Ernie,

The spotted turtle should have bag limits on them just like any other species for which the need is demonstrated. Your post demonstrates a great example of the snowball affect. Rather than having Game & Fish do their job of licensing collectors and dealers, monitoring harvest and possession, and sending LE out into the field, you want them to take away somone's right to sustainably harvest a resource. Then the next state gets lazy and bans them and then the next and then the next. Pretty soon you are down to a couple states who have greatly increased pressure on them. What do you think they will do?

Meanwhile in the states where they are banned can you keep previously captured specimens for captive propagation? Can you sell the neonates or no longer wanted adults? Can't wild caughts be "washed" in that system? What about acquiring new blood?

And finally, so spottys are protected from collection but since they are not listed as Endangered or Threatened, because they are doing okay, the bulldozers of habitat destruction can still destroy them. If not, the wetlands themselves, the habitat all around them and eventually they will go extinct.

Why not do something that is fair and reasonable? Something which promotes captive reproduction and allows harvest especially in areas that are being destroyed? You don't want to protect them into extinction, you want to regulate the situation. What the government should be doing is buying two types of habitat. One type in which NOTHING can be harvested. And habitat that can be managed for harvest. That sounds smart, fair and reasonable.

Welkerii

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