St. Peters, MO Animal Ordinances: Exotic Pets (2026)

City Code Section 205.030 splits wild and exotic animal keeping into two flat prohibitions and one licensed exception. Subsection A bars any person or business from keeping a wild or exotic animal for display or exhibition, for a fee or free, unless the operation is a zoological park, performing animal exhibition or circus. Subsection B goes further for private ownership: 'No person shall keep or permit to be kept any wild or exotic animal as a pet,' with no registration route available at all. Section 205.010 defines EXOTIC ANIMAL to include non-human primates, alligators, large carnivores, deadly or poisonous animals, wolves, coyotes, or any wolf or coyote hybrid, and defines WILD ANIMAL as any indigenous species not normally domesticated in the United States regardless of how tame it has become.

The only legal path to keep such animals at all in St. Peters, Missouri is Subsection C's registration for a business selling them: a wild animal registration from the Health Manager costs one thousand dollars ($1,000.00) for the first animal and twenty-five dollars ($25.00) for each additional one, runs on a January 1 to December 31 calendar with renewal due thirty days before expiration, and requires filing a copy of the registration with the St. Peters Police Department. Registration also requires meeting the current cage-size standards of the American Association of Zoological Parks and the Federal Animal Welfare Act, keeping cages at least one hundred feet from any property line, carrying at least one million dollars ($1,000,000.00) in liability insurance or a bond, passing a field inspection for sanitary and humane conditions, and holding a Missouri Wildlife Breeder or Hobby permit plus any required federal wildlife permits.