Your information is not coming from academia or FWC? Are you saying the commercial guys are making up these proposed regs? I know activist academics are pushing the turtle ban. There sure is a way to defend it. If by “it” you mean harvest. Everything can be harvested. It is how much you take that is the issue not the taking itself. Now, I would agree with you that the methods of take maybe cruel. Fishing for turtles with trout lines sounds very cruel. Maybe they should out law that method of take? I also believe it is illegal to collect eggs. So these guys are poaching. If they are not going to obey the law now then making it tougher on the rest of us isn’t going to change that. And there is no way they will catch out all the turtles in Florida in 10 years. That is impossible. Now, some populations could be over-harvested in 10 years. But with bag limits and management most populations will recover. You are pushing “hype.”

I would also agree that the food turtle harvesters are causing the trouble for the pet trade and recreational harvesters. You can’t punish all for the sins of a few. I know they see dollar signs and don’t care about the resource. This can be fixed with bag limits. Bans are wrong, period. You will never convince me otherwise. I know that every species over-produces its kind to account for removals in the population. If you have data that they don’t let me know. It all has to do with over-harvest and FWC’s unwillingness to do research to determine what the bag limits should be for each species. Licenses and permits will help fund that.

Is the cattle, chicken and hog industry bottomless? I don’t think so. There is a bottom. Whether they can reach the goals of captive production is a valid argument. Softshells maybe more tricky to breed then red ears but the Chinese can certainly breed the red ears. Farming is farming and ranching is ranching if they do it correctly they can produce captive offspring to feed the demand. The guy in Florida or where ever that figures out how to breed the softshells will be the one making the cash. Do you doubt that someone can’t figure it out? With captive production and bag limits it will stabilize the market and the price will go up if the demand is there. This will make the more expensive (and delicate) farming operations viable.

The reproductive numbers are low balled. Academics are low ballers. That is pretty much fact. They err on the side of caution with all their data. Academics don’t get enough data and then they low ball it. That skews things hard towards low balling. Take box turtles for instance, it is published that they usually have one clutch a year but in fact they can have up to four. That is low balling. Turtles reproduce several times a year. They live a long time and have more reproductive years. And juvenile mortality isn’t as bad as previously thought. Quoting sexual maturity data from northern latitudes and applying it to Florida populations (longer activity season) is not right either. To say these things is playing “fast and loose” with the facts. Using out dated or geographically irrelevant data to push an agenda (stop harvest) is not right. This has all been done by the academic activists.

I understand that over-harvest needs to be stopped. I also understand that cruel harvest methods may need to be eliminated. I also understand the disgust about letting our turtles be shipped over to China to be killed and eaten. But none of that is a viable argument for taking away the rights of American citizens to sustainably harvest a resource, captive produce and commerce in a natural resource.

Welkerii
El Paso, TX

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