Quote:
Originally Posted by tittezzz  It seems such a waste of perfectly good herps. |
And indeed, it certainly is a big waste of perfectly good herps, but that's no reason to make a bad situation even worse. It is so admirable that you are so keen to help, but it's important to take action which is going to help, rather than just taking action. If an area of habitat is being destroyed, the sad reality is that the available habit is going to be reduced and so will the population of reptiles (and other animals). We can't just expect to be able to remove all the animals from every development site, put them somewhere else and expect the new sites to maintain their original populations as well as all of the new animals. Each area can only support so many, and nature finds that balance by itself. If you add more than nature can sustain, nature kills the excess. The reality is, their only proper home is being destroyed and we can't change that. Putting them into someone else's home is a destructive thing to do (even though it is often done with the support of the government - let's face it, the government can't even get economic policy right when that's its specialty! We can hardly expect them to get environmental policy right when they don't even care about it!). Unless we can create a new home for them, the best thing to do is not interfere (yes, I know, it's extremely sad, but the alternatives are worse). To give them new homes, we either need to bring them into captivity, or create new habitat for them - which might involve the bulldozing of a shopping center or industrial area very close to the current development, revegetating it and waiting a few years. In this age of urban sprawl, that sort of thing happens VERY infrequently and I suggest it isn't worth persuing.
From here, I will withdraw from this thread. You can lead a horse to water but you can not force it to drink. My head hurts, it's upsetting to see support for negative action and I am too busy to beat my head against this wall any further.
