Will EXOTICS EVER MAKE THEIR INTO OUR COLLECTIONS LEGALLY ? FAT CHANCE.
The dream herp thread got me thinking...so instead of hijacking the thread i thought I would throw my 1 cent into the cauldron..
The dream herp thread got me thinking...so instead of hijacking the thread i thought I would throw my 1 cent into the cauldron..
Given the way our hobby is progressing, it was never going to be long before a little experimentation went down- and native destruction doesnt necessarily have to be out in the middle of the Nullarbor- there are plenty of breeders wilfully throwing down hybrid orgies right now in their caves ("oops I accidently left the enclosure open, but look at how beautiful this RPM Coastal hatchie is...") then gloating about it with pretty pictures. The attempt to condition us into acceptance of interbreeding is already going on daily. 5 years ago, mentioning the word hybrid meant a ritual burning at the stake !
....in THIS very room...
Then there are the quarantine issues, the legislation of which would need to be handled at a federal level...and the the fact that anyone with sufficient respect in the industry, and therefore the sufficient pull to instigate change, is most likely partaking in large scale legal breeding practices, and cares little to move to change policy for us neophites when by all accounts they can flash their James Bond Licence tomorrow and have an exotic pair in their lap within the month.
You have to ask yourself, as pessimistic a few as it is; why would anyone in the position to incite debate, or use their perceived credibility from a legislative point of view, make it easy for any of us mere mortals- when exclusivity of a species, morph or freakish gene is the aim of the game anyway. Or at least, making lots and lots of money from the perceived rarity is more the aim- but look at albino Darwins as an example of saturation of the market- word on the street is that several batches of darwins are soon to hit the shelves with a sub-thousand pricetag.
You heard it here first. Uh huh.
Do you think SXR will be able to move albino yearlings for $4 Large after the exotics hit the fan ? hmmmm.... so will a respected commercial breeder float the idea of importing foreign exotics to their fed buddies ? Of course not- it spells complete business suicide- and how could we blame them ?
So it is left to us collectors and small-time breeders to navigate the issue without any input from those who regulate the scene, or those that have the ability to support such a move, whilst the bigger fish sit back and play the waiting game.
I would love to see exotics become available, but if they are going to be as easy to pick up as a GTP or Woma, and suddenly render the hard work of many topline breeders futile, then I would rather froth over our native stuff until EVERY base is covered.
It is not just a matter of risk assessment and permit regulation- that type of report writing is as easy as any Masters thesis- a year's research tops, assuming that a wide demographic has input- and probably not much more depth than a top-shelf business plan- but in reality all levels of heirachy fromthe larger commercial breeders to environmentalists to government departments at State and Federal levels, all the way down to lowly scorpion owners would have to have input ; and progress such as this would require a complete overhaul of our current system- where MA's are stamped, stuck in a filing cabinet, and barely read.
Would we want to sacrifice the relative ease with which we engage in our hobby- in the present tense- for a couple of pretty vipers in our herp room ? I believe that a move to change things would open up every loophole and backdoor currently being exploited- it would have to; in order to ensure that the same factors are not exploited with the influx of exotic species; and a whole lot of behind the scenes politics would ensue- the decision would be made before the report even went to print. A breeder who turns over millions and is living a rockstar lifestyle is not going to help us much, considering they would be the biggest losers- their current native collection would decrease in value overnight massively; and they would most likely support the move in public but destroy it from behind the curtain.
And OF COURSE the government would assess what is financially more viable- ; the consensus would be an emphasis on taking tax dollars from the high flyers who need to declare their profit already, in favour of the import taxes which a very small number of us would have to pay for extravegant foreign purchases.
that will always be the bottom line. It is easier right now to have the States here running the show- and they are underfunded and disinterested participants already- so the Feds won't want to touch it with a 10 foot Burmese Python. The work that would be required, the change of policy, the debate of the issue- all so we erceived outcasts- a minor percentage of the general pop, can have a nice snake ? It wouldn;t even qualify as sufficient fuel to run any election campaign even as a minor issue- probably not even at a local or regional level. Not even in Gympie !
