Skip is a good guy and a very thorough scientist. He reports the truth. But, I will admit, he is not very sympathetic toward the pet trade. He simply wants to fix the python problem and when you know the source is the pet trade then that seems like the logical place to start making improvements. I agree. However, I don't think we need to ban all exotics to improve the situation. I don't even think we need to ban burms. In fact, if the pet trade would start policing itself and owning up to some responsibility, I would be in favor of preventing any legislation that makes it harder to keep pets. We KNOW there is a problem. It only takes one visit to a local importer to see dozens of escaped animals (and/or their offspring). It doesn't matter whether the hurricane damaged enclosures... the pet trade is still the source. And, there are plenty of escapes/releases that were not caused by the hurricane (I'm talking about herps in general). Face it... this is a problem caused by the pet trade and you would expect there to be SOME consequences. This should at least be a wake-up call to responsible folks in the trade to start putting pressure on others to make sure they are running a tight ship. It sucks that one or two bad apples can spoil it for the whole bunch but that's what's happening and we need to pressure those bad apples.



Mike

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