Quote Originally Posted by janeothejungle View Post
Hmm. How many bp's are currently in captive collections? So you're telling me that if bp imports were banned tomorrow, we'd be looking at severe inbreeding? Not likely. Look up minimum sustainable genetic resource or population size and I think you'll find that inbreeding is really only an issue for those who ignore it's basic tenet.



Yeah, but here's a part that bothers me. How many WC gravid imports would you be willing to go through to get that holy grail? What would you personally do with the females who 'didn't pan out' so to speak? Say 20. Say you had to go through 20 females to get one baby hatched that could be something. Say 1/4 of those females are never going to recover from the stress. So 15 females, right? I can see making room for 15 females or else taking the time and effort to get them clean and healthy before reselling them. But what if it wasn't twenty? What if it took 100 or a 1,000? Got room for 750 females (and burial space for the ones that didn't make it)? Got the time and inclination to do what is ethical for them? I find it to be a veritable Occam's Razor.

I'm not saying there isn't an ethic behind some people who choose to go this route. I just have to wonder if the bp market would really suffer if we imported over 50,000 bp's maybe every other year instead of every year? Or, if we took a good look at the stock that is already in captive collections and the multitude of possibilities that already exist in the alleles that are here, would it really hurt the market at all to wean itself off a bit, say by half?

Almost becomes a veritable catch-22, doesn't it?
I think a lot of it is $$$. Yeah there are already so many morphs and so many combinations that haven't even been created with existing morphs. But whoever finds the "next big thing" can make a lot of money. I mean some new morphs go for over $50k; imagine if you discovered a new morph and got to name it and produce it and combine it with other genes etc.

I agree with you that there's so much that can be done with what we have, but I also see reasons for wanting to import. Now that being said, I think you raise some good points about what about all the "normals" that don't pan into anything. I'm sure there are some irresponsible people who probably just get rid of the animal ASAP without much regard for her health and what not. But so long as there is $$ to me made in the numbers, the search is always going to be on for the next big thing.