First off, gun ownership is a RIGHT under the second amendment to the constitution. Unfortunately for herpers, reptiles are mentioned nowhere in said document

But now we are getting somewhere (did you notice you had to rephrase your question at length to make it answerable?). Put that way, I have few problems with it. Realize, though, that state agencies will be the ones deciding the specifics-seasons, bag limits, etc. These are unlikely to be generous except in the rare case that they have specific research pointing to a large harvestable surplus. And these same folks, almost invariably, will have an institutional mindset that is actively hostile to even the idea of commerce in any kind of wildlife.This has to do with issues going back more than a hundred years in wildlife management, to the days of Gifford Pinchot and Aldo Leopold. It also has to do with many's personal experiences of the abuses sometimes attributed to commercial collectors (I myself remember finding vernal pools in central Ohio totally ringed by drift fences and bucket traps by a notorious local commercial colector. He took spotted and tiger salamanders by the hundreds, totally extirpating local populations-due to this person and several others, Ohio now has draconian herp laws that are bad for ALL herpers). Right now, herps are the ONLY terrestrial vertebrates that can, in some states anyway, be collected from the wild and sold for profit.

In my view this is extremely unlikely to continue, regardless of what we do. But we risk losing everything if we set ourselves up in an adverserial position on this single issue, which after all affects a VERY few people nowadays.
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Brad Chambers
WWW.HCU-TX.ORG

The Avalanche has already started-it is too late for the pebbles to vote....

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