Up until now wildlife regulations at the Federal level have been pretty lenient. As

I've said in the past this not their doing. Florida along with California have been ground zero for anti ownership groups. This situation with the burms and the Glades was the chance they have been waiting for.



Number one it cost them no money to come after us. It's also very easy to get political backing something the animal industry is very much lacking. Does anyone know of any senators that have submitted letters on our behalf ? How about other political figures ? How many of these guys are on our side ? Is there a single reptile business or society that receives major corporation funding ? How about the media ? News papers , TV etc. Comedy Central alone donates hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to Peta , not to mention the hundreds of other media outlets animal right groups have formed tight bonds with. They do not have this type of support by accident.



I often hear people refer to Peta for example as animal rights nuts. The reality is the person who throws goat blood on somebody's mink coat is a nut. The people that pull the strings are intelligent extremely well organized individuals that are very goal oriented. Motivated . At this point do we have much more then our passion to fight with ? In the past the reptile field has been attacked pretty hard on a few occasions and has come out alright but at some point maybe very soon push just might come to shove.



Guys like Skip Snow and Gordon Rodda already made their minds up the moment they got the call. Does anyone really believe the Rodda map was the product of not understanding, a mistake ? Does anyone really believe Rodda even gives a crap about Burmese pythons at all ? This clown has a long standing affiliation with the Sierra Club one of Petas closest allies. What he got out of this was a chance to kill two birds with one stone. Overall what he accomplished was making a fool out of himself by trying to use a giant snake invasion to get the Sierra Clubs Global warming message some free press. Skip Snow was called in as the everglades specialist. I'll just say this was not an accidental choice and Kingsnake TOS will not allow me to express my opinion of this guy. While Rodda failed miserably on a scientific level he may have succeeded somewhat at the street level. Snows contribution based on his wanting to milk this for everything he can has been very detrimental.



Like I said right now it appears passion for what we do is about all we have going for us. It might be enough , this time. Who knows what will happen behind closed doors. When it comes to long range goals we will defiantly need more then that. I just hope people understand the full scope of what's going on. This go's way past just Burmese pythons.





Ernie Eison

Westwoodreptiles.com

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