Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This came from another board!!! Sounds funny and assanine when you reads Ron Trempers case.

The following is two posts regarding this persons talk with TPWD officials

The purpose behind this bill was to prevent Texas from being stripped of its turtles and other reptiles to sell them as culinary delicacies in the Asian marketplace. There were a number of suppliers who had contracted with collectors in Texas to collect hundreds of thousands of turtles of every size shape and color and ship them to asia to be sold for thousands of dollars. The state wildlife agencies decided to request the ban at least until they could study the effect of such practices and implement suitable limitations on takings. At the rate turtles were being collected and shipped overseas, by the time anybody got funding and initiated a proper population study, the damage to the reptile populations might already been too severe.

Bottom line...the wildlife of the state belong to the people collectively and not to asians in need of turtle soup to get it up. We need this ban to allow tpwd to do the necessary research and then put sensible limits on take so that true collectors can still harvest reptiles, without leaving entire populations at risk of beings sucked up to satisfy the giant vacuum consuming rare and exotic wildlife of all types and flavors in Asia.

My information came from somebody within TPWD. Since they are forbidden from publicly lobbying for or against legislation, I can't give you a name or contact info to go with it as I don't want to get them in trouble. They have a similar set of regs to cover reptile commercial harvesting that either just went before the commission or is about to go before the commission. I think your point is correct in that they do not know how such a harvest could impact the population, so they want to prevent it until it can be properly studied and regulated. The person I spoke to was well aware that there are honest research and hobbyist collectors out there and TPWD does not want to prevent them from pursuing their interests. But until they have some way to separate the hobbyists and researchers from the commercial harvesters, the ban is the proper way to make sure they are protecting the resource.

by not consulting with Herpetologists to come up with a reasonable and amicable solution to this problem.

We had the potential to help them with the wording. The either neglected or refused to to solicit that help. Now they are THIS close to losing critical funding because of it.

Also, we can get the names, and we will. We will deal with each of these individuals one at a time.

Post number says "I have no clue" because the anti-hunting reg will not impact the turtle trade very much at all.

and post number two "my friend broke the rules and could get in trouble to make this happen"

I kind of like it... Gives me hope any FOI request..

Lance

If that were true WHY did they not use the word TURTLES in the legislation.

oh oh I can answer that, because it is not true. That is yet another blatant lie in the vein of CYA.

HB 12, which contains HB 1309 and HB 2414, does nothing to address Turtles and the Turtle harvest in the least.

The action of which Mr. Tremper speaks was a change in the wildlife code that is set by the TPWD commissioners. Since these
changes were requested by Matt Wagner at TPWD in his role at TPWD
it is incorrect to say that this was not "lobbied for" by TPWD.
Since this was not legislation but changes to the TPWD code there is no reason to protect anyones anonymity at TPWD as the ban on lobbying only applies to legislation, not changes to the wildlife codes.

>>This came from another board!!! Sounds funny and assanine when you reads Ron Trempers case.
>>
>>The following is two posts regarding this persons talk with TPWD officials
>>
>>
>>The purpose behind this bill was to prevent Texas from being stripped of its turtles and other reptiles to sell them as culinary delicacies in the Asian marketplace. There were a number of suppliers who had contracted with collectors in Texas to collect hundreds of thousands of turtles of every size shape and color and ship them to asia to be sold for thousands of dollars. The state wildlife agencies decided to request the ban at least until they could study the effect of such practices and implement suitable limitations on takings. At the rate turtles were being collected and shipped overseas, by the time anybody got funding and initiated a proper population study, the damage to the reptile populations might already been too severe.
>>
>>Bottom line...the wildlife of the state belong to the people collectively and not to asians in need of turtle soup to get it up. We need this ban to allow tpwd to do the necessary research and then put sensible limits on take so that true collectors can still harvest reptiles, without leaving entire populations at risk of beings sucked up to satisfy the giant vacuum consuming rare and exotic wildlife of all types and flavors in Asia.
>>
>>
>>
>>My information came from somebody within TPWD. Since they are forbidden from publicly lobbying for or against legislation, I can't give you a name or contact info to go with it as I don't want to get them in trouble. They have a similar set of regs to cover reptile commercial harvesting that either just went before the commission or is about to go before the commission. I think your point is correct in that they do not know how such a harvest could impact the population, so they want to prevent it until it can be properly studied and regulated. The person I spoke to was well aware that there are honest research and hobbyist collectors out there and TPWD does not want to prevent them from pursuing their interests. But until they have some way to separate the hobbyists and researchers from the commercial harvesters, the ban is the proper way to make sure they are protecting the resource.