All,
Amphibians are not declining due to harvest. There is a simple fix to turtle
over-harvest and that is bag limits. Under no circumstances do we want to
pass banning legislation, prevent sustainable harvest, inhibit captive
propagation or ban commercial sales. Let's not knee jerk and go Animal
Rights on all the breeders, collectors and dealers who are preserving gene
pools in captivity and collecting in a sustainable manner. And doing this
out of their own pocket. Especially since we are doing virtually nothing
about habitat destruction, the impacts of roads and human population growth.
Someone could make some good money ranching turtles but if they are banned
that won't happen. We don't want to protect them into extinction.
It is time to get away from the banning agenda and come up with win/win
regulations. If game and fish doesn't want to do its job then they need to
be restructured and allocate funding differently. The time for excuses is
done and private hobbyists and business owners are tired of banning
regulations as the "supposed" solution. It is time to open your mind.
Mike Welker
El Paso, TX
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jorge Ramos" <jramo...@u.washington.edu>
To: <ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 11:32 AM
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] 1/26 N.Y. Times Editorial on Wild Turtle Trade,
Amphibians have been experiencing a similar situation. A couple of days ago
there was a news report by the BBC about a study coming out in Conservation
Biology by Corey Bradshaw and others. The numbers are alarming and the
images and their captions are interesting.
Thanks Andrea for the heads up to this link:
http://news.<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7845306.stm>
bbc
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7845306.stm>.co.<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7845306.stm>
uk <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7845306.stm>
/2/hi/science/nature/7845306.<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7845306.stm>
stm <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7845306.stm>
Jorge
--
Jorge Ramos
Graduate Student
College of Forest Resources
University of Washington
Box 352100
Seattle, WA 98195
http://www.ecojorgeramos.com/
jramo...@u.washington.edu
On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 6:53 AM, asalzb...@herpdigest.org <
asalzb...@herpdigest.org> wrote:
THE NEW YORK TIMES
EDITORIAL
Eating the Wild
Published on-line January 25, 2009
Printed in January 26, 2009 edition
In America, there are foragers among us, out searching for morels in
the spring, and there are hunters too. Yet most of our food, except
for fish caught from the sea, is farmed. We do not trap songbirds for
savory pies. (We destroy too many of them through other means.)
Once you look beyond the parochial culinary habits of most Americans
you discover that wildness, and the tastes associated with it, have a
talismanic power that is very hard to eradicate. It is what keeps the
Japanese whaling and keeps some Africans eating bush meat. And it is
one of the things that helps explain the voracious and utterly
destructive Chinese appetite for turtles.
As global wealth rises, so does global consumption of meat, which
includes wild meat. Turtle meat used to be a rare delicacy in the
Asian diet, but no longer. China, along with Hong Kong and Taiwan, has
vacuumed the wild turtles out of most of Southeast Asia. Now,
according to a recent report in The Los Angeles Times, they are
consuming common soft-shell turtles from the American Southeast,
especially Florida, at an alarming rate.
Some scientists estimate that two-thirds of the tortoise and
freshwater turtle species on the planet are seriously threatened. Some
of that is secondhand damage — loss of habitat, water pollution,
climate change. But far too many turtles are being lost to the fork
and the spoon.
In the United States, the solution is relatively straightforward.
States should impose much tighter restrictions on the harvesting and
export of wild turtles. Internationally, the problem is more
complicated. There have been efforts to monitor the species of wild
turtles found in Chinese markets, but as long as the appetite for
turtles — and traditional medicines derived from them — persists, we
fear it will be hard to curtail such a profitable and disastrous trade.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/opinion/26mon4.html?_r=1
Allen Salzberg
HerpDigest.org: The Only Free Weekly E-Zine That Reports on
The Latest News on Herpetological Conservation and Science
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