Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I originally brought up these ideas in the Venomous Forum but think it would be a good idea to bring it up here since in many CASES ALL privately kept herps and not just the hots are under legislative attack these days.

I basically feel we should take on the anti herpers in the way the gun rights groups took on the anti gun legislators and their corporate sponsors using the following three methods.

1. Put out newspaper and "letters to the editor" type counter propaganda emphisizing the positive aspects of herp keeping and that most keepers do do it responsibly despite the occasional sensational anti herper articles that are published about the few who don't. Also emphisize the necessity for mass euthanasia of animals if an outright ban were ever to be passed.

2. Emphisize the unforcability of outright bans on ANYTHING using the Christian Fundamentalist experementation with alchohol prohibition in the 1920s as the model. The truth is that laws in America have been eventually repealed by a process known in Libertarian, PaleoConservative, Constitutionalist and gun rights circles as "Jury Nullificaltion" where juries were repeatedly "hung" by activists in these areas until even the people who wanted the laws in question got sick of paying tax after tax after tax for one hung jury after another and were willing to compromise. (I mentioned prohibition here because it is the basic model for the use of "Jury Nullification" against a law outright banning a product or activity.)

3. Reduce the effectiveness of anti herp keeping legislators, zoo administrators and corporate sponsors by "outing" acts or moral terpetude, scandal and irresponsibility on their part therby forcing them to spend more time defending their "reputations" than proposing legislation. Since we are dealing mainly with the keeping of animals exposing possible scandalous irresponsibility on their part with domesitc animals like pit bulls, doberman pincers, rotwiellers and alsations/german shepherds would be especially damaging to theri reputations of being concerned for human life in passing such legislation. (These three dog breeds are more responsible for human death by companion animals than any herp related cause including salmanella, hots and large constrictors which are given the most frequent reasons for outright herp bans.)

How do you guys feel with such an approach to dealing with the anti herpers.

>>How do you guys feel with such an approach to dealing with the anti herpers.

I hope your comments were tongue-in-cheek. The tactics seem dirty to me (personal attacks on zoo administrators and legislators?). I think if you're trying to sway public opinion, you would turn many folks off with this approach.

Also, you don't call your own material "propaganda"--that's what you call the OTHER guy's stuff.
-----
Chris McMartin
www.mcmartinville.com
I'm Not a Herpetologist, but I Play One on the Internet

I'm NOT being tongue and cheak here. Especially where it concerns ANY animal irresponsibility on the part of the so called "professionals" and legislators who want to ban our herps. We have both wild rattlesnakes and loose alsations and dobermans where I live and I've been in at least a dozen NEAR DEATH attack situations from the dogs before I was old enough to drive and have the protection of a car around me which were only stopped with a sufficienly sized rock (usually takes about half FOOTBALL size to stop these beasts) or a BB gun and NONE from the rattlers. So your darn right I'll expose any "professional" or legislator who lets some dangerous animal wild or DOMESTIC "escape" while saying I'm too "amateur" or "inexperienced" to keep even non hot herps.

Who are these zoo administrators and corporate representatives that are trying to keep you from having non-venomous snakes? Just curious.

I would say any that are remotely associated with PETA or the American Humane Association. Both of these groups are for banning ALL Herps, not just hots.

Here is a good site to find the dirt on various politicians:
Look up the dirt on your favorite politicians here..

PETA doesn't believe in keeping animals in zoos, so I doubt a zoo official would be related to PETA.

Katrina

The official AZA position is that private individuals should not keep any wildlife as pets, including herps. As for scandals, I used to hang out at IHS symposiums a lot during the seventies and eighties. The zoo professionals (curators, directors)openly give you lots of ammo to use against them-womanizing, sex harassment, recreational chemical usage, violence (knife fights in dark parking lots). Its all there for you to observe and report.

This is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. (the recreational chemicals.) Even a so called "professional" mantaining something like a Tapain under the influence "recreational chemicals" is sure to cause an escape and cause some innocent person to come under the influence of the TAIPAN'S "chemicals" someday. Permit or no permit, ban or no ban there should be nothing less than LIFE IMPRISONMENT for that type of gross irresponsibility
if a death results from it.

It's interesting to note that the curator of the Luray Zoo in VA, not an AZA accredited institution, has never been bitten by a venomous snake, while curators/keepers of some AZA institutions have been bitten several times.

I worked at a natural history museum in college (non AZA), and although I only worked there for two years with three rattlesnakes, I was their primary care-taker for that time, and I'm quite proud of the fact that I can say I've never been bitten.

Katrina

I don't know if wireptile is smoking crack or just got released from the looney-bin, but I attended those IHS meetings during the same time period and still do attend the meetings.
And I never saw any of those things (behaviors) that he wrote about.It sounds like he is a disgruntled former zoo employee.
Sure, after the papers most folks got together at bars, etc. but sexual harrasment? knife fights in dark parking lots? (why would you do it in daylight? LOL!)

Just see the proposed ban/legislation on inherently dangerous animals below about to happen in NC and you'll see who some of these people are.

Many zoo officials began as hobbyist. Try PETA and the Greens.

The problem I see with shifting the blame to dogs, is that, well, it's just shifting blame. Why shift blame to another group of "scandalously irresponsible" animal owners, when we already have "scandalously irresponsible" herp owners?

What we need to do is get all of the animal owners, exotics, dog and cat breeders, horse and other livestock owners, pocket pet owners, bird owners, tropical fish owners, etc. etc. etc. to all work together towards the common goal of protecting our rights to own animals. Tearing down another group by "exposing" their irresponsible owners, does nothing to promote this idea.

We need responsible dog owners on our side, and we are not going to get that if they think "we" are attacking *their* hobby. What we need to do is promote responsible animal keeping, no matter what species, is concerned. Anything less results in a situation like the quote involving Christians in Nazi Germany " when they came for so and so, I did nothing" etc. "then when they came for me, there was no one left to help me".... Sorry, that's a butchered paraphrase, but hopefully you get the idea.

As for disease transmission, you can get toxoplasmosis from cats (amongst a whole host of other diseases, from both cats and dogs), you can get salmonella from herps (and also cats, dogs, and now "pocket pets", monkey pox from certain "pocket pets".......should be ban these animals? Absolutely NOT! Why?! Because in all cases, the true cause of the disease transmission was poor hygiene and/or poor husbandry - either by the owner, or the dealer, that didn't quarantine their animals properly.

Good hygiene and husbandry is the key to prevent disease transmission, and education is the key in teaching people, both how to properly care for these animals, and not to fear what they don't like or understand.

My advice - educate the public wherever you can. Letters to the editor are a great place to start, especially if the paper then becomes interested enough to do a story. Just try to be diligent in making sure they do a fair story, and don't cave in to tabloid journalism.

Join your state's Pet Law group, if you have one, if you don't have one, start one - and invite all animal owners to join. Give yourselves and other's a "head's up" when new anti-animal ownership bills come out - either at a local, state, or federal level. Then write you're politicians like crazy. Remember that you are their constituents too, and with enough voices raised, you *can* make a difference!

There are also numerous national organizations forming to address pet, exotic, or general animal ownership issues.

I can post websites a little bit later, for more info.

Lisa
Living Earth Environmental Education
@__/ __/ __ / __==< :>--<

>>
>>3. Reduce the effectiveness of anti herp keeping legislators, zoo administrators and corporate sponsors by "outing" acts or moral terpetude, scandal and irresponsibility on their part therby forcing them to spend more time defending their "reputations" than proposing legislation. Since we are dealing mainly with the keeping of animals exposing possible scandalous irresponsibility on their part with domesitc animals like pit bulls, doberman pincers, rotwiellers and alsations/german shepherds would be especially damaging to theri reputations of being concerned for human life in passing such legislation. (These three dog breeds are more responsible for human death by companion animals than any herp related cause including salmanella, hots and large constrictors which are given the most frequent reasons for outright herp bans.)
>>
>>How do you guys feel with such an approach to dealing with the anti herpers.

Yes I meant the Humane Society Of the United States (HSUS) NOT the American Humane Association. Sorry to not have answered this sooner
but I'm involved on several forums plus my computer software programming and research projects. One of those projects I will be releasing soon will be about the darker side of the HSUS and PETA, that includes killing animals tyhat were intended for adoption by the people who gave them to PETA and both organizations' involvement and covert support for ecological based terrorism.

Another project That I'm working on is about the evolutionary origins of the Elapidae.