Jacksonville, NC Animal Ordinances: Exotic Pets (2026)

Article IV of Chapter 4, adopted by Ordinance No. 84-01 on January 17, 1984, prohibits keeping or harboring any nondomestic animal that is dangerous or potentially dangerous to persons or property anywhere in the City of Jacksonville. The ban does not reach traveling zoos, petting zoos, circuses, or other traveling commercial exhibitions of limited duration, and it does not reach small native wildlife species the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission has specifically authorized someone to possess. Section 4-78 puts enforcement in the hands of the city's animal control officers, who must keep a current and accurate record of the names and addresses of every owner or keeper of a nondomestic animal in the city, drawn from the declarations Article IV requires, and who prosecute violations in the district court division of the General Court of Justice.

Anyone who already owned or kept a nondomestic animal when the article took effect in 1984 is grandfathered under Section 4-79, though that grandfathering never excuses an activity the Wildlife Resources Commission separately prohibits or restricts more severely. Day-to-day animal control services within Jacksonville, including impoundment of ordinary domestic animals, are actually administered by Onslow County under an interlocal ordinance the city council adopted in 1998, but Article IV's dangerous-nondomestic-animal ban remained the city's own law and was last amended in 2022. Camp Lejeune, the federal Marine Corps base bordering the city, falls outside this ordinance's reach because it is federal land, not city territory.