I have mixed feelings about this whole situation, In reality, if everyone was concerned about the animals in general, u wouldn't be in the hobby. If there was no demand in captivity, there would be no demand for the WC trade. Sure you bought a Cb baby, but somewhere down the line, it came from a WC animal, and it wont ever stop unless it becomes illegal to import or keep them.
You can try to justify your points, but truthfully, keeping any animal in Captivity that is not endangered, and is not for zoological or scientific researh rather just for pure "enjoyment", holds weight in the root of the problem.
How much different are you from the guy in who-knows-where, taking gravid females or breeding them for a "livng" to support the pet trade, where as we for "enjoyment" breed our animals to sell and make a buck or two.
At least hes doing it for a livelyhood to support his family and at least hes taking an animal that would otherwise be slaughtered and giving us the babies. Just maybe, guys like that, are giving us a few more snake years.
In reality, many ppls goals in this hobby is to "Breed" each species we choose to work with, not many ppl here breed the one time to "experience" it and move on. Rather, they breed the animal every year, and if a male or female shows no interest one will simply sell it off. Because, in most cases, ppl dont want to keep an animal who wont breed, or they dont want to wait any longer for it to reach an adult size to breed, so they sell it for an adult of another species.
True, Cb can be seen better then WC's in some respects, but without Wc's ,somewhere down the line, no matter how far it is, for many species or locales, there will be way to much imbreeding, more then whats already going on. Eventually, two unrelated wc adults die, but all there offspring from all those years (with the same genes) will be floating around, and as all those original adults die off, some from age, but most from sicknesses, the gene pool suddenly becomes smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and so on.
So prices for unrelated animals sky rocket, no one can afford them, so its either get some defects or get out of the hobby. and sooner or later. theres nothing left of the hobby. So not only is the population in the wild gone, (because we all know the skin trade wont stop) but the population in captivity is totally imbredded and the animals left are dying younger and cant fight a simple winter "cold".
No one can honestly tell me, that the amount of blood pythons in Canada, minus all the ones who wont get proper care and die earlier then later, as well as those dying from old age, can addequately sustain everyones wants.
Anyone checked the classifieds lately? Theres what, a total of 1 maybe 2 ppl selling CB bloods in Canada in the past year?
Dont forget to minus all those ones at the shows and in the pet stores, because those wont be there if the WC trade ceases. So basically, will end up with only a few blood breeders trying to fulfill the wants of many canadians with so little animals.
One of the best purchases i have made were my bangka island locality blood pythons and yes they were WC, but how many other ppl out there that u know of are working with them??
Not many. So like the boelens, etc... does that make it ok for me to import these because there are minute amounts of them in captivity?
So we can import rare animals like the boelens etc... but when it comes to ball pythons, and bloods, we shouldn't because there are said to be enough of them.
So basically were saying we can import the ones we dont have here to fill that void of enjoyment, but the ones we do have are enough. So the whole slogan of "save the natural species" goes out the door for these particular "animals". ???
I think the key is in moderation. You cant sustain small populations with no outside help.
I am for the WC trade to a certain extent, as new "morphs" and "bloodlines" are what fuels this hobby as well as its longevity.
So taking it out of the equation, would be covering up a problem which we started.
If anything, maybe we should rethink the underlying reasons many iof us are in the hobby and how we go about our enjoyment.
Small rubbermaids and tanks, breed em every year, powerfeeding, line breeding, hybrids, swapping, etc...etc...
I think the Wc trade is the least of our problems.
just some ramblings at we hours in the morning.
To bad i didn't check this thread earlier.
good topic.
Gvg
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