Continuation: Exporting Reptiles From Australia

[PilbaraPythons]

Is your first line a question to me slim6y? If it is, who said I am complaining ? just stating facts really.

 

[silverback]

For those that think there isn't a current demand for our reptiles from many different countrys around the world haven't seen the regular e-mails I get from overseas buyers.

buyers???? or spyers or (probably) 12 year old enquirers,

just because you get enquiries doesn't mean that overseas people would pay the exhorbitant prices being quoted. you would be familiar with the red Egernia depressa, it is one of our most sought after skinks overseas. but they are still cheaper in germany and in the US than in australia.if you said you could get 500 of them at $20ea, you may have a buyer. you tell them that they sell for up to $2000ea in Sydney, they would lose all interest. the same with V.glauerti, nearly all Phyllurus and Saltuarius, all Neph's bar stellatus are cheaper overseas, just about all pythons are cheaper, probably due to NG stock for some, same with frillies and taipans. adult A.perthensis sell for 2-300euro throughout europe. Carphodactylus are less than half the price in europe as what they are here. RSPs are plummetting in price quicker than they did here.

i am sure you get lots of equiries for depressa and V.pilbarensis and more, but i am positive that doesn't equate to there ever being any offers of big dollars for them. they are cheap overseas by comparison with australian prices. it is a myth that there is big money involved. notwithstanding, of course there are many, many people who want things in their collections and will smuggle them anyway, but the issue of people spending large sums of money on our animals is a myth perpetuated by NPWS and customs to gain public resentment against our hobby.
perenties, lacies and shinglebacks are exceptions (due to the difficulty in smuggling them out over the last 40years, they haven't bred huge numbers yet and shinglebacks being naturally slow producers), but allowing trade would see them selling for what they do here. people aren't going to pay a few thousand dollars if they could legally obtain them here and export them.

 

[slim6y]

Is your first line a question to me slim6y? If it is, who said I am complaining ? just stating facts really.

Sorry Dave, it was aimed at you... Though I wasn't suggesting you were complaining, more like why aren't you complaining about WA's strict recreational keeping laws?

 

[PilbaraPythons]

I'll leave the complaining in the good hands of the W.A herp group (WAHS) they seem to be making some progress albeit very slowly.

 

[dpedwards08]

How aren't those listed elapid species available in Australia? I see the whole "escaped pet" argument as being very weak. Ask yourself this, are you really going to let a $5,000 Inland Taipan escape from it's cage, let alone your snake room, let alone your basement, let alone your house! I think NOT! And $5,000 is just the cost of the snake itself. Not shipping cost, not broker cost, not import cost, inspection fee, etc. For that big of an investment, I highly doubt escapees are going to be a problem. I'm going to go ahead and make the argument that escaped native species could just as well do damage to your own native population. Lets say someone had a litter of red belly black snakes born and they all escaped. Would that not cause an imbalance in the local ecosystem? I know you are all thinking about the burmese pythons in the Everglades. This was caused by irresponsible pet owners, not importers, not reptile breeders, not legit reptile keepers, but just that idiot that bought a burm from a pet shop because he thought it was cool at the time. All of the literarure I've read about burms in the Glades has pointed to other animals being more responsible to predation on native species. I believe it was a wood rat that was the topic of interest. They did a study on the stomach content of a colony of feral cats in the Glades and found them to be more detrimental to the population of rats than the burms themselves.

For the argument of animals being more expensive in Australia than the stock that comes from Indonesia, Papua New Guinea or whatever, they aren't the real deal! People will pay good money to have captive bred locality Australian reptiles from new and different bloodlines, period! And then again, you can't speak with certainty that people would or wouldn't spend good money or that any exotic species are going to take up residence. I know one thing for sure, many of the world's big time dealers would HATE to see Australia open it's boarders because they make really good money from smuggling and selling to other countries.

 

[slim6y]

Since when do RBBS have a litter? Not to mention that the RBBS is a verywidely distributed snake.

So how do we guarantee that these $5,000 snakes are kept in a maximum security environment?

Did a cobra not just escape from Boston Zoo (though recaptured after nearly 2 weeks on the run). I would think a zoo would have a higher investment in security than a person buying a $5,000 snake.

From my experience, people with money don't always care enough about their animal to warrant extreme saftety measures - and to be honest, who'll enforce this?

And one word - disease....

 

[fugawi]

I think that the costings on what the US pays for Aussie herps is wrong. Sure, at the moment they pay less than we do for US bred Aussie herps but if they REALLY want Aussie bred animals then THEY WILL pay through the nose. There IS a lot of cash to be made by an enterprising young Aussie breeder and the government can get a bit of spare cash through licensing. If the VERY, VERY strict controls are put in place......it could work. Saying that it would cost an American $1000 or so for a common Eastern Blue Tongue etc. Simple economics....user pays. I say Blueys because they have bred the black mark behind the eyes out of them and they would pay for new blood stock.

On saying this, Australia didn't close its borders on the export of natives to be isolationists. We did it to stop the rape and pillage of our native flora and fauna and to try to conserve our natives from extinction. Australian animals are currently at war, trying to survive everything from destruction of habitat to feral animals and they are losing. Our animals are being poached at an alarming rate and our ecosystem can't handle any more.

At the end of the day, America and Europe would pay for Aussie bred herps and there would be money in it for some Aussies (short term at least) but at what cost to the environment. The old saying "Just because we can do something, doesn't mean we should" comes to mind here.

In Australia we WANT to conserve our natives, unlike the US we don't have a Brown Snake roundup or a hunting season on Koalas.

 

[longqi]

How aren't those listed elapid species available in Australia? I see the whole "escaped pet" argument as being very weak. Ask yourself this, are you really going to let a $5,000 Inland Taipan escape from it's cage, let alone your snake room, let alone your basement, let alone your house! I think NOT! And $5,000 is just the cost of the snake itself. Not shipping cost, not broker cost, not import cost, inspection fee, etc. For that big of an investment, I highly doubt escapees are going to be a problem. I'm going to go ahead and make the argument that escaped native species could just as well do damage to your own native population. Lets say someone had a litter of red belly black snakes born and they all escaped. Would that not cause an imbalance in the local ecosystem? I know you are all thinking about the burmese pythons in the Everglades. This was caused by irresponsible pet owners, not importers, not reptile breeders, not legit reptile keepers, but just that idiot that bought a burm from a pet shop because he thought it was cool at the time. All of the literarure I've read about burms in the Glades has pointed to other animals being more responsible to predation on native species. I believe it was a wood rat that was the topic of interest. They did a study on the stomach content of a colony of feral cats in the Glades and found them to be more detrimental to the population of rats than the burms themselves.

For the argument of animals being more expensive in Australia than the stock that comes from Indonesia, Papua New Guinea or whatever, they aren't the real deal! People will pay good money to have captive bred locality Australian reptiles from new and different bloodlines, period! And then again, you can't speak with certainty that people would or wouldn't spend good money or that any exotic species are going to take up residence. I know one thing for sure, many of the world's big time dealers would HATE to see Australia open it's boarders because they make really good money from smuggling and selling to other countries.

The important part here is; yes they will pay top dollar for 'reptiles from new and different bloodlines'
There are only so many specific localities for each species
Many of these localities are under a lot of pressure to survive now
With the added pressure of specifically target poaching their long term future could not be easily maintained

While in theory your idea is a good one
While yes a selective export business could make great money for four years
In the long term it would be detrimental to our reptiles

 

[fugawi]

If Red bellied Black Snake babies got loose in Sydney, noone would notice........they are native to the entire east and south coast of Australia and would just join their kin. Blacks find their way into all the suburbs anyway, a couple more would make NO difference.

 

[Red-Ink]

Export license : $2000

Inland Taipan : $5000

Australians having the peace of mind that our natives aren't being raped and pileged for kiddy American tantrums of wanting them just because they can't have them: Priceless

 

[Elapidae1]

Slim6y, What do you call a litter of RBBS?

 

[fugawi]

You can call them what you want......they still wont come.)

 

[Dannyboi]

How aren't those listed elapid species available in Australia? I see the whole "escaped pet" argument as being very weak. Ask yourself this, are you really going to let a $5,000 Inland Taipan escape from it's cage, let alone your snake room, let alone your basement, let alone your house! I think NOT! And $5,000 is just the cost of the snake itself. Not shipping cost, not broker cost, not import cost, inspection fee, etc. For that big of an investment, I highly doubt escapees are going to be a problem.

Yet an Egyptian cobra got escaped from a zoo. You cannot say with certainty that no pet will escape.
Oh and Slimy no not from experience but I do know a fair few dogde people and well I will leave it at that. But imagine if exportation was legal one trip up the road I could pick up 100 stumpies hold onto them a month or so then line up some buyers and sell them. Because in SA they are exempt from permitting. So then it would come down to even more restriction here if they wanted to stop that and that is not fair lets put more rules on reptile keepers here so some people in the states can have them.

 

[slim6y]

Slim6y, What do you call a litter of RBBS?

Isn't it a clutch??? Maybe it is a litter... Anyway - regardless of that - that was merely an initial statement and perhaps it backfired... To be perfectly honest, I am not sure of what the collective noun for baby snakes is... I honestly assumed it was a clutch!

Dannyboi - glad to think you're not crooked But watch the beagles - they're good!!!

 

[Elapidae1]

Isn't it a clutch???

LOL, I don't know I imagine if the term clutch isn't correct, it is at least acceptable. I have allways refered to live bearers as having litters. I'm quite possibly wrong.

 

[slim6y]

LOL, I don't know I imagine if the term clutch isn't correct, it is at least acceptable. I have allways refered to live bearers as having litters. I'm quite possibly wrong.

haha.... I had a bit of a search going on - and I still can't find the answer - but I believe a 'clutch' is the group of eggs, not the actual snakelets... So let's just say for arguments sake that a clutch or a litter is correct for the time being until some English scholar can correct us

 

[junglepython2]

Rbbs are live bearers so litter is correct I'd imagine.

 

[slim6y]

Rbbs are live bearers so litter is correct I'd imagine.

Fair enough.. Stop trying to be right now... let's go back to bagging out Americans some more.... (and it can still be a clutch... because Steve1 said so...)

 

[Elapidae1]

Only because Chuck Norris allowed me to.

 

[dpedwards08]

Red belly black snakes have been producing ovoviviparous litters of babies since the good ole' days. Didn't you know that? There is no guarantee that there will be any maximum security. It was the Bronx Zoo that had a cobra escape which is in one of the coldest parts of the United States...by the way. They found their snake shortly after it escaped and no one got hurt nor did it escape into the environment. Even if it did escape, it would have died through the winter. And if one snake escaped, how is it going to reproduce without a mate somewhere nearby? The chances of a pair of snakes escaping, surviving the winter, and reproducing in the wild are very low in the majority of the United States. You are simply focusing on South Florida when it comes to escaped snakes reproducing in the wild. Most people that buy expensive snakes don't just come up with the money right away. Normally they have to save their money or take out a loan out from a bank and pay interest. With that being said, it is a bigger deal to that person on how they keep their snakes, especially if it is venomous. I will use myself for example, I am saving up to make an order with a breeder in Europe for collettes blacks, red bellied blacks, inland taipans, and coastal taipans. It's going to take some time to save that money. To say that I am going to have an escaped snake is ridiculous. I've never had a snake escape and I've kept snakes since I was a little kid. There are far less escapes in venomous snakes than non-venomous snakes if you look at it as a safety aspect. And no one has ever died from the bite of an ESCAPED venomous snake in the USA. No one has even died from the bite of a venomous snake in the USA, other than the owner who took the risk and responsibility of owning that snake.

Ok so why not open the trade up for four years? When I say that people here would pay for locality reptiles, I mean that they would pay for locality reptiles that are captive born and bred. A lot of dealers here won't buy wild caught animals for the same reasons that you don't want to import animals in Australia. For some, wild caught imports is a thing of the past. The wave is going more towards captive bred and born reptiles vs. wild caught. A lot of reptile expos here discourage and even ban wild caught animals from being sold.

You don't think a group of escaped red belly black snakes would make any difference to the environment? Have you ever studied individual care and capacity for a given plot of land? There are only so many animals an area can withstand. Be it hiding areas, breeding areas, places to bask, holes to den in, egg laying sites, prey available, etc. There are only so many frogs and lizards in an area for red bellies to eat.

You might THINK that Australians have the peace of mind that your natives aren't being raped and pileged for kiddy American tantrums of wanting them just because they can't have them, but the reality of it is that they are still being smashed over the head with shovels, ran over by cars, tortured by little kids, all by your fellow Australians, collected by Europeans, smuggled out of the country by Southeast Asia, and bred by Americans. At least the people that come in to take the reptiles out, care for them enough to want them to stay alive and reproduce.

I have a reasonable solution. Why would it not be a good idea so sell captive born reptiles that you have produced at your facility and use the profits that you make to buy land in Australia to use as sanctuaries for Australia's native wildlife? If all of you are so worried about Australia's wildlife and habitat destruction, what are you doing to help stop the cause? If you sit behind a computer and do nothing, than why are you on here fussing about Americans wanting to keep and breed species of Australian animals?