I agree with all you said here. I too know and respect many in the academic field. I know and share and get information from many different fields of academia. So it is not that I have a bad biased opinion of all academics.

That being said lets be honest though as well. Not all in academia are as smart as they give themselves credit for. Some are just agenda driven and have forgot science altogether.



I went to a fish hatchery many years ago and a guy that worked for TP&W had found an albino water snake. I tried to get him to give it to me so I could put it into a captive breeding project (I even offered to pay him for it). He refused because he said he was against people that kept and bred reptiles because they exploit the animals for profit. So he gave it to a professor that put it into a pickle jar.

This is a true story, no kidding.

Also recently I met a student that told me there was no need to keep and breed animals in captivity because we can just freeze the DNA to save the genes if they go extinct in the wild. I tried to tell him that even with genetic engineering they can't do it accurately yet. They only recently found out that the chromosome has more than one function. So if they for instance try to make an animal faster and they know exactly which chromosome is responsible for giving the animal speed. They then can put that chromosome into an animal they are producing but the chromosome may just as well also be responsible for making the animal slow. So they could try to produce a fast animal and get a slow one instead or God knows what else. This is why there is just no substitute for producing the animals and the genes in a natural way.

The student ended up calling me stupid and argumentative. Well I want to argue that one but stupid? Really?

It is hard to stay out of a pissing contest when you are getting pissed on.

Florida used to make developers pay for the amount of tortoises they killed when they developed an area. This was done while the tortoises were protected. But darn your hide if you wanted to keep and breed them in captivity. If they had of allowed the private sector to keep and breed them we would not have lost so many genes there. I think it is safe to say we may have lost entire gene pools.



It would help if collages did not turn out so many that were brain washed into a narrow minded agenda way of thinking. Scientist should think on there own and always cross reference and learn from other sciences besides the one they work from only. Information is gathered from the outside of the collage and brought to it for the most part. It is wrong to think once you have gone to collage you know everything and are the higher inelegance so you no longer need to listen to anyone else.

Those in academic fields that do think for themselves or at least try to get brow beat for not worshipping the golden agenda calf and are less likely to get grant money. Which brings me to another thing. They say we are all commercial but they get way more money for what they do than I do and it is our tax money for the most part. So who is commercial? But I know, they think they are pickling the animals or freezing there DNA to make frankenanimals so they are the higher intelligence and are taking ( as I have heard them say) the higher moral road here.



There are many good examples of were academia has worked with herpers in some way. Take the Aruba rattlesnake for instance. There is a plan zoos have come up with that will keep the rattlesnakes out bred for the next 200 years by working with the private sector that also breeds them.

Take the way academia helped bring the crocodilian breeders new blood to keep there stock out bred.

Academia needs to get responsible and do the right thing and bring more of this to the table.

Even while the alligator was protected Texas auctioned off two or so permits to let people hunt and kill them.

Alligators were being bred for meat and hides as well. None of this made them go extinct so why would captive breeding any reptile do it harm? It is pretty obvious it won't.



Captive breeding is a plus for any species even when the private sector does it. But then you have those that do not even want academia to do it. So when you come up against this kind of mentality it is hard to get them to reason with you because there thinking is not really scientific it is agenda based and not reasonable. It does little good to wait until an animal is nearly extinct and has already lost many of the genes the pool once had before you decide to run in and captive breed it like most of academia is doing now. It has to be done before this time to save as many genes as possible.

There was a comment on PARC recently that we need more money to save many of the species even small frogs and others that often get over looked. Because there was a scientific report about some scientist may have found a cure for a disease (I don't know the details) from studying frogs. They said just think if they went extinct and we could have cured cancer or something. Well I say what do you think captive breeding guards against? Captive breeding can act as genetic pools that academia could be taking advantage of.



The idea that we can just make it against the law for people to have reptiles and they will just do OK in the wild on there own is not true. We have lost many gene pools already in several and maybe all States while animals were under such protection. Because development and natural disasters and climate changes still effect those animals and there is not always enough money or time to do anything about it. So again captive breeding makes since and serves a good purpose.



Some of the scientific papers if you really want to call them that are so full of agenda against herpers that some of them contradict others being published or else do not jive with other scientific papers and scientific understanding that already exist.

It is OK to have a theory but when you use your theory to enact laws that hurt captive breeding projects and peoples way of life and happiness I have to draw a line.

I for one am tired of being demonized for keeping and breeding reptiles. I am not a low life criminal type and deserve more respect. Especially from those using my tax money to get a paycheck.

Making everything I do illegal doesn't make me a criminal or low life. If I make it illegal for kids to eat ice cream and one gets caught doing it is he a low life criminal? Or should we just stop making stupid laws that hurt people? They can make any law they want but captive breeding is a good thing. I will not just sit back and let them make laws so they can confiscate the animals and let them die like happens so often while they are in there custody (Oh but if the State kills animals with neglect it is OK, once again we get the they are better off dead than being captive bred mentality). I do not want my animals to end up in pickle jars either. Don't think that some of this has not happened before. I am not saying I think it will this time. But only that I take care of and love my animals and therefor I am the one that is taking the moral high ground. Eric

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