More bad news and dirty deeds in Austin......after an one hour phone conversation with our attorney, Chris Jones, today, I am sorry, but not surprised, to report the following highlights of the hearing in Austin on May 24th and the plight of our turtles.....

1) Matt Wagner, director of the nongame species dept of TXP&W, is a personal friend of Bayou Bob's.

2) All of the commissioners, but maybe two, feel that the "resource" is sustainable eventhough Jones had a cadre of

experts testify that such harvesting is detrimental.

3) They intimidated some of our expert witnesses in person, via peers and by e-mail to the point that the top witness (name

withheld by request) walked before testifying and two others had to be retrained prior to taking the stand.

4) They did not want anyone to report the fact that snappers store toxins from man made polutants in their fat....mercury,

PCBs and so on......they tried everything possible to disallow testimony by saying, "that is for the Public Health Department to handle. We are only concerned with the 'resource' at this hearing".

5) They say that turtles should be taken out of many water systems and regarded as vermin.

6) They threatened to table the entire issue over to next years court if we did not comply with their wishes to allow harvest of red-ears, 5 species of softshells and common snappers on all public land, eventhough LE will not be able to tell a private turtle from a publicly taken one.

7) So far they have not published the testimony, both written and audio, on the State website as the discussion and input from our side regarding nonsustainability, bio-accumulation, and health hazzards are very damning to them.

8) They took testimony from a dozen pro-harvest folks, including a commercial box turtle guy that claims, (now get this), he only takes them off roads! Other trappers said that they are doing a service to the State and the poorer communities by ridding them of these pests. Jason Shaw of the DFW area had two attorneys there and tried to get the law thrown out based on procedural points.

They are really playing hardball on all levels. This is a multi-million dollar business.

What they have passed is worthless, as I am informed that if the law is not published in the State Register within 30 days

then it is null and void and moved over to the 2008 Court.

It is the feeling of Chris Jones that this will be the case and the result is 15,000 lbs of live TX turtles being shipped out weekly from DFW with now end in sight.

We even had video of the trapping on the Trinity River near Houston where fishing is banned due to polution yet hundreds of pounds of adult turtles are being taken weekly. Other video

submitted into the record showed all the boxes being shipped from DFW air cargo to overseas clients.

The really big plus for our side was a letter on formal stationery from a MD and liver specialist that stated that consuming these turtles was a public health hazzard. Jones got read that into the public record while on the stand.

Another plus was letting the US and foreign Chinese communities know that many of their people, who cannot read English, are likely eating contaminated turtle meat from Texas.

I don't want to list all the next steps our side is going to take but you can be sure the fight is not over. This is just another clear trangression of power and "good ol' boy" politics that is in our face. It no longer just effects us herpers.....this turtle harvest is going to cause ripples everywhere........ Ron Tremper

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