If you are working with the Department of fish and game, then I hope you can pass this message along. The banning of private collection breeding of Lampropelis zonata in California is a bad policy all around. Due to their secretive nature and their mostly inaccessible habitat, Zonatas are very common and easily found if you know where to look and if you are willing to endure the long hikes up to their usual haunts. I do understand the DFG's intentions are to protect Zonatas from exploitive collecting. But to ban the breeding of the species by responsible hobbyist in California is absurd. If a hobbyist collect a pair of Zonatas in the wild and breed it, the price of the animals will come down as the number of animals available in the market goes up and eventually this will make it economically unfeasible for illegal collecting of the animals by unscrupulus collectors. Just look at the Lampropeltis getulus for example, I doubt if any unscrupulus collectors are willing to spend the time to go out to hunt for them in the wild. This can also be true for Zonatas if the DFG would just let responsible hobbyist breed zonatas here is California and put them up for sale. If a hobbyist is able to buy a captive bred snake free of parasites, then they will not buy one collected from the wild that is full of parasites and other associated problems. This would enevitably drive the illegal trade out of business.

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