I agree with you, Terry. Unfortunately, education is difficult at best with people that don't want to be educated, don't care about herps and just enjoy killing them because they are there. The other side of that coin is that more laws aren't going to stop that ignorance either, so education is the only viable method we have. We just have to keep talking and trying.



Some of the protection laws are basically good...for instance, Alabama's protection of Black Pine Snakes, Gopher Tortoises, Eastern Indigo Snakes, etc. The problem with them is that they don't allow for privately breeding them in captivity, which in my opinion would reduce the pressure of illegal collecting. Part of the reason for the way the laws are written is the fear that people would take it upon themselves to release their captive born animals into the wild populations (which would, in fact, cause problems) and the fact that it would be difficult to differentiate between a wild caught Black Pine Snake or Gopher Tortoise and a captive born one, making the laws nearly impossible to enforce. They don't have the manpower to track every captive born animal of a protected species and it's offspring.



I lived in Mobile County when the Gopher Tortoises came under protection and had several in captivity that I had kept for years. The law was written to grandfather in anyone who was keeping them at the time they came under protection and the DNR would come out and place tags in the carapace of your tortoises and issue you a permit for those animals. I had moved out of Alabama before the Box Turtles came under protection so I don't know how that was handled.

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