OldChamKeeper
Chameleon Enthusiast
What is the purpose of this report to tell us what percent of essentially break down in types animals died at the hands of attendees @ 2 herp shows in the uk?
Certainly this title is misleading Captive Reptile Mortality Rates in the Home and Implications for the Wildlife Trade should read Captive Reptile Mortality Rates In a Small Segment of United Kingdom..How can we come to any real " Implications for the Wildlife Trade" with this small data set..Im not buying it. Im of the belief the percents are much higher in the big global picture..and fairly high even in the captive bred chameleons.
I really don't know if anybody is going catch what I'm going to say, I fail at communicating via text sometimes. I'd rather toss a rock from my cave to get my point across sometimes.
It was the early 90's, I saw different groups going to bird shows and gathering data from people there about mortality and vet visits and what types of parrots people kept. They published a huge paper on hos both wild caught and captive bred parrots were dying in captivity, being mistreated, all kinds of bad stuff. It turned out much later some of the people who were researchers were from PETA. To this day I don't believe the paper was valid. The vast majority of bird owners I knew as customers my self included had their birds for decades in some cases as pets. Many keepers in those circles later felt it was just part of a multi-pronged approach to building data and support for banning the keeping of birds. never think PETA and those who want to tell you or me we can't keep a pet are idiots, or shortsighted, they focus on the long term goals.
Is that what happened here? I'm not saying it did, but I am saying that their sampling method has holes in it and a bigger red flag is the purpose of it.
Anybody here ever met a zealot? As it pertains to our topic I am referring to a person whose life is so totally consumed feeling that we are the bad guys hurting all these animals to the point that they will devote their waking life and resources to "saving" the animals via a number of methods, like collecting data to support their new laws.