Whoops. Sorry.

Although I do think if we focus on that we'll get better results. They respond to money, not so much anything else.

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"Let's eat, Grandpa!"
"Let's eat Grandpa!"

Punctuation. It saves lives.

There are other actions that could be taken the state of Hessen in Germany just passed a law restricting people without a licence from keeping venomous animals (scorpions and species of trantulas included) and large snakes (Burms, Recs, Anacondas). People who wish to breed these animals will require a another type of licence. These must be provided before the sale of these animals within the state and are only avalible though goverment office.

The good part was that the Hessen worked with the German clus (Dearge and Dght) to work our the list of species.

Thier are a fair nubmber of poor keepers out there, While in a good shop picking up a male Boa C. C. The shop keeper (a friend of mine) was talking with another coustomer. Who had his animals taken by the Vet department after a suprise inspection of his house. Apparantly he had made the changes needed and would now be allowed to house animals again and was inquiring about Burms. Needless to say my friend stated later to me that he wouldn't be getting them from him.

Fish and wildlife inspectors are already there and are fully capible of doing the job (the trainning would be minnimal). Their not talking about a all out ban just import and shipping over state lines. How hard would it be to check a licence if someone needed a snake that was on the list shipped or imported. They have it in place for plants and other animals why not these. And with money as a motivation they can charge for the licence. I would say it's win-win if something must be done.

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http://schlange-titus.de
http://dearge.de
http://dght.de

This seems like another attempt by legislators to justify their existence. How about enforcing the laws we have? If someone's 12' Burmese gets loose, cite them for reckless endangerment. We don't need another law to clamp down on liberty. Here in South Carolina, we recently (last year) had a proposed law shot down proposed permits, microchips, insurance, signage (like a sign posted telling everybody you have snakes is going to keep people out) and so on. Keeping anything other than an anole would be cost prohibitive.

I'm writing my letter.
CK

This has nothing to do with legislators. The lacey act is already passed. It is up to the secretary of the interior to interpret this law and decide which species are added to the list.
I'm not sure writing letters to your congressman would be as helpful as doing what is stated in the federal registry as far as responding by april 30th to the channels described.

I have to say that I'm a little dissapointed with the idea that,"Hey, it's only Florida." Florida probably has more a diversity in wildlife than any other state. In Florida they have everything from Deer to Alligators to Manatees. Maybe Alaska can contend.
Here in Georgia, I've seen the devastation that foreign species can inflict. Here, It's mainly with fish. Someone dumps some non-native fish into a lake and the native fish are wiped out!
Really, How many stories are there out there about man bringing animals into an enviroment where they don't belong with ruinous results?
Frankly, I care more about the native animals of Florida and their survival than I do about how much money people make off the snake trade.
Snake roundups is a bandaid solution. Actually I don't know what the solution is. The damage has been done. I don't believe pythons can ever be completely eradicated now.

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Git'er Done!

I am just thinking this out loud and have not given it much thought.

If we ban the importation of these snakes, and the transfering across state lines, would this possibly weed out the irresponsible owners,, the ones that buy them on impulse , the ones that have no idea what they are getting into.

It would obviously put the demand up higher for them and then the prices would skyrocket, so not just everyone would be willing to drop a grand or two at a whim,, and the people who spend that kind of money usually take care of their investments.

This is just from a rescuers point of view,, and a thought that has not been thought out all that well, lol. Please dont think I am a hater or anything, lol
I think it would be an interesting discussion to hear other peoples points on this.

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I have sucker tattood on my forehead

Maybe, Nicole, but my experience has always been otherwise. The people who have enough to drop a couple of grand on an exotic animal tend to expect them to be easy pieces of decoration, and the animal suffers.

I'll never forget when I was a kid talking to someone who ran an exotic rescue at a farm in, I want to say oklahoma. She was talking about people who spent thousands of dollars on leopards or tigers, just to declaw them and remove their teeth. They were like pieces of furniture, and when the owners got tired of them, she'd take them. But the poor things were living off of mush, because they'd already been mutilated to that point.

But these were the people who went to the trouble to find a dealer and pay big bucks for these animals.

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"Let's eat, Grandpa!"
"Let's eat Grandpa!"

Punctuation. It saves lives.

To whom it may concern,

I read that you want to ban all pythons & boas, is that because of all of those people out there that let them go in the wild? What you should do is have people fill out papers at the store they buy the snake from and already have the snakes registered, that way everyone could keep track of them. There are so many people that love their snakes and their reptiles, and all of those people take very good care of them.
There is that one law now where u have to have a liscense to have big snakes and a chip put in to them so that you know who it belongs to, it should be that way with every big snake from the moment you buy them, that's why you should register them at the store before you get to take them home, they do that with birds, and so many of them end up outside.
By taking Boas and Pythons away from us and the stores, the United States will lose money from the taxes that they get from stores and the new liscense for big snakes. Everyone that breeds, sells and owns the reptiles and owns pet stores love the animals, and the new law that will help us when we sell them to people. We (and the pet stores that already sell reptiles) tell customers that when they buy them that these burmese and some boas will get big and will be bigger in time when they grow. We ask if they have enough room for them and ask them what they would do if they can't handle a snake that gets that big. We would let them know they could bring them back if they get to out of hand, but as for what i am trying to say is let the one law be, and forget about that takes our rights and love for these reptiles away. Just think of how much money the economy will be losing, and also think of how many people there will be that will be extremelly upset and angry if this new law does pass?
I am just asking, as are many other people, to just rethink this through. We love our reptiles like our own children, and like many of you love your dogs and cats.
Sincerely, Dravin

hmm..banning snakes in the whole country to protect the environment in one or two states thats they can survive. why not just ban them in that state?

hey, theres more harmful things then snakes out there.
pit bulls, Rottweilers, and Presa Canarios account for more then 70% of the 5 million dog related injuries a year in the US. more then 800k of these require medical attention and more then 1k a day require hospital visits, and many of those 1k are young children bitten in the face. 26 people die as a result of dog attacks each year.

as a comparison, WILD snakes in the US only bite around 8k people a year and only about a dozen die as a result.

boy...heaven forbid a snake gets loose in florida and eats a cat when theres millions of dog bites a year.

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This is not an issue of what animals bite the most. It is about an ecosystem. I could care less about how many people get bitten or how many cats get eaten.
There are those snakes that are native to the region and now they will have to compete for resources, not only among themselves ,but now with these newcomers who don't belong there! There's only so much to go around.
Worst case scerario? This could be an extinction event for some native species! South florida is very isolated to the rest of the world enviroment wise. An animal cannot escape east or west, Only north. And northern Florida is nothing like southern Florida! Jacksonville and Miami have completely different climates!
I will say no more.

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Git'er Done!

Well sadly with globalization and ease of travel we are never going to stop the spread of non-native species into habitats. Look at most of the crops grown in the U.S right now- many are not native to this part of the world. The rat came from Europe, diseases from Europe also wiped out most of the native homo sapiens in this hemisphere as well. So I think we may be a little late to be worrying about species contamination at this point. I can't say I don't support the idea of licenses for the especially large constrictors and iguanas. But I do find it slightly on the unconstitutional side to ban every boa and python like that. Why don't they try to ban irresponsible owners instead?