I wasn't able to post on the Pethobiest link at the top of this page for some reason but how does this sound for an argument. Are Florida keepers of giants willing to accept any compromise?

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The founding principals of this country dictate that there must be a very good reason to limit freedoms and I’m not sure this qualifies. Burmese pythons are already in the Everglades and many more in captivity inside Florida. Will restricting interstate commerce help anything? Even if every Burmese python in the Everglades where to die in a freak freeze tonight there would still be plenty of captive animals already inside the state to restock. Is there any other state with the right conditions for wild boids to reproduce? Even if there is a state left to protect there is no doubt already a captive population in that state so restricting interstate traffic does no good and might even backfire with more releases as the legal interstate business collapses. Even if this does become law I’m sure boids will still be transported across state lines it will just become an unregulable traffic with rewards for those willing to break the law reminiscent of prohibition.

If some regulation is unavoidable for political reasons it needs to be reasonable and enforceable so that the trade doesn’t just go underground. How about requiring transponders be implanted and recorded in the giant boid species before they can be sold in Florida? Sure there is some cost to such a state program that would have to be passed on to the consumer. I’m not too crazy about any government involvement and tracking but we have to admit that at least a small percentage of keepers have already failed to responsibly regulate themselves to get us to this point. A targeted program like this where every giant boid purchaser in Florida would know that if their snake turns up in the Everglades the transponder can be tracked back to them will be enough to encourage responsibility for the small percentage of keepers who caused this problem in the first place by releasing unwanted pets into the wild. We must find a way to appease the movement for an unenforceable ban that includes states and species where there is no risk and really wouldn’t do any good even with the one known risk of Burmese pythons in Florida.

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