Exotic pet laws in Montana

12.6.2215(6)(j)

Indian python (including the Burmese python) – Python molurus;

Named in the parenthesis, so there is no argument about the split of Python molurus and Python bivittatus. The reticulated python, African rock python, amethystine python and green anaconda are prohibited alongside it.

Cities and counties here can prohibit what state law permits, so check your local ordinance too.

How this rule works: 12.6.2205 is the noncontrolled list, 12.6.2208 the controlled list, 12.6.2215 the prohibited list. The noncontrolled definition at 12.6.2201(8) expressly preserves county and city ordinances.

Checked against the published text on 4 August 2026.

§ 87-5-705(1)

A person may not import into the state, possess, or sell any exotic wildlife unless: (a) the importation, possession, or sale of the exotic wildlife is allowed by law or commission rule

No canid appears on the noncontrolled, controlled or prohibited list, so there is no rule allowing it. ARM 12.6.2225(4)(a) confirms the direction of travel: exotic wildlife may not be imported unless it has been classified.

Cities and counties here can prohibit what state law permits, so check your local ordinance too.

How this rule works: Montana runs a white list, which is unusual. § 87-5-705(1) says a person may not import, possess or sell any exotic wildlife unless it is allowed by law or commission rule, so an animal that appears on none of the three lists is not permitted rather than unregulated. § 87-5-706 is the statutory noncontrolled list and § 87-5-702 puts rodents, cats, dogs and Eurasian ferrets outside the scheme as domestic animals.

Checked against the published text on 4 August 2026.

12.6.2215(4)(q); 12.6.2201(7)

The following mammals are classified as prohibited species: ... (q) Southern flying squirrel - Glaucomys volans

Named outright, which makes Montana the only jurisdiction on this map to prohibit this animal by binomial. ARM 12.6.2201(7) defines a prohibited species as one that "may not be possessed, sold, purchased, exchanged, or transported in Montana, except as provided in 87-5-709, MCA, or this subchapter", and 87-5-709 is the exception for zoos, research and rehabilitation rather than for pets. The company it keeps on that list is telling: the Virginia opossum, the short-tailed opossum, the brush-tailed possum, nutria and the African soft fur rat, all animals Montana treats as escape and establishment risks rather than as dangerous ones. Montana has its own flying squirrel, the northern, and the prohibition is written for the southern species alone.

Cities and counties here can prohibit what state law permits, so check your local ordinance too.

How this rule works: 12.6.2205 is the noncontrolled list, 12.6.2208 the controlled list, 12.6.2215 the prohibited list. The noncontrolled definition at 12.6.2201(8) expressly preserves county and city ordinances.

Checked against the published text on 5 September 2026.

§ 87-5-705(1)

A person may not import into the state, possess, or sell any exotic wildlife unless: (a) the importation, possession, or sale of the exotic wildlife is allowed by law or commission rule

Montana defines wildlife to end with the phrase or other wild animal, which reaches an invertebrate, and it runs a white list rather than a black list. The statutory noncontrolled list has no myriapod, and the commission's rule at ARM 12.6.2205 clears two scorpions and one hermit crab and nothing else. Absence is the answer here, and the answer is no.

Cities and counties here can prohibit what state law permits, so check your local ordinance too.

How this rule works: Montana runs a white list, which is unusual. § 87-5-705(1) says a person may not import, possess or sell any exotic wildlife unless it is allowed by law or commission rule, so an animal that appears on none of the three lists is not permitted rather than unregulated. § 87-5-706 is the statutory noncontrolled list and § 87-5-702 puts rodents, cats, dogs and Eurasian ferrets outside the scheme as domestic animals.

Checked against the published text on 5 August 2026.

§ 87-5-705(1); § 87-5-702(12)(a)

A person may not import into the state, possess, or sell any exotic wildlife unless: (a) the importation, possession, or sale of the exotic wildlife is allowed by law or commission rule

Montana is a white list and an insect is inside it. § 87-5-702(12)(a) defines wildlife as "any wild mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian, fish, mollusk, crustacean, or other wild animal", and the catch-all reaches an arthropod; § 87-5-702(3) makes anything not native to Montana exotic wildlife; and § 87-5-705(1) then bars possessing it unless a law or commission rule allows it. Nothing does. The statutory noncontrolled list at § 87-5-706 runs birds, gallinaceous birds, fish, snakes, lizards, turtles, frogs, caecilians and salamanders and contains no invertebrate. ARM 12.6.2205 clears two scorpions and a hermit crab and no insect, ARM 12.6.2208 classifies one shrimp as controlled, and ARM 12.6.2215 prohibits a crayfish and three molluscs. So the cockroach falls where the tarantula and the giant millipede already sit on this map, banned by absence. Montana is the state where clearing the emperor scorpion by name and stopping there decides every other arthropod.

Cities and counties here can prohibit what state law permits, so check your local ordinance too.

How this rule works: Montana runs a white list, which is unusual. § 87-5-705(1) says a person may not import, possess or sell any exotic wildlife unless it is allowed by law or commission rule, so an animal that appears on none of the three lists is not permitted rather than unregulated. § 87-5-706 is the statutory noncontrolled list and § 87-5-702 puts rodents, cats, dogs and Eurasian ferrets outside the scheme as domestic animals.

Checked against the published text on 5 September 2026.

12.6.2215(6)(n)

Red-eared slider – Trachemys scripta elegans;

On Montana's prohibited species list, so it may not be possessed, sold, purchased, exchanged or transported in the state.

Cities and counties here can prohibit what state law permits, so check your local ordinance too.

How this rule works: Montana runs a white list, which is unusual. § 87-5-705(1) says a person may not import, possess or sell any exotic wildlife unless it is allowed by law or commission rule, so an animal that appears on none of the three lists is not permitted rather than unregulated. § 87-5-706 is the statutory noncontrolled list and § 87-5-702 puts rodents, cats, dogs and Eurasian ferrets outside the scheme as domestic animals.

Checked against the published text on 5 August 2026.

§ 87-5-705(1)

A person may not import into the state, possess, or sell any exotic wildlife unless: (a) the importation, possession, or sale of the exotic wildlife is allowed by law or commission rule

Not by name, but by omission. The arachnid entry at ARM 12.6.2205(3) clears two scorpions and no spiders, and under the white list an unclassified exotic species is not permitted. Montana is the one state where the emperor scorpion is expressly cleared and the tarantula is not.

Cities and counties here can prohibit what state law permits, so check your local ordinance too.

How this rule works: Montana runs a white list, which is unusual. § 87-5-705(1) says a person may not import, possess or sell any exotic wildlife unless it is allowed by law or commission rule, so an animal that appears on none of the three lists is not permitted rather than unregulated. § 87-5-706 is the statutory noncontrolled list and § 87-5-702 puts rodents, cats, dogs and Eurasian ferrets outside the scheme as domestic animals.

Checked against the published text on 4 August 2026.

§ 87-5-706(1)

all nonnative tropical and subtropical species of turtles with a carapace or shell length of more than 4 inches and not on the controlled or prohibited lists in the families: ... (v) Emydidae (pond turtles)

Box turtles are Emydidae, so the family is cleared, but every category on this list is gated on being tropical and subtropical, and both the eastern and the ornate box turtle are temperate North American animals. The qualifier looks deliberate, since a temperate species could survive a Montana release in a way a tropical one could not. Ask Fish, Wildlife and Parks before buying.

Cities and counties here can prohibit what state law permits, so check your local ordinance too.

How this rule works: Montana runs a white list, which is unusual. § 87-5-705(1) says a person may not import, possess or sell any exotic wildlife unless it is allowed by law or commission rule, so an animal that appears on none of the three lists is not permitted rather than unregulated. § 87-5-706 is the statutory noncontrolled list and § 87-5-702 puts rodents, cats, dogs and Eurasian ferrets outside the scheme as domestic animals.

Checked against the published text on 5 August 2026.

§ 87-5-702(2)

"Domestic animal" means an animal that, through long association with humans, has been bred to a degree that has resulted in genetic changes... The term includes livestock, as defined in 81-2-702, dogs, cats, rodents, Eurasian ferrets, and poultry.

The word rodents is written flatly into the domestic animal definition, which would put every rodent outside the exotic wildlife scheme. The substance of the definition is about animals bred into domestication, which a capybara plainly is not. Nothing classifies it either way.

Cities and counties here can prohibit what state law permits, so check your local ordinance too.

How this rule works: Montana runs a white list, which is unusual. § 87-5-705(1) says a person may not import, possess or sell any exotic wildlife unless it is allowed by law or commission rule, so an animal that appears on none of the three lists is not permitted rather than unregulated. § 87-5-706 is the statutory noncontrolled list and § 87-5-702 puts rodents, cats, dogs and Eurasian ferrets outside the scheme as domestic animals.

Checked against the published text on 4 August 2026.

§ 87-5-702(3)

"Exotic wildlife" means a wildlife species that is not native to Montana.

Both the black-tailed and white-tailed prairie dog are native, so the exotic wildlife white list does not apply, and Montana's only prairie dog rules are the translocation program at ARM 12.9.1001 through 12.9.1035, which governs moving whole colonies between wild sites under department approval and plague monitoring. Nothing there addresses keeping one as a pet in either direction.

Cities and counties here can prohibit what state law permits, so check your local ordinance too.

How this rule works: Montana runs a white list, which is unusual. § 87-5-705(1) says a person may not import, possess or sell any exotic wildlife unless it is allowed by law or commission rule, so an animal that appears on none of the three lists is not permitted rather than unregulated. § 87-5-706 is the statutory noncontrolled list and § 87-5-702 puts rodents, cats, dogs and Eurasian ferrets outside the scheme as domestic animals.

Checked against the published text on 5 August 2026.