As I said I have known a lot of people in the academic realm for a long time that I respect. And yes I would say it is more or less a few bad apples here that I feel are a problem. But then also there are those that do rape and pillage a place of its reptiles. But this is what bag limits and regulations should be for.

As for building a bridge I have been trying, but if they will not sit down with us and listen all of our points are usless and will not be heard.

I have said before and will say it again "My door is open". I will let any of them get to know me and have access to my project so they can see for themselves who I am and what I do.

As for bring the proof, if you mean the scientific papers that I feel show a clear agenda I have lots of it. So much of it that it would take a books worth to sort through.

The problem is that they tend to think they need to extract and interpret data to show only that herpers are bad.

This in part is due to them seeing us as only a bunch of poachers and people exploiting animals for money.

So really the problem is they have a preconceived idea of what we are so then they do not care to hear us out or get to know us.

The way they interpret the data then becomes skewing of science because it gets too biased. There are either other ways the data could have been interpreted that either get left out or else they simply say there opinion is not for of coarse for the agenda and points away from anything else the data could have been interpreted as saying.

I am not saying there is no truth to any of the papers but some are more on point than others and a few I read were just simply outrageous.

It is just strange to me that I can read and get geology and paleontology just fine. Then I read a science paper that says that qoute "In my opinion Terrapen should not be kept in captivity" or the one that said Quote "In my opinion no collection is sustainable". They tend to feel this way about all species though even before a study is done. Terrapene have been collected by Native Americans for as long as Native Americans have been here. Terrapene did not go extinct. Yes they have there so called Iroquois paper were they say the small area West of New York has no box turtles due to over collection by the Iroquois. They say this is proof that collection is not sustainable, but fail to mention the Iroquois lived in a larger home range that stretched from New York to under the Great Lakes and as far South as about North Carolina. Box turtles were used over all of this range and they did not go extinct everywhere the Iroquois lived and used the turtles. Also the fossil record shows that not only Iroquois but all tribes collected and used box turtles over all of the box turtles range. Box turtles have survived several great extintions and yet they paint a picture of a turtle as being so fragile that if I collect only a few (some say even one) that the species will slowly die out.

Now maybe the Iroquois in that one small area did over harvest and the others in other areas did not. But then why after over three hundred years are there still no box turtles there? They said in one paper on Terrapen in the far North Eastern corner there that there was low reproductive raits and they thought it may be because people that had them let there pets go and some could have been from somewhere else and this may have dropped there ability to reproduce. OK, so if we are letting all of these box turtles loose why are there still none in that small area West of New York. Do you suppose they could have missed something that may be important to the survival of this species all because they were too ready to point a smoking gun at herpers to say that collecting reptiles is bad? I worry they may be too feverishly trying to nail us and put us under instead of objectively putting the knowlege of science forward in at least some cases. I am not the only one that has said this even some in the academic field have said so. They have said also that population counts where the turtles have been collected may appear high due to emigrants moving through the area from other places. Well what they are getting at here is that they want to say even if numbers are good were they get collected they really are not good so collecting them is bad anyway even if the population looks good. But then again I have to ask why are the emigrants not moving into or through the are West of New York? My point in all of this is that it is not good science to try to stick knives in herpers backs so often and so quick that they could be and are missing importand true information about what is happening with any species. They just should really be carefull and think that one out more for the sake of the animals they are trying to save. I do think over collection is bad. But low and moderate collection and not doing it always in the same place is OK for most species. There are many more examples and even more I could use to prove my point on this.



Anyway anytime any of them can pick a time and place to start building this bridge I will be there. Eric

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