well... my take is that the interstate commerce permit was never really made for snakes. there are plenty of loop holes in it (gifts, moving out of state, etc...) which it does not address. the number one problem with indigo depletion is development which results in loss of habitat/habitat fragmentation. the developers hire a bunch of lawyers and ties up fws in the courts. in the end, it's easier to go after the individual hobbyists. if they wanted to protect indigos then the eastern indigo will have to be listed as endangered requiring a cites 1 permit. it costs a pretty penny for fws to do field studies to come up with cites 1 designation.

as far as the private hobbyist goes, it didn't help any when certain unscrupulous breeders deliberately inbred/line bred indigos for certain traits (ie. redder throats) back in the days. i heard the recent mitochondrial studies on the captive indigo population shows a pretty tight cluster of related animals and very few outliers which is very bad news.

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