Reptile & Amphibian Forums

HB 2414 is scheduled to be read before the House tomorrow! Now is the time for residents to call, fax and email their representatives and for out of staters to flood the TX House of Reps with polite calls, faxes and emails too.

Link to all the TX House of Representatives members:
http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/welcome.php
http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/welcome.php

This is on the floor now, and we need to hope that the communication we have had with our reps will pan out to defeat or amend this in the house. I would have to say that all those cards are being played now, we just need to see how good our hand was on this one.

Our focus now, just in case this thing escapes the house is to work with the Senate. We need to verify what committee in the Senate would receive this bill and start there with a focused and dedicated effort.

This bill has two selling points that need to be squashed…..

1 – (The conservation issue) Which is already addressed in a more manageable way with the commercial permit system and the white list. We also need to debunk the idea of roadways as wildlife sanctuaries, they are not managed that way at all, and the mortality rate far exceeds any take they are guarding against. It is also directly counter productive to our understanding of native Texas wildlife in that hobbyist can no longer contribute specimens found on right of ways to educational institutions, this will truncate our understanding distribution and variation of species in Texas.

2 – (The safety issue) Which has no facts to back it up, I assume they are saying that between a collector walking down a shoulder and traffic there is a high risk to individuals. But the assumption is not supported by the facts at all as there are no records of injuries or fatalities because somebody was on shoulder looking at an animal. If this safety issue is a concern then they need to keep all pedestrians off of vehicle right of ways, which as you can guess is not doable at all.

I know that we can expand these two concerns into a huge list of point by points, but I think we need focus our explanations into these two categories as much as possible. After all they are the categories they are using against us to try and pass this legislation.

I will keep my fingers crossed that this thing dies on the house floor, I hope that some of our sympathetic reps will speak up and ask questions and look for the real reasons that this is wanted by the people that are supporting it. This legislation will not survive under scrutiny, and I think everybody involved knows it. That is why the support behind it is this vague for our own good type stuff, not any kind of supporting data showing a need.

So, let us keep our fingers crossed and start thinking of a “Senate Strategy” just in case all our hard work playing catch up in the House does not pay off. The Senate we can hit this more proactively, maybe even get a chance to prepare and testify to committee about the wording it has now. After all, it will be better for us to have a plan and not need it, than to need a plan and not have it…

But we need to move fast, very fast....

Lance

Lance I sent you a private message.

I thought the salvage permit would only allow you to pick up dead animals off the road, but if they later on consider any animal on the road or right of way "as good as dead already" then maybe it could be used.

The problem is that we are getting treated very differently from other sportsmen in the State of Texas. I can understand the permit system and white list, and fully support those ideas to keep commercial collecting in check, without doing much to impact selling captive produced animals. But if they expect us to get a special permit just to hunt a non-game resource beyond our hunting license then they are in fact putting us in a different light than other hunters and that treatment is not acceptable. We should be treated with equal consideration.

Anybody know details on these salvage permits? I say that we ALL apply for one if they are cheap enough... I am sure the revenue for these permits is not earmarked for LE division anyway. We would in effect be showing support for TP&W processes, displaying numbers in our hobby, and making any enforcement of hunting along right of ways impossible.

Do not think that I am resigned to HB 2414 at all, even with that polished turd off the books getting the salvage permit may be a good play for down the road.

Lance

Lance,

You are DEAD WRONG about the "White List". The "White List" is a bad idea. The "White List" allows the commercial collection (selling of ONE animal) of species that we collect in high numbers (alternas, atrox and subocs). These are the animals that are under the highest collecting pressure thus they should not be on the "White List". The animals that are not on the "White List" are the animals that most people don't collect so they are already protected because of little or no demand. Many of the species not on the "White List" are very common so why protect them? The "White LIst" is self defeating. The "White List" will prevent the development of a captive "safety net" population of these species. It will deny people and researchers who want to work with these animals the right to do so and for what? This reg is backwards. It has no scientific or logic based reasoning. It is plain and simply putting in regs that serve no purpose and it causes restrictions where no restriction is dictated. All of us should be against the "White List". Suppose one day you want to breed, sell and work with Slimy salamanders. Sorry you can't because they are not on the "White List" and they are common as dirt. It is quite obvious that this reg is totally wrong and a very, very bad idea.

Take Care,

Mike Welker
El Paso, TX

It is still a regulation I can live with, and it beats hands down places like AZ that answered the same question by just saying you cannot sell native wildlife at all, and you can only have x number at a time. CA is not much better when they have size restrictions on what can be sold and limits on how many you can keep, in some cased you can only have one.... Good luck getting it to breed with itself.

Conservations concerns will be addressed one way or another because that is an "in" thing, what we need to do is find a compromise that we can live with. We will never get anywhere with a "just leave us alone" stance. And looking over that list it is not a bad start, if there is something missing you want added, name it and I will be there with you to try and get it added to the list.

And if I wanted to keep a 1000 slimy salamanders and breed them in captivity, even with this list I could knock myself out with all that I could stand. I just could not sell them, but then again who would buy them? This just is not the battle I decided to pick, not with 1309 and 2414 out there....

Lance