Nowadays Animal Planet and it's programming choices have become hot button topics on the interwebs.
Why is it so surprising that Animal Planet chooses to show the sordid and sensationalist side of herpetoculture? Animal Planet makes it's living on advertising and advertisers look for ratings. While the members of BP-Net may want to see documentaries about the respective lives of Roger Conant and Karl Schmidt, the general public wants titillation. They want drama, they want animals eating other animals, animals killing people. They want to be entertained, not educated.
The problem is that our hobby has always had a group of a$$-hats that do some truly stupid things. Whether it's 10 Burmese pythons in the Everglades or 10 million, the fact that they - along with countless other non-native reptile species - reside there should be an embarrassment to everyone who claims they want more intelligent discourse regarding our hobby.
Here where I live in the Bay Area, some douche bag let loose a 6' BCI and a small burmese python in the Contra Costa Canal during the middle of a cold streak. A good samaritan took them both to the Lindsay Wildlife Museum where they both eventually died (overnight temps were in the 20s here).
No, they didn't populate the Bay Area and begin eating kids, but it was another example of this hobby attracting it's fair share of idiots who buy without research and then make matters worse by releasing the animals into the wild.
As long as there are stupid people in this hobby, there will exist an audience for their antics. Whether it's the dimwit who let free the first rock python in the Everglades or the moron who hoarded venomous snakes without being able to exercise the proper protocols and died as a result, the public is very willing to be entertained by our collective boobery.
Next time I see some expert debating exactly how many pythons exist in the Everglades I'm going to put my face through a window. Has anyone here ever taken a look at the comprehensive list of invasive species of reptile now inhabiting the Everglades? It's disgusting and it's beyond defending, so people need to stop doing just that.
More importantly, arguing about the scope of the problem is a waste of time. The problem exists and no amount of maximizing or minimizing it's scope is going to change that.
Think of Animal Planet as an unloaded gun. Think of our collective stupid deeds as the ammunition. Without our stupid deeds, the only thing that gun is good for is a paper weight.
Educate people before they buy. Educate people after they buy. Call out idiotic behavior for what it is and do your part in making herpetoculture much less newsworthy.
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