I've been wondering for a while if there has ever been any research done on wild ball python populations. Are there any laws regarding how many can be exported every year? Although I do find gravid imports and captive hatching to be pretty fascinating stuff, every time I hear about it, I imagine how debilitating that must be to the wild population. This species reproduces EXTREMELY slowly even in captivity, so many things can go wrong, it must be so unlikely that a wild egg even grows up into adulthood, let alone becomes gravid, lays a clutch successfully, all while avoiding poachers and deportation.

What I would expect to happen as snakes are taken out of the wild is rodent populations go up. If rodent populations go up, they would damage farmer's crops and increase the likelihood that local people resort to eating 'bushmeat' (monkeys, wild pigs etc). This idea really concerns me and the more involved I get in this hobby the harder it becomes to ignore.

I would so love to hear about somebody trying to replenish the exported wild caught ball pythons with captive hatched ones from the states (or anywhere). It would be awful for them to go extinct in the wild. Anybody else ever wondered about this / have any information?