Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I used to live in Texas in the 70's-late 80's. I had a lot of pre act stuff and followed the procedures for documenting it with TPW. I was issued letters of permission to keep and breed al of them. I live in Blaine, WA now and breed these now protected herps each year. Since none of them, including the Texas tortoise, are on any Federal list, I can sell them without any problems. I'm just wondering if anyone else is still breeding any tx lyre, cat eyed, speckled racers, torts, BB geckos or retic collareds? I never ever see any of this stuff up for sale here other than the occasional tx indigos.

No - at the time the breeding community was small and few people
kept stock from that era. Once they were listed the taps closed.
The 90s saw a huge explosion in hobbyist and commercial breeders
but with the ban in place there was no place to get breed stock
and the interests in the breeding community started to move heavily into exotic species rather than natives. Although there are still many people that breed natives, most are more interested in more marketable species such as kingsnakes, pines, and rats, or their sport varieties such as the rainbow of corn snakes.

Its a real shame too as it has limited our knowledge base about the breeding specifics of those species. There are some die hards that keep the native stock going, probably the most well known being the grayband crew over in the alterna forum.

I myself got out of native Texas species once Texas started their current permitting system, not wanting to give law enforcement an open permit to inspect my premises on their whim.
I was penalized by TP&W for taking a hard line in the run up to the new regs and figured I would be high on their "visit" list
and frankly didn't want the hassles and headaches.