southern ontario breeders price wars

[Pythonfriend]

i feel really ashamed for my earlier post where i just failed to realize that Ontario is in Canada rather than in the USA..... really embarassing.

i just want to say: to compete with large hatchling imports from africa, prices for locally bred normals and basic single-gene morphs needs to be even lower.

what recently blew me away completely is that for some species of chameleon, the cheapest captive bred ones are 200-300 dollars while the cheapest wild caught imports go for 100-150. thats NOT HEALTHY. I mean, unless you want these species to go extinct in the wild, so that the few breeders have a monopoly, thats just not good. For many reptile species, the price for a captive bred is double or triple the price of a wild caught specimen.

i mean, what could be more devastating while at the same time being economically gratifying for a breeder than to hear:

(About some chameleon) "Congratulations, the species you are breeding is now extinct in the wild. You failed to produce them for under 100 dollars a piece, which would have been necessary to undercut the market price for wild caught imports. Now you can keep selling them for 200-300 dollars a piece, like you always did, because they are basically extinct in the wild and the cheap imports dried up because of that."

OK thats chameleons, BPs are different, but still, there is one party that benefits when prices for locally bred BPs crash, and that would be the wild population of BPs. Wild ball pythons will never be threatened because they are holy in some places, if you do not know it already watch it. The video starts a bit slow and the presenter has a bit of a snake phobia. Also there are strong accents. Still, its the best video covering this and people should be aware. After all these are half-wild ball pythons being worshipped in a dedicated temple. The BPs stay there during the day, and they all go out at night for hunting, sometimes locals accept them into their homes and feed them. in the early morning all the pythons return to the temple. I strongly suspect this is the largest temple dedicated to ball pythons in existence. I do not know of any other temples dedicated to ball pythons and/or housing ball pythons, please let me know if you aware of other places like this.



I just think maybe a really low price for captive bred reptiles and nice morphs can help protect the wild populations, be it that ball python temple in Benin that is centuries old, or some arcane species of chameleons.

Maybe in the larger context it is not bad when prices get so low that import prices are undercut. Right now some brutal idiot could still make some money by raiding that wonderful BP temple in Benin and putting the BPs in boxes and shipping them off. When the python market in the first world overheats and tanks, there will still be a winner: The wild pythons.


I try to not be hating on anyone, i just want to open minds and show larger contexts.