and just simply say they do not have enough data on any of these animals and therefor put them all on the black list.
I have said many times before and will say it again, there is an agenda to shut down not only reptile keepers but all animal keepers. Most of you acted like you did not believe me. I wonder do you see it now?

I used to keep box turtles and had up to F5 captive born offspring. My hatchling records out did any AZA accredited Zoo. But since I live in Texas and since they would not make any real guarantee that they would not change there minds about grandfathering my collection in or anything thing else they said they would do, I got rid of them all. I had to give most away and then release the indigenous ones as close to were they came from as possible.
TP&W told me all kinds of things and then went back on there word so I feel I made the only hard decision I could and got rid of all of my turtles.
It ripped my heart out but I can't feel joy and peace working with them thinking that they could come and take them away and maybe even charge me with something if they wanted too.
In most such cases the animals are confiscated and most if not all die. The papers about turtles are not all true. Most are done at the Northern edge of there range were reproduction and growth rates to sexual maturity are way lower than in the South like in Texas. And no matter what I point out about this people don't get it. So if I can just skip all of that and get to another very good point. That point being there was and is not and will never be any scientific paper that can say captive breeding is harmful and counter conservative of any species. Unless of course a scientist is willing to lie on a scientific document, and we know that doesn't happen.
It is just too easy for them to use data from the edge of a range up North that shows low reproduction and way more time to mature and lower survival of offspring to push laws over on use. Then they can wash there hands and say, Well we don't have enough data and since we can't get it any time soon we will just use the "Precautionary Principle" and shut it all down.

Did any of them come out to my house to see and try to understand what I was doing? NO ! Not a one.
All I got told is it was up to the experts and not up to me.
I guess my 32 years of on hands experience and leaning from the many people in the academic realm meant nothing even though my turtles had no pyramiding and I produced more on average than any zoo and I know I have seen there breeding records. This is not me being egotistical. I am just stating the facts.

When you guys wake up and see that throwing turtle people under the bus and saying they have scientific data to prove turtle collecting is not sustainable, when what they did was overstretch the interpretation of the little doctored data they had, maybe you will be going in the right direction again.
My collecting a few turtles and breeding them to make more was not going to cause an extinction and was not feeding the Chinese food market.
Turtles have been collected for thousands of years by Native people. If some harvest is going to cause them to go extinct they would have already.
And as for the ever famously quoted "Iroquois Papers" about how there are not box turtles in a little area outside of New York due to Natives collecting them. Those papers fail to tell you that the Iroquois lived over a much bigger range than that little spot. They ranged from New York to the Great Lakes and as far South as about to South Carolina.
Also those papers do not mention that Native people collected box turtles over the whole range every where box turtle live. So that little spot only makes up about less than 1% of the range were they were being collected at for thousands of years.
Also the Texas Tortoise is said in a recent study to be doing so well in one area scientist have said it is OK to graze cattle there. There is a healthy population there of adults and even young adults and juveniles as well as hatchlings. So if the collection of few will make the population collapse why did this group do OK in spite of past collection for the pet trade?
Yes it takes a long time for them to mature and they can't take high volume collection over long periods of time. But even so when you remove an adults it doesn't mean there will not be anymore turtles there for the 5 years it takes them to mature as the population has them of all ages. The less there is there the more food they get and the less diseases they get so they reproduce at higher volumes.

Ironically I went to a park near my house and they are trapping the turtles because they are over populated. These are red ears and maps for the most part. But it is funny they used the Chinese food market scare tactic to shut down box turtle collecting even though it was not the box turtles being sent there and now I don't keep them anymore because of this and here they are having to control the population of the very turtles that were being sent to China. But, this is what you get when you let the government take care of something.
All of this being said once again I remind people I am not against bag limits or licensing. But this whole agenda in the long run is going to hurt species more than it will help. As there is not enough money to put aside habitat to save these species in the wild like they think they want to do.
It has been posted on here and asked how would they get enough money to do the work needed to support proper regulation of collection of reptiles in the wild. I ask How will they set aside land and mange them in the wild after they cause captive populations to go extinct? That is all a law prohibiting captive breeding does, it cases captive populations to go extinct. It doesn't save habitat or manage the species in the wild or save them from extinction in any way.

Throwing the turtle keepers under the bus was a bad idea. It only helped them to gain ground on you and they are still not your friends. It did not make you look like responsible conservationist that should be left alone to keep your snakes and lizards. They still see you as the problem they want to get rid of.
As for the people that keep turtles that supported the agenda, they are fools hanging themselves. In time there State will do them the same way and when they get there turtles taken away or are forced to give them up all I can say is you did it to yourselves and unfortunately a lot of others.
It could be done so differently if scientist would work with the private sector like they did with crocodilians and the Aruba Rattlesnake But that would make good since.

My only advice is open your eyes and do all your can to stop the agenda pushing or say good by to your animals. Anyway I am out. Thanks Eric

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