Attention to all New York State reptile keepers. In case you’re unaware, reticulated pythons and burmese pythons are illegal here. This includes all subspecies. I do kind of understand them wanting to have full size burms and retics be illegal, because of their massive size, but I do not think it is fair to make all subspecies illegal. These laws mean even super dwarf retics and dwarf burms are illegal here. This simply does not make sense. These laws need to be changed. I am sure that they are not purposefully making these animals illegal, and that they are just unaware of the smaller localities. Whatever the case though, the state government needs to be made aware of these snakes. I am in no position to do this myself, but I truly hope someone steps forward and does this task. What could even happen is they could take after some other states and make it so that snakes like that are legal until they reach over 13 feet. I know that’s what the law is like in at least one state, and it seems to work pretty good there. I highly encourage fellow NY keepers to pursue this law change, but please be up for the task before attempting. Once laws are in place, they are very hard to change, so this will likely be a difficult, but ultimately worthy process.
It’s pretty common knowledge for a lot of the hobby. Very little sense is shown with most legislation, and reptiles are no exception. I would contact USARK directly and see how you can contribute to the effort that I would guess they already have in place.
This is also how it is in Ohio, except with 12 feet.
Unfortunately a lot of places have species banned with no basis. Contacting USARK is a good idea but it’s very hard to reverse these (but it’s great to try), the best thing to do is prevent stricter laws from passing, especially in other states. The more states it passes in the easier it is for stricter laws to pass.
Largest size an adult snake is allowed to reach here in Toronto Canada was only 10 ft (3 meters). For lizards its only 6’8" (2 meters). last time I checked that is
The politicians who are passing or proposing these laws don’t have any reptile knowledge or very little. One politician (I forget who) once said they thought all snakes were venomous which we all know isn’t the case. Just goes to show they don’t know what they are doing when passing or proposing restrictions which is unfortunate.
Yeah, you’re probably right. At least now, we’re able to keep other larger snakes like boas and olive pythons.
And often times they’re “educated” by extremist animal rights groups. So what they do “know” is very biased and incorrect.
Exactly, they should be consulting experts in whatever field they are trying regulate.
100%. They especially shouldn’t be consulting PETA.
PETA has their head in their rear end. Their take on animals is that no one should own pets. But that’s a whole different discussion altogether.
They basically think that humans should never interact with, look at, get near to or think about animals.