{Dear Herp Law Perrs; Methinks this was posted some time ago, but I just wanted to point out that anti-exotic-keeping initiatives and press in the United States also affect your peers up here in the 'frozen north'. We face the same problems and will doubtless take your sucesses against anti-herp laws/restrictions to heart for possible use in our own 'uniquely-Canadian' by-law and legal melees. We're all in this together I think. respects, Wes}

VANCOUVER SUN (British Columbia) 16 December 10 Unusual pets, unknown results; Importation of exotic species goes largely unchecked in the U.S., and could lead to new diseases (David Fleshler and Dana Williams, Sun Sentinel Florida)
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.: They arrive from Amazon rainforests, central African savannahs and South Asian jungles, crated passengers in the cargo holds of airliners.
Spitting cobras, common death adders, Zanzibar dwarf geckos, green iguanas, chinchillas, emperor scorpions and hundreds of other non-native species enter North America each year to serve the demand for unusual pets.
A lot of time has gone into the unsuccessful campaign to clear the Florida Everglades of Burmese pythons, just one of the non-native species to find a congenial home in South Florida. But the federal government continues to allow wide-open imports of a vast range of wildlife, conducting few screenings for disease and permitting most shipments to enter without inspection. A report on wildlife imports by the Government Accountability Office last month found "gaps that could allow the introduction of diseases into the United States."
A review of live wildlife import records from 2004 through April of 2010 found that the United States imported these animals:
- More than 739,000 rodents, despite warnings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that rodents can transmit to humans diseases such as hantavirus, bartonella and typhus.
- Nearly 20,000 venomous snakes, among which are some of the most deadly, including 632 puff adders, 113 black mambas and 357 king cobras.
- More than 1.2 million green iguanas, as well as other species that have become established in the United States, including 39,673 Nile monitors and 20,806 Burmese pythons. Several of these non-native species kill native wildlife.
A bill in the U.S. Congress would have restricted imports to those species that had been approved as harmless, but an outcry from wildlife owners and the pet industry defeated it. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is completing the process to declare the Burmese python and eight other big snakes injurious species, which would end imports except for zoos and a few other purposes.
Environmental and animal welfare groups say the python proposal has come too late to help the Everglades, and they call for import limits to keep out the next harmful species.
"If the federal government had listed the Burmese python as injurious 20 years ago, we wouldn't have had this problem," said Beth Preiss, exotic pets director for the Humane Society of the United States. "It may be too late to stop the invasion of the Everglades, but it's not too late to stop it in the rest of the U.S."
But the pet industry and hobbyist groups have fought back. They note that a cold snap last year killed a lot of the Everglades pythons. They say import limits represent an extreme response to problems caused by a few species. And they say tough restrictions would cost jobs and undermine a beneficial pastime that fosters in children an appreciation of science and nature.
"A lot of children spend hours in front of the TV and the computer and have very little contact with nature," said Jamie Reaser, vice-president of environmental policy for the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, a trade group. "So I think it's very important children have the opportunity to learn about animals and the environment."
The wooden crates rest on the cement floor of a warehouse at Miami International Airport, second only to Los Angeles in live wildlife shipments into the United States.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service inspector Carlos Pages dons black gloves and pries open a long crate from Suriname, a nation with rain forests that extend into the Amazon basin.
The box contains a row of bright yellow sacks. When he picks one up, it starts moving. Inserting a plastic tube the size of a Pringles container that lets him look inside safely, he sees the glistening skin of an emerald tree boa. Although the snake is not venomous, he is careful. "These snakes have a nasty disposition," he says. "They will bite."
Last year Miami International Airport received 4,786 shipments of live wildlife. Among the biggest importers is Strictly Reptiles in Hollywood, whose president, Michael Van Nostrand, was sentenced to eight months in prison in 1997 for smuggling 1,500 rare reptiles from Argentina and Indonesia. After serving a five-year licence suspension, the company has resumed importing. From 2004 until April of this year, Strictly Reptiles imported 558,060 reptiles, 172,892 spiders and 161,597 amphibians, according to federal records.
Reached by phone, Van Nostrand initially agreed to an interview but then could not be reached despite repeated calls.
D.J. Schubert, wildlife biologist for the Animal Welfare Institute, said the import business is riddled with opportunities for animals to suffer.
"They can be held for a long time without water or food," he said. "Frequently they're held in boxes or burlap sacks. The entire industry facilitates cruelty, not because people are trying to be mean, but because they don't know any better."
A raid last year by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found horrific conditions at U.S. Global Exotics in Arlington, Texas, with more than 26,000 snakes, hamsters, wallabies, sloths and other animals crowded into filthy cages without food or water, many dead or dying.
Reaser, of the pet trade group, said that case was an exception in the industry that works hard to keep its valuable cargo safe.
"I think it's important to keep in mind that a lot of people in the pet industry got into it because they really love animals," she said. "There's an economic investment, and it doesn't make good business sense not to care for the animals."
About 60 per cent of infectious diseases emerging in humans since 1940 -- including AIDS and severe acute respiratory syndrome -- originated in animals, making the jump to people through live-animal markets, the butchering process and the pet trade.
Dr. Nina Marano, chief of the Geographic Medicine and Health Promotion Branch of the Centers for Disease Control, said rodents particularly are effective at transmitting diseases such as the deadly viral disease hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a chronic bacterial illness called bartonella and various forms of typhus.
Monkeypox, a viral disease from Africa, appeared in people in the United States in 2003, arriving in a shipment of rodents from Ghana to Texas. The CDC banned rodent imports from Africa, but the pet industry found other sources. Since 2004 more than 739,000 dwarf hamsters, chinchillas, golden hamsters and other rodents have been imported, with the largest numbers coming from captive breeders in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, according to the Sun Sentinel's review of import data.
"Rodents carry many viral diseases," Marano said. She was particularly concerned about children who are often the caretakers for these animals and "who aren't known for regularly washing their hands."
"African rodents have been banned, but we've discovered that the pet industry is very fluid," Marano said. "When one door closes, they find another one to open."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it's not practical to screen millions of animals for diseases. The service has 124 inspectors at 38 entry points to watch for smuggling, improperly packed animals and banned species. Adding disease to the list would be "tough," said Edward Grace, deputy chief of law enforcement for the Fish and Wildlife Service.
"Our inspectors don't have the veterinary skills to determine if an animal is ill or may be a disease vector," he said.
Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a group that researches wildlife diseases, said agricultural livestock imports receive tougher scrutiny.
"If you're importing cattle, we're going to test them for hoof-and-mouth disease," he said. "But if you bring in a shipment of rodents from Indonesia, we don't test them for anything. They don't want anything to stop the pet trade, and I understand that. There's a lot of money and a lot of jobs."
Although Burmese pythons have attracted the most attention, up to 130 other non-native species have established themselves in Florida.
Mexican red rump tarantulas live around an abandoned citrus grove near Fort Pierce. Venomous red lionfish, refugees from the tropical fish trade, inhabit coral reefs. The African rock python, a large and powerful constrictor, lurks around Tamiami Trail in western Miami-Dade County, where 18 have been captured since August 2009.
In coastal Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, a Bahamian lizard called the northern curly-tail has pushed out native lizards. Tegu lizards, which can grow longer than four feet, prowl Homestead and the Tampa suburbs.
"The vast majority are from the pet trade," said Scott Hardin, non-native species coordinator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "Mostly it's from pets that have been released."
These animals are sold by big-box pet stores, at wildlife shows, over the Internet and at specialty shops.
Underground Reptiles in Deerfield Beach offers a ring-tailed lemur ($2,799.99), a small South American mammal called a kinkajou ($3,249.99) and two baby marmosets ($2,799.99). In a corner, behind a sign reading "Dangerous Live Venomous Snakes," glass cases contained black and white spitting cobras, a West African Gaboon viper and a white-lipped tree viper.
At the Rodeway Inn & Suites on State Road 84 in Fort Lauderdale, the Florida Reptile and Alternative Pet Super Show last month drew dealers and hobbyists to a long conference room to buy and sell pythons, tarantulas and geckos.
"I don't do normal animals," said Tyler Cowan, 14, of Lake Worth, who had purchased a sunglow leopard gecko and a bearded gecko. "I don't like anything furry. I have two leopard geckos, a bearded dragon, a black and white Argentine tegu -- such a sweetie. Think of it as a scaly puppy dog."
Anna Harvey, of Davie, wanted a snake for her six-year-old son. "He is obsessed with reptiles," she said. She asked one dealer, Jay Eaton, whether a $40 king snake would make a nice friend for her son's ball python. Friend? Probably not, he said.
"King snakes eat other snakes," he said.
Pompano Beach dealer Adam Chesla said buyers range from hobbyists to collectors to investors -- people who buy expensive genetic variants to breed snakes to sell.
Having studied environmental science in graduate school, Chesla takes seriously the problem of the Everglades pythons. But he said environmental and animal rights groups have seized on the issue -- assisted by sensationalist media -- to attack a rewarding hobby that helps children learn about science and nature.
"It puts kids on the right track," he said.
'White list' defeated
"We did it folks!!!!" wrote the United States Association of Reptile Keepers, after nearly 50,000 letters and thousands of phone calls helped kill a bill in Congress to restrict the wildlife trade. "You can thank yourselves and the Reptile Nation for a hard fought victory!"
The bill would have required the federal government to establish a "white list" of harmless species and allow only those in.
Other restrictions are in the works. The wildlife service is considering a petition from Defenders of Wildlife to ban trade in amphibians unless they are free of chytrid fungus, blamed for more than 100 amphibian extinctions.
Several states are considering limits on ownership of some species. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission plans next year to consider ways to control several species, such as tegu lizards, monitors and black spiny-tailed iguanas.
"We're going to start with the larger lizards," said Hardin, the commission's non-native species coordinator. "They're big in the trade, and we have abundant evidence they can survive in Florida."
Unusual pets, unknown results

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