Do you think they will be lost from the hobby?



No, I don't think they'll necessarily be lost. There is always a chance that if some hets were indeed sold as alluded to by Brook Berntson, then it's very possible that the gene could pop up again. There has been lots of talk about people in Europe actually breeding leucistics from that given line and possibly selling them to other countries, but I have yet to see any proof of this.



So, that brings up the major point, supposedly the Colorado Leucistic line is currently outlawed (or so we are still told) in the United States. They have no jurisdiction in other countries so if they do exist, they should be fine.



If anyone "pops" up with some, they are going to have alot of explaining to do to the feds!!



That is what we are led to believe anyways. I seriously question the legality of how the Federal Government even responded to this in the first place. I am willing to bet that if one had a good enough lawyer, that this whole thing could be nullified. And with today's economy, if you could prove that you purchased a leucistic from Europe, then the state (if I'm not mistaken) would have to spend the money to do DNA tests to prove that this was actually a direct descendant from that line. But then that raises the point that there's a lot of Colorado specimens in collections that are legally owned and could still possibly carry that gene. So why should those be illegal just because of a rare mutant gene? Obviously there are a lot of questions to ponder in regards to the law and ownership of these snakes.



Why? Why can't there be more than one line? What if one did pop up? Why would you assume they originated for the originals from CO?



This is exactly my point. The burden of proof would rest on the state if they followed proper legal procedures which could be a costly endeavor and then if one had excellent legal representation to help fight the cause, I'd be optimistic enough to bet that you could have a chance at possibly winning and reversing this legal nightmare.



Isn't there at least two lines of anerythristic lines currently?



Are you talking about compatible yet separate bloodlines of axanthics? If so, that is my understanding as well, that the WC axanthics that Barczyk originally purchased are completely unrelated to the ones that Russo hatched out purely by accident.



But as far as there being at least two non-compatible axanthic lines, this has been talked about but to my knowledge has not yet been proven. I talked to Barczyk a couple of years back about this and he mentioned that he was going to do a trade with Russo so they could try and prove this out, but I never heard anymore from that so I doubt that the trade actually took place.



At least 3 lucy easterns have popped up in the wild from different localities. So why would a western lucy automatically be related to the original.



Well, that's the whole witch-hunt mentality of the Federal Government in regards to this case. The mentality that they have put in our heads is that if any leucistic western hognose hatch out, that they are going to persue legal action. But on what grounds do they really have to do this if one randomly hatches out from a legally owned animal, especially in a different state? Like I said, if you had an excellent lawyer who understood genetics and such, I think there's a good chance of fighting this and winning regardless whether it was of the same bloodline or not. Of course you would have to have a lot of money to fight such a thing or at least a lot of supporters.



The bottom line is, there's a lot of hype and voodoo surrounding this whole case and I seriously doubt that we truly know what the Feds will actually do if another leucistic hognose does appear, especially if it pops out at random from a legally owned private collection.



They obviously have the fear factor instilled in us because we don't really know the extent of the law in which they can legally pursue this. I think it could prove very beneficial if someone could talk to the prosecutors or other persons that were involved in the prosecution of this case and get the real understanding of what legal context they have to keep fighting ownership of such a genetic mutation.
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Troy Rexroth

Rextiles

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