You know back when I still had cable I remember watching some animal cop show on the animal rights network. They were trying to catch a bunch of tegus and a big water monitor at some restaurant down in south fl. They go looking for the source for these escapees and lo and behold down the road......is the guy I used to get my brookesia chameleons from. Obviously it was a serious problem but it was a bit humorous at the time.
Here in Cent. fl. there is a reptile dealer who was notorious for turning things loose. My wife and I stopped into his facility (probably 14 yrs ago now.) and found an emaciated savannah monitor in the parking lot. I picked it up and brought into him assuming it had escaped. I was shocked when he said it must be one of the ones he let loose. He told me I could have it if I wanted it. I told him I did not to which he told me "well go throw it in the bushes over there". Obviously I decided at that point to keep it. It died a few days later. At the time my wife was working at an animal attraction on I-drive in Orlando that had some permit problems around the same time which involved fwc. My wife and I both mentioned this story to the fwc officer. I do not believe it was ever followed up. This same individual is responsible for the colony of red-headed agamas that can be found at the intersection of 17-92 and the 417 in Sanford. While obviously this individual is at fault for what he was doing, how much is the fwc to blame for doing nothing about what was obviously an on-going problem? It makes you wonder how many other introductions are the result of them turning a blind eye to other similar situations. A friend of mine once jokingly went through dick bartlett's book on fl. reptiles and pointed out what dealer's locations coincided with with the range locations of certain introduced populations of animals in the books' range maps. We can't paint all dealers with the same brush but some of the bad apples need to be dealt with so this type of thing stops.

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