I don't think I said any of those things, Jody. I find it funny (and revealing) that people reckon it's a right to import monitors, and that neither the originating nor the receiving countries have any business regulating it. It's also funny that some folks appear to feel that the "taxonomists" (whoever they are) are in cahoots with the native countries in some conspiracy to thwart the pet trade, when those same countries are exporting containerloads of monitor skins for the luxury leather trade. I suppose you could imagine an "evil taxonomist", but it would be a pretty funny-looking and ineffectual creature, something Gary Larson might draw a cartoon about.

You will find a range of views among scientists about the pet trade. Speaking only for myself, I regard it as fairly low on the list of evils that affect monitors in the wild. For almost all species, this trade is insignificant when compared to the rate and extent of habitat loss from logging, burning, population growth and other factors, and for some it is also insignificant when compared to the skin trade. What I am against is unsustainable uses, of any kind, simply because I would like to see monitors stick around in nature. The high-volume trade in WC or CH juveniles (as occurs for savs, Niles and some water monitors) can become unsustainable, though I am not aware of any strong evidence that this has occurred -- since these are low-value items at the originating end, collecting for export will tend to fall off if the animals become too uncommon in any particular place. At the other end of the spectrum, high-value species from restricted habitats (such as small islands) could suffer from unregulated trade, here because they may be worth enough at their point of origin for local collecting to persist, even though the animals become quite rare.

I believe that this was the concern expressed about V. melinus early on, and about V. boehmei and V. macraei at present, for example. When there is no solid information about population densities and harvesting effects, it is reasonable that the countries of origin should take a conservative approach to the export trade -- hard to see how that would be controversial except to someone who really didn't give a rat's patootie about anything but getting some for himself. No doubt there are those people, but there is no particular reason to take their self-centered opinions seriously.

Contrary to what some folks here seem to think, scientists (whether they be 'evil taxonomists' or whatever) don't go and fill buckets with hundreds of dead monitors. That's a slightly different topic (why put any in a jar at all?), which I'll address in a separate post.

I don't keep large numbers of monitors, and I have bought some of those -- maybe half of all the monitors I've ever had were "free" (no monitor is free!) in the sense that someone else already had it and gave it to me. That's not different from any other keeper, I suppose, and some of the animals I've bought haven't been cheap. I am not sure where you get the ideas you are putting in your post, in fact.

I am opposed to unsustainable exploitation of wild populations, whether it be monitors or anchovies. That's all. I also agree with DK above that it is pretty funny (and not defensible) when someone feels that they have an intrinsic right to put their personal gain ahead of a concern about unsustainable uses. And of course government regulations are often stupid -- isn't that more widespread than CITES and so forth?

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