Hi all,
Since obviously all of this negative state law crap has been hitting the fan, I have been doing alot of thinking.
I seriously dont see what the reptile hobby has to offer, that could even hold much ground against our moronic adversaries. As I do google searches and so forth, I see hundreds of pages explaining why these animals should NOT be kept. However, I only have seen a couple pages in defense for us,but not laying anything down explaining why we SHOULD be allowed. Can anyone point me in the direction of articles or documentation that even provides beneficial information regarding:
- Health (wild vs. captive bred)
- mental health (wild vs. captive)
- long term effects (wild vs. captive)
- Pet trade vs. wild populations
- How about anything PERIOD that would be beneficial to our side of things?
I think the primary reason why we lose are:
1.) We dont allow our voices to be heard
2.) When we do allow our voices to be heard, we don't have as much evidence to back us up.
It's amazing how one group of people can present a few small cases with some (not all) documentation that is false or mis-leading and drop us like a ton of bricks. I have written letters to the three individuals at the top of Eric's list and sent them out. However, during the process of writing the letter, I thought to myself, what reason's other than the plain jane obvious ones, can I provide that would even make a difference. We can Bi**h and moan about it all we want about how we dont like it. The bottom line is that they could care less what we like and what we dont. Unless we can provide good reason's why captive ownership by private citizens of potentially dangerous animals is beneficial (to something), then I would have to say that we are completely out of luck. Even zoo's are now starting to let go of their elephants because of these people.
If zoo's can take a beating, I dont see how we have a chance.
OH well, its only our hobby going down the drain, right? Nothing major.
Best Wishes,
Chris
P.S. I was serious about my above questions though, I would certainly be interested in reading documentation regarding the above list if anyone has an idea of where they can be found.
Thanks
