT 2: This is the danger of writing outside my area of expertise.
The above post is solid advice for domestic ruminants. If you want to display swimming dromedaries from India, it’s going to be hard to do that.
But, there are different procedures for the import of wild ruminants to zoos in the Code of Federal Regulations that aren’t clearly explained by APHIS themselves.
The simplest version of the explanation is this: get a permit, sixty day quarantine in the country of origin, thirty day in New York, a year of monitoring in the zoo.
Basically every stage of the process is at APHIS’s discretion, from approval of your quarantine facilities to the veterinarians you’re using to the biosecurity of your zoo to the disposition of the animal’s manure. This makes it harder to outline what, specifically, is required. If you’re going to actually do this, for real, I recommend consulting with people who have experience in the field.
