Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Today's Orlando Sentinel newspaper has an editorial about the "invasion" of non-native snakes into Florida. I need each of you to read the opinion and then go online and vote on their opinion . . . which I hope is a thumbs DOWN. The link to vote is http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/ They post the results in the paper tomorrow. So far less thann 50 have voted but the vote is like 92% in favor of banning our snakes. Lets make sure they hear from us!

Text of the editorial at link:

"What we think: Stop the invasion
June 22, 2009
Let's say a snake, originally imported from another country as a pet, gets loose and starts breeding in the wilds of Florida.

Under current law, the federal government can declare that species "injurious," which means it would become illegal to import it. But in typical bureaucratic fashion, such a declaration can take up to four years to complete..........

Link

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Alice Cobb
Florida Reptile Room

Edited on June 22, 2009 at 18:20:47 by PHGinger.

Thank you for posting this. It truly shows the ignorance we are up against. I really wish they had but the author of that, I would have loved tohavegiven them some actual facts.

I live here in Orlando and I am appaled by this article. My vote has been cast.

Thank you,
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Scott
"The most powerful person never has to use it"

I just used all of my employees terminals to log 7 votes and I changed it from 30% against to 40% against.

Please vote as much as you can!

Thanx

Kevin

Thank you for posting this. I just voted twice against their opinion. I find it interesting that they present their "facts" against exotic animals, and ignore that there are other far more common pet animals that have wreaked havoc on the environment and would not have been banned by the bills they support.

They must have removed the voting because it wasn't going well.

You can e-mail Senator Bill Nelson and tell him to remove his bill, S 513. I e-mail him once a day.

Bill@billnelson.senate.gov
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Jesse Jeffcoat
941-322-4581
Gopher Hill Herps
http://mysite.verizon.net/prissypants1/index.html

I live in Miami, I just voted against
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Neutiquam erro. Hostes alienigeni me abduxerunt.

This is the BS results they published.
They completely changed the results to suit their agenda.

Thumbs up: 95.1%

Thumbs down: 4.9%

And the crappy part is, everyone in here could email them calling them out on it, and they won't post one email in their "news"paper. However, they'll happily post some poorly written letter that makes the reptile community look like a bunch of yokels. There once was a time when it was a journalists job to report the news. now it's their job to make the news.

Those percentages are from a different poll if you look closely, they have not posted the results to the page yet but the percentages are available if you hit the link below where you vote.
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Thanks,

Frank Roberts

.

when I voted it said 80 percent thumbs down...the final results are like 95 % thumbs up....
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Thanks,

Frank Roberts

We won the poll but that is a miniscule victory.

Still very scared!

Kevin

Where do you vote?

Well, they've published the result of that vote, and it's 90-someodd% "thumbs up" to something like 4.1% "thumbs down".

Vote fraud much?

~Bruce

>>Today's Orlando Sentinel newspaper has an editorial about the "invasion" of non-native snakes into Florida. I need each of you to read the opinion and then go online and vote on their opinion

The final published results were 95.1% "thumbs up" and 4.9% "thumbs down". We monitored the results until they closed voting yesterday afternoon. The final as of close of voting was:

Vote on our editorial
· Do you agree with our opinion?

Thumbs up (326 responses)

37.8%

Thumbs down (537 responses)

62.2%

863 total responses (Results not scientific)

I called the editor for an explanation... she said that even though they did not close voting till yesterday PM, that the count ceased at 5PM Monday. She agreed to let USARK do a rebuttal. Stay tuned...
AW

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Andrew Wyatt
President USARK

I think it was before 1 p.m. But I looked several times and could not find any place to vote all afternoon (yesterday).