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BPnet Veteran
Re: Kiss your hobby goodbye!!!! USFW Proposed ban!!!!
I left them this comment
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Since 2002 I have been collecting and breeding some of the rarest and most beautiful python species on the planet. I have invested a lot of disposable income and countless hours of effort maintaining my breeding colony. It is not only a hobby but a passion and hopefully a small business in the very near future. It is what I have been planning on to supplement my wife's income so I can keep working at my full time job and she can raise our children the right way. If I succeed, this would also mean another small business the federal and state government would enjoy collecting taxes from.
If banning the importation and interstate sale of pythons and boas is established, all my years of effort will be for nothing. On a side note, but nonetheless important, how is enacting this ban a legitimate role of government? It protects nobody, and will only drive this trade into the black market. We people who are deeply into this business/hobby take great care of our animals, and try our best to make sure they end up in the most responsible of hands. True, there may be some who relinquish their responsibilities and not care for their animals properly, but they are the minority, and should be punished for their actions. That's the legitimate role of our government: that we have the freedom to be responsible in our trade, and if we commit any crimes of abuse or neglect, we should be punished.
But to blanketly punish us all for crimes we never commited and ban a completely lawfull industry and market is the exact opposite of freedom.
Those who would pass such laws and ordinances most likely have never had the privelege of spending a year feeding and cleaning up after a beloved animal, then introduce them to a mate, to wait months for them to lay their eggs, to then wait a few more months incubating those precious eggs, and finally to watch as those tiny babies pip their little noses out of those eggs and you realize you were responsible for creating those little lives. Then you see that rare genetic color mutation you've been hoping to reproduce and outbreed, or you see that endangered species hatch out of 8 more eggs! This is what it means to us.
We have done more for these species than any naturalist or environmentalist. Our passion and the free market has saved these animals from extinction. The Indian Python is hugely popular, as is the Dumeril's Boa... both on the endangered species list, and both are bred for love and for business, to sell to others who have that same love and business aspirations.
Our trade is the only hope for a lot of these animals that would otherwise be hunted to extinction or left to the ravages of jungles or human encroachment. Our business aspirations and love for these animals make others appreciate them and influence them to be a part of it. The look in children's eyes who see not only their first python, but a genetic mutation that makes them half white leaves children and adults alike in awe, and it keeps this whole thing going.
Please, take everything I have written into consideration. This is important to a LOT of people, so let the people be the ones to decide this industry's fate.
Thank you for your time.
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