.....voted unanimously to ban our right to keep any of the species on the ROC list. If we had not been grandfathered in with animals we already had. As it stands now it would be easier for me to get a permit to own whatever venomous snake I wanted should I want one (with the proper training and caging of course.)...which I don't fyi, than it would be for me to legally own a burmese python or a retic or a nile monitor. In the past I owned two of those three species.
They have done little to address one of the major problems of the introduction of non-native reptiles which is careless practices by some importers. I have in fact seen price lists from some of those very same importers carrying animals I cannot own with no problem at all as long as they sell them out of state.
I don't believe the state should have done nothing but they reacted in a knee-jerk fashion and most likely have done more to drive keeping of rocs underground here in fl. It is about a 4 hour drive to the georgia border from the Orlando area where I live and any idiot who really wants a burm just to be cool can make the drive. Not to mention all the traffic between fl. to the northeast with many states in between where it is perfectly legal to buy them. (gee...I wonder where they get the fireworks..duh), I certainly hope for their sake when joe redneck's col snake gets too big for him he turns it in at one of their "amnesty days" (which seemed to have disappeared lately) then turn it loose in the glades. For the record I am now a libertarian (always was at heart) in spite of the protests of my multi-generational republican party. worse than that (nothing bad about the libertarian part) for the first ime in my life I voted for a democrat for my district for both the state assembly and for the state senate as no other candidates ran against the incumbent republicans. I hated that worse than my family (including my wife)but I'll be DAMNED if I'll ever vote in one of those bastards again.