I Attended the HR2811 Hearing on July 29th

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Representative Wasserman Schultz from Florida was the only vote to oppose the amendment. Her position is that all pythons should be banned. If you live in her district, you might want to educate yourself about when she's up for re-election and decide what you'd like to do with that information.

It's also worth noting that Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) CEO Wayne Pacelle was present for the beginning of the hearing. He was accompanied by Michael Markarian who is the president of the HSUS Legislative Fund (the branch of the HSUS that lobbys in Congress) as well as other members of the HSUS executive staff. These are the leaders of the most powerful and wealthiest animals rights organization in the world. It is no coincidence that they were at the markup meeting today ... they want the reptile industry gone ... and they're willing to do it one species at a time if they have to (obviously). For whatever it's worth, Wayne Pacelle called people who own exotic animals (like pythons) "foolish" in his blog a couple weeks ago and declared that exotic animal owners have no idea how to properly take care of their pets.

Please join USARK ... please join PIJAC ... please donate to either or both organizations ... even if it's only $1 ... please do anything and everything that you reasonably can to protect your rights. Even if you don't keep burms or african rock pythons, your pet of choice will probably be on the chopping block sooner or later. Send a message NOW that we as animal owners won't stand for it ... ever!

-adam

I am not a fan of HSUS or that idiot Pacelle. I read his blog entry and could not find where he said that exotic animal owners had no idea how to properly take care of their pets - or was that not in the blog?

I also thought that he states that it was foolish to keep lions, chimps and burmese pythons as pets. For the record, I agree with 66% of that statement.

Going back to his statement (whether written or otherwise) regarding exotic animal owners not being able to properly care for their pets - even a blind pig gets an occasional acorn.

There are alot of dedicated and excellent reptile keepers - there are also a fair amount of people who buy reptiles with no idea how to care for them. We see it on the forums all the time - don't we? Some are lucky enough to come here and get advice from some very patient people that puts them on the right track before they kill or sicken their animals, but an untold number do not.

While someone seeking a ball-python morph may not fit into that category, I've seen an awful lot of young, inexperienced people getting into retics, burms and anacondas.

So while Pacelle is a jacka$$, his statement could easily be amended to be essentially correct - MANY exotic animal owners have no idea how to properly take care of their pets.

A couple of weeks ago it was debated here that the legislation passed in North Carolina was unfair and restrictive. While parts of the wording could be open to interpretation with respect to enforcement, I could not - for the life of me - understand why a responsible snake owner would have issue with being required to properly cage, transport or transfer ownership of venomous or giant snakes. I'd say we were just about split on support of the concept of the bill.

How do you feel about people's efforts to thwart sensible legislation backed by people in THIS hobby?