Are Savannah Monitors Legal? Louisiana Is the Surprise

Most American states that regulate monitor lizards are worried about the big ones. Water monitors, crocodile monitors, Nile monitors: animals that reach six or seven feet, take large prey, and in Florida's case have established breeding populations in the wild.

The savannah monitor is not that animal. It tops out around three to four feet, most of which is tail, and it is the monitor people are usually steered toward first. That is why the eleven places that do restrict it are worth reading individually, because in most of them the savannah is caught by a rule aimed somewhere else and in one it is caught deliberately.

Where It Is Restricted

Louisiana Names It, and That Is Unusual

Louisiana is the one state that decided about this species in particular. LAC 76:XV.101 lists prohibited nonnative reptiles, and the entry reads:

iv. Savannah Monitor (Varanus exanthematicus);

That is a deliberate act. Louisiana's list is short and mostly aimed at animals with an establishment record in the Gulf states, and the savannah sits there alongside the tegu and the green iguana. It is one of only two monitors Louisiana names.

Compare that to the way most states handle monitors. Washington restricts "Family varanidae, only water monitors and crocodile monitors," which is two species out of roughly eighty. Ohio's dangerous wild animal list contains exactly one lizard, the Komodo dragon. California does not restrict Varanidae at all. In each case the savannah is untouched, not because anyone cleared it but because the rule was aimed past it.

Arkansas Comes Within One Name

Arkansas produces the closest call in the matrix, and it is worth knowing about if you are buying there.

Arkansas publishes an unrestricted captive wildlife list. Species on it are exempt from the state's possession, breeder and importation permit codes. Its monitor entry clears ten species by name:

Monitor Lizards (Genus Varanus: V. acanthurus, V. albigularis, V. glauerti, V. jobiensis, V. kingorum, V. macraei, V. pilbarensis, V. prasinus, V. salvator, V. timorensis)

Varanus exanthematicus is not among them. But Varanus albigularis, the white-throated monitor, is, and for decades the white-throat was treated as a subspecies of the savannah monitor. They were split into separate species and Arkansas cleared one and not the other.

The practical effect is that a savannah monitor in Arkansas sits inside the permit codes while its close relative, a considerably larger animal, does not. Whether that was intentional is not something the document says.

The Ones That Catch It by Structure

Three of the eleven restrictions never mention the savannah monitor's biology at all.

New York City bans the whole family, and then names this species in the parenthetical for good measure: "any member of the family Varanidae, including the white throated monitor, Bosc's or African savannah monitor." Bosc's monitor is another name for the same animal, so the city has it covered twice.

The District of Columbia bans it without ever considering lizards. Its permitted list runs to seven categories, and the reptile category is "non-venomous snakes, fish, and turtles." Lizards are simply absent, so every lizard in the District is barred by omission, from a savannah monitor down to a leopard gecko.

Hawaii names it on Part A of the restricted animal list, which is headed "FOR RESEARCH AND EXHIBITION." Appearing there is not a permit route for a pet keeper, it is a ban with an institutional carve-out.

Rhode Island keeps a real door open. Its rule requires an exotic animal possession permit for "the Gila Monster, Beaded Lizard (Heloderatidae), and all Monitors (Varanidae)," which is a permit rather than a prohibition. So do Arkansas, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Delaware, each for a different structural reason, and Minnesota allows one sourced from a permitted breeder. Of the twelve, five are outright bans and seven are paperwork.

West Virginia Regulates the Shipment, Not the Species

West Virginia never named the savannah monitor, and the rule that reaches it is not on any species list. W. Va. Code § 20-2-13 says that "no person shall transport into or have in his possession within this state any live wildlife or viable eggs thereof from without the state, except as authorized by an importation permit issued by the director." Wildlife is defined in § 20-1-2 as wild birds, wild animals, game and fur-bearing animals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, mollusks and crustaceans, and the reptile and amphibian clause carries no nativity qualifier and no captive-bred exception. A savannah monitor shipped in from a breeder is therefore live wildlife from without the state.

The argument that an out-of-state animal sits outside the chapter is closed before it can be made: § 20-2-4(b) says wildlife lawfully taken outside of this state is subject to the same laws and rules as wildlife taken within it. What is missing is the other half. No rule in Title 58 implements § 20-2-13 outside aquaculture, the Division of Natural Resources publishes no application for an importation permit, and the only penalty the section spells out is written for coyotes. The requirement is clear on the page and invisible in practice, which is the honest thing to tell someone crossing the state line with a tank in the car. Louisiana restricts this species because of what it is, and West Virginia because of where it came from.

The Bigger Risk Is Not Legal

Forty of the 52 jurisdictions place no restriction on this animal, so for most readers the legal answer is a straightforward yes.

That makes the savannah monitor unusual among the animals in this matrix, because the hard part of keeping one is not permission. It is that a low price and a beginner reputation attach to a carnivorous lizard that reaches three or four feet, needs a custom-built enclosure most people underestimate, and is very commonly overfed. Fatty liver disease kills more pet savannah monitors young than anything else, and it is entirely a husbandry outcome.

The legal question here is easy in a way the animal is not.

The savannah monitor encyclopedia profile has the natural history, and the exotic pet legal hub shows why the Nile monitor, a monitor treated very differently, sits on so many more prohibited lists than this one.

To see this at a glance, our interactive map of savannah monitor laws shades every state that restricts one, and clicking a state gives you the rule it comes from.

Sources & Further Reading