Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok, I can understand how breeding bp helps stop importation of wild specimens..
but my question is...does it really?

I look at the classifieds on this site and 98% of them are expensive designer snakes. $2000 and up.
Top the average "i want a ball python for a pet, nothing more" type of guy, $2,000 is alot to spend.

Most of the breeding is designer morphs, and most of the business of those breeders is done between breeders.

Does it REALLY help the wild population that much?

does it help inregards to the total number of imported animals, no. Most contries are currently exporting to their full CITES quota (or are doing there best to meet it). However the captive breeding of BP's does help to the extent that responsible individuals who research getting any exotic species as a pet will surely see the benifit of captive born animals. These individuals then order "normal" balls from local or national breeders or buy them at local shows. In the long run this should help wild populations as they will not need to replace there "pet" every year.

On another note, many countries are having problems meeting there quotas, even Bill Brant was 4000 CH animals short of his quota for last year. The cattle industry has also been placing tremedous pressure to stop the importation of all reptiles species as some type of tick (the name of this tick slips my mind right now) but it can do tremenodous damage to cattle.

I know that I may be slamed for this but I for one would like to see all CITES quotas cut in half right away and all imporation of balls stoped within the next3-5 years. It will have an effect on some new morphs coming in each year, but is overall much better for the species (and most others as well) as a whole. JMHO

Neil

That's a very interesting question.

On the one hand, morphs are the only good way to identify which animals are captive bred. I mean sure, there are some imported morphs, but it doesn't take long before the captive bred for a given morph way outnumber the imports of that morph. The high initial price of morphs makes sure that the decades of hard work that need to be done to make them readily available get done as quickly and efficiently as possible. Eventually morphs will be reasonable but never as cheap as normals, which can't really be distinguished from the 10's of thousands of imports every year. Morphs are the key for differentiating between imports and captive bred ball pythons.

On the other hand, how much of the wild collection of ball python eggs is searching for morphs with the normals being just a byproduct? Maybe even without the high dollar morphs they would still work just as hard to find every last normal to meet their quotas. Still I bet the morphs they find pay the bills compared to whatever little the trappers get for a normal. And of course the breeders benefit from all the morphs that are found sprinkled amount those hundreds of thousands of balls harvested from the wild over the years.