Wild Caught Ball Pythons

[Oxylepy]

It's even worse if the plan is to release a bunch of babies who aren't accustomed to captive living. Then they have to survive twice as long as the subadults to make it to a point of being able to reproduce and re-establish the wild population.

Do not the baby balls already exist and have to thrive on their own in the wild? Do we think that the animals are entirely incapable of fending for themselves? Any young snakes sent would have the same likelihood of survival as the wild babies.

But as was mentioned before the diseases that would be introduced could create more of an issue than the released snakes would be helping.

Bringing it back to African based breeding programs.

Also if only the visible morphs are removed from Africa, then the snakes that are there would have no problem reproducing with one or two less snakes every few years.

Again, I'm not proposing we go grab up all the snakes in Africa and bring them into the pet trade, but I darn well wouldn't say that we should completely abandon importing wild caught animals.

[SpiderBP]

Also if only the visible morphs are removed from Africa, then the snakes that are there would have no problem reproducing with one or two less snakes every few years.

I like this. Actually, even more than "one or two"....
Don't think that I am in this disbelief and think that BP's are going extinct or something. They aren't. BUT, when you wait for the problem to arrive, it'll be that much harder to turn around....