The main problems that are causing the increase seen right now kind of all boil down to a few things. First, there’s more being bred as they’ve become more widely available and the prices have come down. That has been compounded with the fact that there are a lot of breeders who don’t see issues with breeding bug-eyed Palmettos.
If you look at the currently listed bug-eyed animals, not a single one is tagged “pet only”. Small breeders, big breeders, none seem to tag them as pets, and some don’t even list that the animal is bug-eyed in the description despite the photo showing the defect to varying degrees. This can be extra problematic when they discount the animal, as someone sees it as a good deal and then buys it to use as breeding stock. Then you’ve got breeders who don’t even make sure both eyes are clearly visible (you can have one normal, one large eye) in Palmetto listings, meaning you might not know the animal has an issue until you receive it.
All of this and the fact that things have only gotten worse as time has gone on is why I’d like to see Palmettos with a note on them. There is going to be no change until people are actually informed. There’s every chance that no matter what we do, there’s no way to ensure all Palmettos in the future will have normal eyes, but I’d love to see at least some effort put towards trying to lessen the number of these animals produced.