I agree with Marla!!! This is a slippery slope! I am all for conversation and protecting our environment and native species environments. But I don’t believe that this should come at the expense of our rights as keepers. When we start allowing laws like this to be made without letting our voice as a community to be heard it’s only a matter of time before they make more and more restrictive laws. Remember a lot of groups don’t want us to keep reptiles as pets at all. One thing we always needed to be United on is our rights to keep our animals.
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There’s always been some type of legislation that was proposed to ban the trade and ownership for different species for longer than I and many of us have been alive.
What’s been going on in Florida, NY, and South Carolina is a combination of things. That many have already commented on.
NY’s idea simply won’t pass…too many economic ramifications for the pet trade as a whole. The issues in South Carolina and Florida stem from the lack of utilizing herpetologists as resources, the simple fact that uneducated pet owners, and collectors - who never had the facilities properly care for their animals - started releasing their pets into habitats that can sustain them.
The only real solution is to support USARK, educate your communities, and sign which ever petitions you see that truly support our cause.
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Apologies in advance, this turned into a huge reply. I can’t sleep.
I could see the sending of live vertebrates through the MAIL being banned for animal welfare reasons. I’ve had enough inanimate objects sent through the mail (even highly insured and through overnight services) that arrived broken due to rough handling or were incorrectly delivered (like a frozen rodent delivery left in a neighbours garden) or were sent back to the postal depot for a few days.
The US practice of mailing animals has always freaked me out, and I’ve seen so many reviews/writeups of things going spectacularly wrong. From animals not even leaving the dispatch office for more than a day, boxed animals being delivered to sunny porches or driveways, to a greybanded kingsnake in a box labelled “live animals” being spun by the corners as the delivery driver walked up to the recipients front door… Wtf!?
If this ban goes ahead, it will be a prime opportunity to start up a small, specialist transport business.
In the UK live vertebrates are transported by specialist couriers who are registered with DEFRA (Department of Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs) and insured. It costs £45-55, as a bit of a ‘flat rate’ for up to 10-15 animals as the business’ main costs are man hours and fuel, if they’re coming to you anyway, it doesn’t make much difference to them whether it’s 1 snake or 12. I’ve used two companies;
One is an overnight service from a company that primarily transports racing pigeons. You book it online (up to I think Monday evening) for collection on Wednesday and delivery on Thursday. The sender and reciever both get texts with collection/delivery time slots. The sender boxes up the reptile in a polybox with a heat pack. The animals are transported overnight, but may be in transit from early Wednesday to late on Thursday as the absolute max. If the driver is struggling to find your house, they phone you. I have received fancy pigeons, baby variable kingsnakes and Cape house snakes, wild caught sub adult Sunbeam snakes and kukri snakes through these guys and all were alive and healthy on arrival.
One is a specialist in reptiles. They do one or two ‘runs’ a month. They optimise routes between senders and recievers and they have a central hub. The ‘transit’ time varies and can be several days, but the reptiles are placed in heated environments and offered water during the night/day stays whilst they wait to go out on their delivery run. The sender and reciever get time slots. My favourite bit about this company is: when the van is on its way to you, you get a text message to a tracking website that shows you where the van is in real time. You don’t have to keep looking out of the window, you can get on with things. I was able to watch the van getting closer from an hour away, and when he was round the corner I went out to meet him so he didn’t have to try to find my house number in the dark. I was able to look in the van: there is a stack of melamine vivariums in the back, running off pink Evo thermostats and with polycarbonate doors instead of glass. All reptiles are in individual shipping tubs, labelled up with “1 of 2, 2 of 2, recipients name and postcode”. I received two baby false water cobras double het for lavender and European hypo through these guys, warm and active, and I will be using this service going forwards. Photo because they’re cute!
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I live in Tampa. The reason so many snakes are in the wild was due to a hurricane that wiped out a breeding facility.
People arent spending hundreds on animals just to release them in the wild
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Some people probably have released some. Hurricanes were the main issue though. That is why venomous snakes have to be kept in hurricane proof buildings and enclosures. I wouldn’t be surprised if they push that for all non-native exotics in the future in Florida.
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Its kinda crazy I can drive about 2 hours south and find burmese python just laying across a trail
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This isn’t nearly as big as the first link but I figured I’d throw this in here:
https://www.change.org/p/new-york-state-legislature-new-york-state-govt-attempting-to-ban-reptile-shipping-along-with-others
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As someone who lived in Florida for years I can tell you no building is truly hurricane proof.
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That is true, but when a hurricane is expected the venomous keepers also have to lock their animals up in actual lockboxes. It is to make sure they have no chance of escape. The building has to be to the standards set in place by the state and all that. I believe they also might require microchips in the snakes.
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Any responsible venomous keeper is already going to have them in locked enclosures. We shouldn’t need laws for this. And irresponsible keepers won’t have them with or without a law. We should not be advocating for the government telling us how to keep our animals.
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I misunderstand what I mean when I say lockbox. I don’t mean the locked enclosure they are already kept in, I mean one that is a box that is placed in the enclosure in the event of a hurricane. They are essentially a large version of a lockbox you would find in a bank and are to make sure the snake can’t escape if the building is destroyed.
The laws and regulations are there to reduce the amount of irresponsible keepers, and to help keep things like cobras from getting released into an already vulnerable environment. Not every law put in place in inherently bad, just like ones that keep people from collecting and selling endangered species in basically every state. Laws that could help the environment in the long run, despite them potentially being annoying and telling us what to do, isn’t the worst thing in the world. Growing up and watching countries known for their effective stance on conservation like Australia and New Zealand might be why I feel differently (and more open to laws) than the older generations that have been doing things the same for longer. That and many countries outside the U.S. have stricter laws on matters pertaining to animals.
As @kukrikeeper has stated, if this ban of mailing animals does go through (unlikely all things considered) then there is a loophole. A specialist service specifically for shipping animals could pretty quickly get into business in NY. I feel like there might already be specialist shippers, but they are all over shadowed by Fedex since that is the cheapest option. It was nice to hear the way the U.K. ships their animals, even if such a system never makes it here. As someone that has had a DOA because the seller didn’t package their animal correctly, a system like that would be pretty nice. But again, a broad law like this being passed seems unlikely. I also don’t think outright banning is the best course of action for the record, and lighter regulations are honestly better. Banning things just leads to unsafe practices for the sake of sneaking one passed the government.
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At the expense of responsible keepers. So we trample on there rights because of others irresponsibility.
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In the eyes of the government, “a rotten apple spoils the bunch”, as the saying goes unfortunately. Even with the laws in place, there are still people that keep them illegally and irresponsibly. But with the laws in place, if they are caught at least they are punished. If we lived in a world where everyone was responsible and properly cared for their animals, then the laws wouldn’t have any justification. That is sadly not the case. I wish it was though.
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So you purpose we support that attitude?
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Whenever another threat of a ban emerges, I always begin pondering the future of the exotics industry. We raise up our torches and pitchforks in retaliation, and usually emerge victorious because the government is really bad at formulating any good backing for the ban in the first place. The ban is stomped into the dust and everyone goes back their regular lives, but I think if we are going to be progressive and further our industry and support the animals we claim to care about I think some major reflection is needed.
Keeping animals as hobbyists do is a purely selfish desire. Keeping them as we do now came from the result of sometimes harm, displacement, and destruction of other animals and their habitats. We at least owe these animals protection against abuse and neglect, whether it be intentional or not. Right now anyone can get an animal and know nothing about how to take care of it and I do think that needs to change, even though I think people have a “that’s just how it is mentality” about it.
Bans like these are not good or supportive of animals already in captivity or in the wild, but I think the US needs regulation of exotic animals driven by science and input from the industry. We should not be so adamantly against regulation, as it is a tool that can be used for the betterment of all. For example without size and quantity restrictions and regulations for recreational fishing, then there likely would be no recreational fishing at all today.
There is a difference between “loving animals” and “loving to keep animals”. Our want to have them should not overshadow their wellbeing. I feel if we do not self regulate eventually in an official matter, then someone else is going to do it for us (and not in a good way…)
Just my thoughts on the matter. Either way I am vehemently against this particular ban and pretty much all that came before it.
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I can’t for the life of me name one thing that the Government regulates in a effective manner. Our country was founded on individual liberties sadly these days we have few.
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I support having laws in place that help protect animals and the environment. I don’t support anarchy and only governing ourselves, as that doesn’t work at all and would lead to even worse treatment of animals. Sure, I am a good keeper and it would be an inconvenience for me to deal with regulations, but it is better than people having no legal ramifications if they decide to be horrible keepers.
Hunting is one thing I can name. Without the regulation of hunting we would nearly be without deer of multiple kinds in the U.S. as we almost were back in the earlier 1900s. Now we have sustainable deer populations and plenty for many to hunt so they don’t go hungry.
As @fatalis states fishing is yet another thing. I agree with them on all their points.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. As I stated as well, bans are usually not the best for the animals. Generally it will just lead to illegal and unsafe practices by selfish individuals that want a shiny animal to look at. We do definitely need regulations that are made by people that are actually knowledgeable of the situation, and not just lawmakers that are scared and confused.
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And who would that be? Not the us government or animal rights groups. They want to take all of our rights.
These regulations keep the deer from getting over populated not protect them because there are to few.
Isn’t it by nature a selfish act to keep any animal?
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Nor do I that’s why I served honorably in The United States Navy for 6 years protecting everyone’s freedoms.
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The hunting regulations is where they tried to hide our iguana and tegu ban in Florida. The way it was worded sounded fantastic about conservation and to the lay person who knows nothing about our reptile keeping world it was fine. To us we read the whole thing and actually understood what they tried to hide. Edit: here in Florida just to be clear
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