Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have read soome of the posts below and wanted to make a short comment on the issue. I do not want to get into a war over this. Everyone is entitled to there opinions. I also import these animals myself and do not want to come off like I am in defense of the entire situation. So I will try to make my opinions short and sweet.

First of all there are quotas on the amount of Royal pythons you can import from Africa. So we will not deplete the population of Royal pythons. If it seems that is happening I am sure authorities will adjust quotas or stop the importation of Royal pythons all together. I am not a deer hunter, but it is very similar to compare. If we were not allowed to hunt deer, deer would literally die of starvation from over population. Royal pythons are reproducing in such numbers in Africa, it is very similar. Its a fine line, but I think over population and animals dieing from starvation would be an issue if they were not exported from Africa. And proper quotas should keep that in check.

To answer an important statements that was made in a rediculous post below... 1/3 rd of the imported animals DO NOT die in shipping. If that were the case Fish and Wildlife would give you so many fines your head would spin off. You must keep in mind each and every shipment requires a health certificate and an inspection on both ends of the shipment. I know in NY from experience, that Fish and Wildlife do not play games when it comes to the welfare of the animals. If an animal arrived dead on my end, I HAVE PROBLEMS! Thank god they are usually very healthy upon arrival.

I truely believe that the animals that are imported would do much better if people properly cared for them. If you are going to buy a snake YOU MUST BE RESPONSIBLE ENOUGH TO KEEP IT ALIVE. These are live animals. They NEED FOOD AND WATER. So when you purchase 1000 baby Royal pythons, or 100 adult Royal pythons, make sure you can handle it and properly care for the amount you are buying. Dont get caught up in the idea of making a million dollars profit, because you DONT, and if the animals are mistreated and die anyway, you are losing either way.

BOTTOM LINE - dont buy an animal if you are not going to take care of it.

First off, even IF 1/3 of the babies died during importation, that would still be a far lower mortality than they would face in the wild.

However, the deer hunting analogy is WAY off base. Deer are not exploited commercially. Historically, when an an animal begins to be exploited by humans for commercial gain, that's when its days are numbered! CITES quotas are NOT necessarily based on good science and sustainability. It definitely does not follow that "if there are quotas, then we will not be depleting the ball pythons". The CITES quota process is fraught with political influence in the third world, and moreover, do not and, at present, CAN not reflect the situation in particular localities.

To suggest that balls would "die of starvation" and "overpopulate" if importation were stopped, is a peculiar notion. What was happening for the millions of years before we so benificently stepped in and offered the "helping hand" of removing tens of thousands of their number every year?

That being said, I am NOT advocating, necessarily, an end to importation. But in order to evaluate what is best for the animals and the hobby, we must begin to think more precisely about the issues involved.
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Brad Chambers

The Avalanche has already started-it is too late for the pebbles to vote....

I just wanted to reply to this particular comment:

"To suggest that balls would "die of starvation" and "overpopulate" if importation were stopped, is a peculiar notion. What was happening for the millions of years before we so benificently stepped in and offered the "helping hand" of removing tens of thousands of their number every year?"

Overpopulation is greatly due to habitat loss. These animals, as well as deer, suffer great losses to their habitats, forcing more and more animals to survive on smaller and smaller areas of land. Deforestation and expansion of human communities contributes greatly to this. Millions of years before we offered this "helping hand", we were not also offering a "helping hand" in contributing to their habitat loss, essentially contributing to their overpopulation. We almost owe it to them to lessen the cramping of their habitats, being that we've taken a great part in causing it.

I, in no way, am an advocate for either side of this issue, simply because on any and all sides there are too many opinions to be had, and not enough solutions.

This is just my two cents.

AS I said in my last sentence.

DONT BUY THE ANIMALS IF YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE ENOUGH TO TAKE CARE OF THEM AND KEEP THEM ALIVE!

Dont buy too many if you cant handle them, and treat each one like it was the $5,000. morph that makes it.

Dont think because they are $5-10. that they do not need the same care as a $5,000. animal. That is all

If these animals are in the proper hands they do very well. Remember all of the original mutation came stright out of the bush and did very well. Creating our entire genetic mutation list.

"Overpopulation is greatly due to habitat loss. These animals, as well as deer, suffer great losses to their habitats, forcing more and more animals to survive on smaller and smaller areas of land. Deforestation and expansion of human communities contributes greatly to this. Millions of years before we offered this "helping hand", we were not also offering a "helping hand" in contributing to their habitat loss, essentially contributing to their overpopulation. We almost owe it to them to lessen the cramping of their habitats, being that we've taken a great part in causing it."

My point is that I don't believe there IS overpopulation. There is an ecological concept called "carrying capacity"-a given tract of habitat can only support so many adult ball pythons per acre. Any baby balls produced by said population, above those needed to replace losses of adults, are "surplus" Let's say, for the sake of argument, that each acre produces "5" (all these numbers are just plugged in for the sake of argument-it doesn't matter what the actual numbers are vis' a vis' my point) surplus babies per year per acre. Then 100,000 acres will produce 500,000 surplus baby balls per year-that is, that many babies can be eaten by predators, die by other means, and/or be taken for the pet trade-with no danger to the parent population.

But to argue that humans are decreasing the available habitat in no way supports continued exploitation of populations. If you remove half of that 100,000 acres, all of a sudden you only have a base of 250,000 baby balls to exploit! Loss of habitat makes the problem far worse, not better. If Ghana had, a decade ago, a base 1 million acres of habitat, but today that number is, say, only 2/3 of that, then the potential "harmless" take of balls is reduced by that amount, 1/3.

Further, I would argue that no one has a good idea what the actual numbers are, so it would seem that the reasonable thing to do would be to set very low quotas, that all involved would agree are harmless. At least until much better science is available.
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Brad Chambers

The Avalanche has already started-it is too late for the pebbles to vote....

As a wildlife biologist, I am a bit familiar with examples of deer populations that have boomed and crashed due to human intervention. They cannot be accurately compared to ball pythons. For starters, the comparison is between a prey species and a predatory one.

One of the basic principles of population dynamics is that predator populations are controlled by prey populations, not the other way around. What drives ball python populations is the number of rodents and other prey species in their habitat. My understanding is that BPs do very well when humans replace the native environment with crops; rodent populations increase and so do the ball pythons.

I do not agree that the CITES process involves adequate monitoring of wild populations. I suspect, without hard scientific evidence, that most wild populations of BPs are not at risk. However, I have enough experience with wildlife agencies and politics to know that policies are not always based on good science.

We can speculate all day, but without population surveys, we are just guessing. I know that some research has been done, but I don't have that information with me.

This is a worthwhile topic. We should continuously evaluate the affects of our actions and the actions of our "industry" to preserve the African populations and promote responsible care of captives.

As an aside, I am more concerned about the genetic mixing caused by African agents returning spent females to the wild without regard for the place of capture. We stand to lose genetic diversity from this practice.

Just my $0.02.

Chris
www.coilsserpents.com

no post
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Brad Chambers

The Avalanche has already started-it is too late for the pebbles to vote....

>>I am more concerned about the genetic mixing caused by African agents returning spent females to the wild without regard for the place of capture. We stand to lose genetic diversity from this practice

That's an excellent point, imagine if someone tried this with L. alterna? It would be considered an ecological disaster by the reptile community. Not to mention, bringing all these animals in to holding facilities in close contact certainly increases the possibility of disease transmission. Like it has been said before, there's many things wrong with the wild reptile industry. The most difficult thing to define, IMO is where to start. A concerted effort on the part of the community could make a difference, but would the efforts be better spent on the Asian Turtle situation where extinction is a reality, if not a certainty for some species right now? As bad as some aspects of the regius trade are, they aren't what I would consider an imperiled species....In a perfect world I guess we could work toward fixing everything, in the real world I wonder if we should use our life preservers for the ones who are actually drowning as we speak.

" My understanding is that BPs do very well when humans replace the native environment with crops; rodent populations increase and so do the ball pythons. '

That's just it. The deforestation that has taken place in West Africa is considerable but the forest isn't being displaced by shopping malls . It's agricultural deforestation. This is great for the snakes . The best possible population surveys are done every season and that is the hunters catch just as many just as easy as they did the previous year. Until this changes there is no problem. While the numbers might seem huge the realty is what gets taken for the live trade represents only a fraction of the population from a fraction of the range. The large mammals , natural foliage on the other hand in these areas ........ in the toilet. Where there used to be ball pythons there's still ball pythons. Where there use to be lions , elephants etc......... there's ball pythons. Pretty much the last thing they have to worry about in West Africa is ball python population density's. But for the those do ,

The demand for imported baby balls and everything West Africa ships has dropped considerably . The past few years the bottom fell out pretty fast for baby import sales. I don't see that trend changing and my guess is the live export numbers will go way down anyway. At that point my guess is wild ball pythons may represent the new Asian turtle market .

Ernie Eison
Westwoodreptiles.com

"First of all there are quotas on the amount of Royal pythons you can import from Africa. So we will not deplete the population of Royal pythons. If it seems that is happening I am sure authorities will adjust quotas or stop the importation of Royal pythons all together."

It's a good thing that the importation on all the island iguana's stopped before the pet trade damaged their numbers to almost extinct levels.

"I am not a deer hunter, but it is very similar to compare. If we were not allowed to hunt deer, deer would literally die of starvation from over population. Royal pythons are reproducing in such numbers in Africa, it is very similar. Its a fine line, but I think over population and animals dieing from starvation would be an issue if they were not exported from Africa. And proper quotas should keep that in check."

Now that is the most rediculous comments I have ever heard. The reason that there are so many bp's available as babies is because the africans gather all the gravid females they can and then all the clutches of eggs possible and then hatch out the babies preventing the natural predation that would normaly occur. this also has an effect on the predators that feed on baby bp's and thus causing a decrease of numbers on those predators. I am not against bringing in ball pythons just the number that is currently being imported and for some reason people are importing gravid females which is just crazy as this eliminates a substantial number of animals over the natural life of those females.
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons, boas, dogs, cats, fish, an amel tiger retic female, a couple sulcatas and a few other odds and ends.

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

i've learned much from reading the various emails. i have no interest in imports or importing and am too ignorant on the africa / importing situation to have an educational opinion. but i always believe relying on others to fix things, such as if they notice ball pythons in the wild declining, they'll stop importing until the native populations are up again, is very often simply not true. i think we get used to the fish and game dept of the usa doing such a great job keeping an eye on various populations of native (or now native) animals - but still in the usa, like the rest of you, i've noticed in many places, a decline in reptile populations. and not just places where housing is going up. and if its happening in the more rural areas of a country like ours, it'll happen in africa all the easier. there are people who advertise on this site, who will take a rat snake or a kingsnake out of the wild just to make $15. i dont care who you are - that's wrong. right now there is a ringneck snake up for sale - i give that animal 4 months before its a goner. and every individual is part of the whole, part of the problem. africa might be too convoluted to figure out easily, but we all could start closer to home fixing the world reptile problem. if there are plenty of breeding colonies in private collections, buy from a breeder. the oddest thing is that many who sell wild ratsnakes right out of their backyard list their religous beliefs on their websites, bible passages, etc. - religion and ethics can often be two very different things.

Some real good points made here. Great discussion.
I personally don't care for Ball Pythons, but I've been into reptiles as long as I can remember. I'm 55. The more things change the more they remain the same.
jsc
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"As hard as I've tried, just can't NOT do this"
John Crickmer