Who said I was telling them to stop from eating available resources? I'm not saying they should stop eating them at all. I'm just saying that we shouldn't abandon all importation of WC animals. What if we find a reduced pattern red and white snake out there? That could be worth a hundred thousand dollars, money that could go to helping the local population.
And a breeding program doesn't mean you stop people from eating the wild animals, it just means you set up an area for the balls to breed in and remove predation from those balls to help to boost the wild population.
Addition:
My whole argument is for pulling out potentially valuable animals that can help to earn the people in Africa money, not to stop them from eating the animals they can get, not to continue bringing thousands of animals into this country, not to interfere with the local population in a huge way. In fact I'm saying that if the local population dwindles we should definitely fund breeding of animals in Africa to help boost that so they don't become endangered in the wild but remain, hopefully, locally common.
And if it came down to needing a breeding program I'm pretty sure that the same people who sent 50,000 letters to the government about HR 669 would be willing to part with 25 to a thousand dollars a year (depending on personal income) to help fund it. If we really care about the snakes then we would all be willing to part with a small fraction of our income to help out the wild population of the species.
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