zzzdanz, those turtle tunnels sound great, and I hope they do the trick. There are so many areas in Mass that used to be heaven on earth for turtles, but they got built up so much during the housing boom that a lot of habitat was lost and the roads through such area started seeing a lot more traffic.

There's got to be some way of running this that minimizes the loopholes and maximizes the benefit to the turtles, while still letting people enjoy the animals they've kept since childhood. I was thinking something along the lines of only allowing people to purchase PIT-tagged CB neonates of such species. The PIT tags should keep folks from conveniently switching identities on their animals, and neonates from most of these species (EBT/spotted/wood) are so rarely encountered in the wild they would be much more like to be CB. No solution will be foolproof. But looking at drivers licenses--the significant dangers to life and property posed by drunk drivers and the difficulty in policing the entire driving populace hasn't led to everyone's ability to own or drive a car being revoked, has it?

I don't fault the wildlife officers. They are doing an important and often thankless job. The problem lies in the laws they must enforce--laws that were made by the same greedy politicians who flip-flop on ecological issues when their cronies stand to benefit from a change of stance.

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