Brimstone:
The only scientific way to measure stress is through Cortisol content in blood and I can't find anything about it causeing anomalies. If you have information I'd like to see it so I can better understand it, hopefully its not just speculation.
Cortisol is primarily in mammals. In reptiles and amphibs the governing adrenal hormone is corticosterone.

wilomn: I'm leaving Ungo out of this. If you go down that road it leads to african politics and the resposibility of developed nations. A whole nother thread in and of itself.

Rather than play the whole "if it wasn't us importing them someone else would" game (which is a total cop-out defense common among teenagers). Lets focus on the mature issue, namely our decision as a community to consider our own impacts.

The idea that if you love morphs, you must support imports is no longer relevant. 5-10 years ago, yes absolutely. Again, take a good look at how many bp's are currently in the states and then stop and imagine how many independent alleles that is. I'm not talking about the million combinations still to be made from 'cookbook' morphs we already have discovered, I'm giving reference to the very real possibility that there are a great many 'normals' in captive collections that could probably yield some pretty interesting new phenotypes with a little time and patience.

The reality is, as long as people can justify it to themselves, WC gravid females will continue to be imported. I, personally, choose not to participate in that avenue. Do I want to see morphs dry up? Of course not, but I would like to see some focus on the resources we already possess.

For those who believe that imports drive the morphs that drive the industry, a question. Where does it stop? Think we are still going to be importing huge volumes of snakes in 10 years? in 25? 50? Would you consider the practice sustainable (again leaving out human rights and the economics of africa)?

Just a thought.

Cheers,
Kat