Personally I never saw HCU's stance of not actively supporting commercial harvest as brownnosing. I think there is only a small number of indivuduals within TPWD that are actively opposed tokeeping herps. I have gotten the impression that there are many within TPWD who don't oppose herpers but are just going along to get along so to speak. And there are some who are actually symathetic. One of the problems is that the ones who hate herpers are doing all they can to indoctrinate their peers and create a culture of hatred against herpers. One of the things that the ones who hate us do is portray all herpers as solely out to make a buck. They spread this inaccurate characterization of us to their peers within TPWD, to other LE in TX and to legislators.

From what I have seen in my 14 years of collecting west TX most field collecters living in or visiting TX do not collect mainly for money. Although as you said, some do make gas money and some do end up eventually selling some of animals that they collected, either because they have established the breeding colonies the set out to establish or because they want to persue other projects.

HCU's choice of not actively supporting commercial collecting is more than just brownnosing. It helps to shoot down the claims of those few within TPWD that hate us and say that all herpers are in it solely for the money. In my opinion that's good for everyone because it helps TPWD get a more accurate picture of what's going on.

If there are 100 herpers hunting TX and TPWD thinks that every single one of them is collecting as many herps as they can find and sell, then TPWD is going to think there is a much bigger potential impact than they would if it can be shown that 90 out of those 100 herpers are only taking a one or two target "trophies" out of the wild. If only a small percent of hunters are taking substantial amounts of herps then that shows TPWD that there is alot less to be concerned about than they may have thought. So in my opinion HCU's stance serves a very valuable funtction. That stance really does not hinder an organization like USARK from supporting commercial collecting. It also raises the notion that as a whole, herpers might be giving more to the state of TX than they are taking.
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www.hcu-tx.org/

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