Reptile & Amphibian Forums

All,

I just got back from being out of town for a day 1/2 and the ideas are just flying but there is NO organization in this madness. Eby has mentioned this a couple times. It took me about an hour to read all the posts and there are a mess of good ideas but many will be lost because our effort is not organized. Now, that I am back I don't know what to do now to take action. I pulled an all nighter so I have to sleep but tomorrow I will be ready to go. If someone wants something to do tonight go through all the posts and write down all the ideas. Then we need to priortize them and then assign tasks. If this doesn't get done then I will do it tomorrow. Great ideas but we need to step back and use our heads to plan the most affective attack. We don't want to waste our energy in chaos.

Good Night,

Mike Welker
El Paso, TX

Much of what is needed is just volume.

We need everybody making contact with these legislators, not just one rep. As for being organized and on top of each detail... We are not doing bad here on the forum.

If we need to direct effort through just one person, then they need to be in Austin doing face to face meetings like a lobbyist. If nobody on this forum can fill that roll, which seems to be the case then maybe we need to hire somebody down there to represent our point of view.

I beg to differ. But if you want to be obstinate then it will be our loss. Try debating with TPWD or the Reps NOT with me. Others have pointed this out. No wonder we got attacked with our pants down.

Later,

Mike Welker
El Paso, TX

One thing that we should do is get a petition...a lot of signatures in one place always looks impressive. Names and emails and phone #'s would be good, eh?

For a petition we will need to get each major region to have a sign up point. That can all be compiled later when the signatures are collected. I am not sure how fast such a thing can move, but I would put my name down plus as many other people as I could fit into a car.

In the mean time we still need to call our local reps, as well as send emails, faxes or letters to as many other reps as possible.

If somebody wants to write the petition up, then it can be printed out in each major city and signatures collected. We can then get them all mailed to one person and put together as one list. I also assume that each person has family or friends that would oppose 2414 and sign such a petition.

Instead of having numerous petitions out there, then having to collect them all and put it together, couldn't we just send names/#'s/email addy's to one person to recreate on a printed petition?

I think to carry the weight a petition is best have hand inked signatures. Not just a list of names.... They will look at that and think, how hard is it to make a list of names? At least in the back their minds it would not matter that the list was honest and true.

It will be a complete waste of time and effort if it is not taken seriously.

We can also fax the petition to each office once it is compiled but I would still feel that we would need have a live person in Austin at some point to let them see the original to.

Do it old school, we should post some suggest wording for the body of the petition here to make sure everything is covered, it is short enough to be read in a glance, and presents our opposition strongly.

So,email, sign, scan, email? Or is that still too hokey? I'm just looking at ease of transmission...not trying to be picky.

Maybe a middle ground would look good, Have a shorter body stating just the opposition and room for 10 - 20 signatures below that. Everybody has their one or two pages to get fill out and deal with.

They can be compiled to one PDF to send to all Reps, and the originals can just be mailed to whoever is the steward of the petition process. I still think it will be important to have the originals on the floor when this is open for public input.

My next concern is how many signatures will be needed to a consideration to somebody on the fence, or worse yet in support of HB 2414? I think that is what has me worried

So who is leading this? and can they (or someone else) please get a summary of this whole thing on ALL the forums here on Kingsnake.com? This will effect many people, and we want EVERYONE to know about this so as we can be more affective.

Ok, I don't know much about the subject. I only have lizards, no snakes (yet). Plus I'm from Florida. But I'm into collared lizards, and this bill will prevent the diversity needed to continue the captive breeding of the texas collared lizards (the local sub species). There are few captive breeding projects of c.l. period, and texas collareds are only a part of them.

SOOOO... we need to be able to get wild caught females and males to continue to get a good captive population, and this bill will harm the effort to get more captive bred lizards on the market.

Thus, if anyone could get a base-facts idea down and put it on all the forums, we can allow EVERYONE to start fighting for the right to responsible collecting of wild reptiles... I don't have a problem with legislation until it is so strong it disallows something flat out with no wiggle room... Anyhoo, I've gone on long enough. Good luck everyone! I'll do what I can.

~Buggzter
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Non-normal people make the world go 'round, not the other way 'round!