Some hybrids and crosses are beautiful and valueable to the segment of the hobby that's into those sorts of things. Many species and subspecies have been compromised but the practice of crossing can't be expected to stop. People have a right to do what they want in that regard. Therefore I think it falls mainly upon the purists to make sure they can trace their stock back to the original wild caughts if they want to be absolutely sure they have pure snakes. IMHO you really can't expect everyone to keep stuff pure.

Additionally alot of sources, ie pet stores, inexperienced breeders, etc. may misidentify stuff. A pet store could get a clutch of hatchling pure black rats and the minimum wage employee may label them as pure gray rats, just out of sheer ignorance. I've seen this sort of thing many times at pet stores. Then what can happen is a newbie buys one from the pet store and a couple years later they decide they want to breed it so they pair it up with a pure gray rat from an online breeder. The result is unintentional crosses entering the hobby. Purists have to be on gaurd against this sort of thing and countless other scenarios that result in something simply not being what it's represnted as. The only true way to combat this is to obtain from sources that can trace back to wild caught.

So I think rather than jump on people who make crosses the best thing to do is edjucate them and let them make their own choices.

I don't think crossings done between common native species are that big of a deal because a purist can still go out a collect new stock. What I would like newbies and others to really consider carefully before doing, is crossing non-native stuff that we connot just go out and collect fresh bloodlines of. Like the stuff from Mexico. When that stuff gets crossed the pure forms are just lost from the hobby, essentially forever.
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