Reptile & Amphibian Forums

There has been some good debate concerning sustainable harvest of reptiles and amphibians here lately but I haven't seen, or missed, any projected figures put forth for sustainable collection for a species as well as any ideas as to how to fund these activities.

The idea has merit but I'm not convinced that enough $$ could be generated from licensing to pay for the F&G folks to properly monitor population health for such a variety of animals.

My good buddy Phil,

I posted an example of how it could work in a response to Katrina below. You have to group species that have similar range size (based on GAP habitat data), fecundity (decent data on this), commonality (most subjective), harvest data (tracking) and population health data (very limited). You would have a different management regime for each group. We definitely need better and more accurate data on most everything. The first thing to do is to track all harvest for at least five years. Then right away from that data you can weed out a whole mess of species for which there is no concern. You have to whittle down your list to about half a dozen to do research on.

Funding can be from permits and licenses specifically earmarked for herp research. We can initiate an excise tax similar to Pittman Robertson for herp products and live specimens. We can gain funds through license plate sales and other nongame fund raising ideas. But the best thing we can do is restructure wildlife agencies and their funding to better reflect the conservation of biodiversity through an ecosystem management approach. We should also be collecting impact fees from developers.

It would take a lot to do all the research needed but we don’t have to get that fancy yet. We can use known data for species to come up with some decent management scenarios that would conserve herp populations while allowing harvest. But all this kind of makes no sense with development out of control and the impacts of roads not mitigated.

Your pal,

Welkerii
El Paso, TX

Mike, so darn good to hear from you again.....

Your response is not without its merits and certainly is in the right direction but one key ingredient that impedes ideas of this sort is funding. The funding solutions you presented are a good first step but would likely fall short of being able to pay for this initiative. Working with a variety of private and public organizations has given me a bit of insight as to the cost structure required to make something like this happen (costs were much higher than I envisioned). Game hunters benefit from having large numbers to spread the cost of licensing around and I wonder just how many people we could realistically license for herp harvesting.

I'm not trying to be a buzzkill as I think the idea is pointing in the right direction but I wonder how much the average person would be willing to pay for their herp collecting license.

Either way it was good to talk to you again.

Your bff ,
Phil