Ferrets to be banned in NZ

i can't speak for new zealand but in a more general sense - ferrets might be considered more or less borderline exotic - and like all creatures not everyone is intimately familiar with have special needs not everyone is neccessarily either educationaly or otherwise equiped to deal with - however i've always thought the idea of outright bans a bit excissive - something more like a driver's licence test to keep a particular species of creature would make a lot more sense - there are a lot of more or less endangered species that i suspect would actualy bennifit from being allowed to be kept as pets - ferrets have somewhat filled this gap where other species have been bannd - personaly i'd love to be able to keep something like red pandas or one of the more exotic varieties of small cats - but i would also want to make sure i understood their special needs and was able to meet them too - it's part of a larger issue really that IS admittedly quit complex - but for any of a large number small relatively non-aggressive species this sort of outright ban seems an excessively simplistic approach ... ~;)

I don't know why ferret owners always seem to feel their desire to own a particular pet should trump environmental concerns. It's an odd sort of conceit most of them probably wouldn't tolerate from other people. (If I complained about not being able to own a 'pet hot rod' that violated car emissions requirements, would they stick up for me?)