Snake Ban reversed in Wilson County Texas!

[royerreptiles]

Good news on Monday from Wilson County Texas! Andrew Wyatt made the trip down south to finish up the work that everyone put in regarding the ban that was put in place starting back in November while Kas and I are in Iraq. If you aren't familiar with the situation: a local veterinarian voiced his concerns to our county commissioner's court and was successful in getting a ban on possession put in place on the largest five constrictors and non-native venomous snakes. He then moved to get all species of boas and pythons added to the ban which was voted on and approved. We got together a group of reptile experts to write letters and speak to the commissioner's court to give them good information to base their decision on and all of our work was finalized this past Monday. Andrew presented the amendment, the commissioners, judge and county attorney liked it, and they voted unanimously to pass it. That's right, no more ban in Wilson County!!!

A very large group of reptile people and citizens came together to make this happen. We'd like to thank everyone that showed their support and fought with us on this. PIJAC, USARK, the Herp Alliance, the ARAV, zoo keepers and curators, reptile veterinarians, reptile professionals/breeders and reptile keepers of all kinds helped us out in this. It was a huge effort from our side. I don't believe the judge and commissioners had any clue that our community was so large! We hope that this is an example of how we can all come together to fight side by side, regardless of our differences. This was a very positive outcome considering that the ban was already put in place. We also hope that this is a sort of wake up call for herpers in their own communities. We were unaware of any move to ban these animals in our county until it was already done. It happened very, very fast. The same thing can happen in your community/county/city. Don't hide out on the sidelines thinking that you won't get noticed or that nothing can happen to your ability to keep your favorite critters. We're a large industry now and we're being noticed. A good option is to let your city/county government officials know who you are and express your concerns so they know where to go if the issue is ever brought to them by someone else. Get out there and educate the public! Our local library and a local feed store have approached us after this asking if we would bring out some animals and put on public education workshops. Show people how important keeping these animals are and that it's not as dangerous as some would make it out to be. It's also very, very important to make sure that any potential buyers of our animals are prepared to take care of these animals. Every time an inexperienced keeper gets in over their heads and makes mistakes with a more "advanced" species it gives fuel to the other side to use against us. It also causes the animals that we love to suffer at the hands of that inexperience.

We put together all of the videos of the meetings and presentations regarding this ban on our Youtube channel. Some of them are pretty entertaining! Come by and have a look. There's video of the very first meeting concerning the ban, voting in all species of boas and pythons, the reptile community's presentation to the court, the first version of the amendment being presented to the court, and then a non-native snake workshop that was put on by the veterinarian that originally voiced his concerns. We'll be adding the video of Monday's meeting to the channel soon.

Enjoy!

Wilson County Ban Videos

Herp Nation also did an interview with Andrew about how the meeting went on Monday.

Herp Nation interview

[cinnamonpython]

yaa, i am glad it got removed

[Starsnake]

Nice job. Working together DOES make a difference.

Sent from my ADR6350 using Tapatalk 2

[MarkS]

Congratulations, that's great news.

[iknowthetruth]

YAY now if only texas would allow ccw permits from ALL states