About the laws and cntinued attacks

[BHB]

This is obviously a very serious topic, but that being said I don’t think that we should think the sky is falling. A law like this has such a slim chance of ever passing. It’s really against the interstate commerce law. It would prohibit the free trade of something that should not be outlawed and would probably never make it though because it’s in complete defiance of the constitution. I know some laws still get passed even if they are unconstitutional, so we have to be diligent, send our letters and comments or both. Stay on top of it and they will cave in and drop this.
For me it brings up a bigger issue, we will be facing more attacks in the future. Not to try to sound self promoting here, but this is one of the biggest reasons why we started our SnakeBytestv series. We not only wanted to expand our market through entertainment and exposure, but just as important we wanted to grow the voice of reptiles. The larger the communities the less chance of these attacks ever being realized. As of right now we don’t seem like a very organized group to the powers that be. If we can have a show that gets hundreds of thousands of viewers it will make them think twice about taking us on. If they know cameras might show up at their doorstep and tons of people will see the ridiculous way their tax dollars are being spent it would keep them in check.
I’ll do the best I can do to make sure we do are part. We need everyone to be behind us as well, we have to become one strong community. There is always more safety in numbers.
Brian(BHB)

www.myspace.com/bhbreptiles
www.youtube.com/snakebytestv
www.snakebytes.tv
www.snakebytes.tumblr.com

[neilgolli]

Brian, the problem is that fish and wildlife can simply add them to the existing injurious wildlife listing, this list can be found here.

http://www.fws.gov/contaminants/ANS/...F_16_10-05.pdf

Reptiles are already within this list, leaving the door open to add more.


§16.15 Importation of live reptiles or
their eggs.
(a) The importation, transportation,
or acquisition is prohibited of any live
specimen or egg of the brown tree
snake (Boiga irregularis): Provided, that
the Director shall issue permits au-
thorizing the importation, transpor-
tation, and possession of such live
snakes or viable eggs under the terms
and conditions set forth in §16.22.

A listing will prevent interstate commerce. I agree, the bigger the crowd, the more voices, the louder the message, but do not take this lightly or you'll be trying to sell 30,000 snakes a year within the confines of just Michigan....

[Gary Orner]

Back in 2001 The National Humane Society tried to also ban all reptile keeping.

I agree with Brian.

[GirDance]

In such an economically based society, in order to keep laws like this from ever passing it needs to be both established that herpers are not a minority, *and* that such laws effectively prevent a non-minority group from conducting their daily business effectively. Its not just enough to unify an established case and cause need to be present as well or your group assumes the official definition of either a rebel group, or radical group.

I know this may not seem to relate at all, but both politically and legally the banning of smoking in public areas is an almost identical act. It has been successful in California, and the entire province of Ontario. In analysing how this law came to be, it becomes apparent that the business owners in question failed to present a unified front - most of the experts (at least in the criminology sense of how it came to be a crime) agree that the failure to establish this as something causing an economic burden to a large group of people was greatly responsible for the failure of protests. In these cases, even though evidense was collected showing that more public opposition than support was present in this case, the law was still passed.

With reptiles the 'human rights' and 'freedoms' aspects may be a little more obviously in our favour as its hard to make any sort of claim that our keeping of herps endangers the health of our neighbours, however even so these arguments typically are too difficult to prove in a court of law.

In order to quash these sorts of attacks permanently we both need to unify, and to prove the 'economics' of the hobby, business and practice. Not to mention the 'conservation' efforts... Every day more and more of these species' natural habitats are depleted due to lack of adequate environmental restrictions in foreign countries - that is not what's being focussed on at all, in fact this is being ignored completely. So at least one of the arguments is that we're taking them out of their natural habitat and treating them cruelly (at least the current Canadian version of the same attempt to ban-ours actually includes many fish species as well)... Yet at the same time, it's "okay" to commercially farm, forest, and pollute these same habitats to the brink of extinction because it's either cheaper, easier, more profitable, or all of the above.

There are a lot of sides to this argument... But the one definate is that we need to stop appearing in the minority, we need to shed a lot of the 'cliches' that come with the keeping of herps, and we do need to get out the education, as well as start thinking of this in political and legal terms - because those are the terms the attack has been brought to us on.

[BHB]

Great points! By no means would I ever consider this something we should take lightly. I agree that we have to unify and show the finacial effect on all aspects of the hobby. I would personally have to down size and lay off most of my employees, my rodent suplier would go out of business and his employeed would lose their jobs. The company that supplies him with rodent food would probably go out of business, the reptile specialty stores would go out of business and all employees would lose their jobs. You get my point, it would cost this country hundreds of millions of dollars by time the ripple effect was over. I truly believe that if we can show that we are not a small "niche" community, and that the numbers would be incredible on the economy, we will get through this. We also have to make sure that we are aware that future attacks might be on the way. Anyone that doesn't belong to PIJAC should join right away, it's the closest thing that we have to a lobby group and we need to support them so they supoort us. Again, us banning together makes us a stronger community. Brian(BHB)
www.myspace.com/bhbreptiles
www.youtube.com/snakebytestv
www.snakebytes.tv
www.snakebytes.tumblr.com

[GirDance]

This link was posted through a candian based reptiles forum, its an article outlining the proposed bans, (if anyone doesn't know). It provides the formal and legal way for everyone to provide their comments regarding the bans - at this point apparently this is the only formal manner of opposition that is being provided against the addition of these species to the "Injurous Wildlife species" list.

Article

The article also mentions that there will be a web chat about the bans, and so far a confirmed member is the USF&W services - If anyone is interested. I did notice that it appears that a member or two from here will be participating, and I would very much like to extend my gratitude to you.

I may not live in the US, but we are also going through the same thing here, and the one thing that is apparent is that the "Herp Community" defies traditional national and government boundaries... We're an international community, and as such its nice to see that we can all support one another.