Re: Conservation Rant

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Posted by Bob on April 21, 2000 at 22:00:15:

In Reply to: Conservation Rant posted by Nigel Carter on April 21, 2000 at 16:01:35:

Define smugglers. Does that denote the clown who cleans out a pond of spotted turtles in a state where they are protected and claims they came from a non protected state? No, that's a mercenary pig, too stupid to make it as a used car salesman. How about the person collecting and or exporting these spiders? Has the letter of the law as well as the intent of the law and CITES been followed? Who knows. There are those who would bestow accolades of heroism on this person because, although de facto, they got them out of rather certain harms way. Take your pick, slash and burn, agricultural expansion, food market harvest? In any case who says that endemics BELONG to one country, esp. when that country affords ineffective at best protection.
Same for the Asian species. Are the Bangaladeshi traders selling all the CITES I stuff to the Chinese smugglers? Do they then get a good guy hat if the send the same stuff to responsible breeders here in the West?

Yes, I think you are right, in the not too distant future, the bulk of surviving genetic material will be in the hands of passionate private breeders in the form of F2, F3 etc. progeny. The result of smuggler procurement; in many cases yes. The nano percentage of harvested turtles that end up in the pet trade versus the soup pot, I think, condones the activity of the pet keepers and utlitmately and preferably the private breeders. BTW where the hell is the AZA throughout all this, oh, right, Asian turtles don't make great t shirts.

I think the semantic problem here is that both CITES and the ESA (with USF&W zealots enforcing it) were drafted at a time of a different world than exists today. The Indonesian fires, Three rivers damn project, food market harvesting were never contemplated then. But here they confront us and current conservation dogma is blowing it man.

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: Define smugglers. Does that denote the clown who cleans out a pond of spotted turtles in a state where they are protected and claims they came from a non protected state? No, that's a mercenary pig, too stupid to make it as a used car salesman. How about the person collecting and or exporting these spiders? Has the letter of the law as well as the intent of the law and CITES been followed? Who knows. There are those who would bestow accolades of heroism on this person because, although de facto, they got them out of rather certain harms way. Take your pick, slash and burn, agricultural expansion, food market harvest? In any case who says that endemics BELONG to one country, esp. when that country affords ineffective at best protection. : Same for the Asian species. Are the Bangaladeshi traders selling all the CITES I stuff to the Chinese smugglers? Do they then get a good guy hat if the send the same stuff to responsible breeders here in the West? : Yes, I think you are right, in the not too distant future, the bulk of surviving genetic material will be in the hands of passionate private breeders in the form of F2, F3 etc. progeny. The result of smuggler procurement; in many cases yes. The nano percentage of harvested turtles that end up in the pet trade versus the soup pot, I think, condones the activity of the pet keepers and utlitmately and preferably the private breeders. BTW where the hell is the AZA throughout all this, oh, right, Asian turtles don't make great t shirts. : I think the semantic problem here is that both CITES and the ESA (with USF&W zealots enforcing it) were drafted at a time of a different world than exists today. The Indonesian fires, Three rivers damn project, food market harvesting were never contemplated then. But here they confront us and current conservation dogma is blowing it man.

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