Stop WC imports campaign

spoons said:
im not sure how happy i am about my lovingly bred herps being sold in a shop to 10 year old kids who will probably kill them in a month though , even if it is just a little fbn
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It seems wrong, in my opinion, to put an age limit on enjoying CB newts. I got my first newt, a C.orientalis (that I still have) when I was 11; I'm sure many other people have similar stories about their early experiences in newt keeping. If it weren't for that newt, I probably wouldn't be posting this now. I definitely agree that owner responsibility needs to be accounted for, but age shouldn't be the only deciding factor...
 
To be fair, Nathan, most kids aren't as diligent and caring as you. One time the kids in my neighborhood were running in a pack and one of them showed me his new green snake: he took it out of his pocket. I said to my neighbor, "That snake's not long for this world" and indeed, two days later, she told me it had died.
 
Dawn, that's exactly true. I guess what I was attempting to say is that age doesn't always dictate these sorts of things; unfortunately, in most cases it does...

I'm certainly not saying people should go out and hand over Cb N.kaiseri to 10 year olds (not that they could afford them), if that's what my post came across as.

Anyway, It seems that I took the thread off on a tangent, and for that, I apologize :eek:
 
Oh no no, Nathan, don´t apologize, every aspect of this matter is worth discussing :)
I´m very happy to see people are interested in the discussion.

I personally think age is not a big factor, because a well informed kid is no less capable of keeping healthy animals than an adult. However it´s true, that some species are probably not to be recomended for certain ages...i guess.

I agree with Dawn it´s not eassy to part with your babies that you might have been hand feeding, and worrying about for several weeks/months, when you are not absolutely sure they are going to decent hands. However, i can´t help but feel that it´s a sacrifice that is worth it, because i consider the damage is greater when the animal suffering that fate is a wild one....
Again, i stress the necessity of proper information and education....if we manage to do so even if it´s with a few more people, it´s a small battle won. After all information is the key for new keepers to avoid mistakes.
 
I just wanted to say, the article is starting to be planned, but it would be very interesting to have an experienced point of view in the WC section. If anyone has knowledge or references of how exactly it works, and would like to take the part, it would be very much apreciated. Otherwise that section will have to be based on common experience, which might not be 100% exact.
Thanx.
 
azhael said:
it´s not easy to part with your babies that you might have been hand feeding, and worrying about for several weeks/months, when you are not absolutely sure they are going to decent hands.
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That is so true!! Sometimes when I talk with the owner of the pet shop where I always go, we've talked about selling my cb newts. I've told him I could never sell animals to strangers, I'd make people take quizzes and read stuff before I'd let them buy the animals. I'd go broke. I could never sell my cb babies in a pet store.
 
I think that at least part of the problem is that salamanders in general are not appreciated by the public at large. Even among herp keepers we as caudate enthusiasts are a definite minority. Until fairly recently salamanders were a common fishing bait here in VA (actually they still are, it is just illegal to sell them now). As I understand in at least some other states it is still legal to sell them for bait as well. I do appreciate the good intention of this thread however I kind of agree with Peter in that I think that little good would come of any sort of boycott.
Chip
 
not really adding to the conversation but i just wanted to say there have been some amaing posts on the last couple of pages. amzing reads. thank you. valuable as a breeder and as a general buyer. thank you again
 
I´m the same Dawn...Mind you, if competition is to be made against the general public buying imports, offering CB animals in a more obvious way than just inside forums or the internet is needed.

Chip, even though the title of the threat came out a bit radical xD my intention is in no way boycotting petshops, my intention is promoting information so that individuals can form an opinion and decide what they think is right. One of the biggest problems, i think, is lack of knowledge. Take someone that´s completely new to amphibians, and has his eye set on some particular species, let´s say C.pyrrhogaster, and one day sees some for sale in a petshop. If that person has had access to information, it´s very possible he might think twice and decide buying them at the petshop is not his best option. Also imagine that person wants some species that´s considered difficult or not apropriate for beginners. If that person doesn´t know the complications that buying those animals might represent, there´s nothing to stop him from buying them. I´m not that naive, i know we can´t do much, and it´s definitely not going to have a big impact, but just because it´s not, it doesn´t mean it´s not worth it. Even if it´s just a few dozen people, i believe it´s a victory.
This site, and many others, are providing that information, although the WC matter might not have been stressed enough outside the forums.
I hope the article contributes to the quality information of CC, and completes a gap.

I also think there are other things we could try, but i understand not everyone has the time.

It´s very true that caudates are a clear minority even inside the hobby, and it also exposes them to be thought as "not that important". In the other parts of the hobby, mainly anurans and reptiles, the value of CB animals is taken into more consideration, i think. Though there´s also an import market, the most common sold species are almost always CB. With caudates, it´s not the case, the most common sold species are usually the less bred ones.
That´s why i think it´s time to try and make some changes, even if they are the tinniest ones.....because who knows, maybe step by step someday we´ll achieve something.
 
I think that offeriing a CB alternative through the petstores is the best solution. People are not going to get online to buy a Cb firebelly if they buy one from the petstore(though if they are one of the few that learns later they might as I did).

Also, most customers could care less about the particular species, many just want a cool 4 legged animal for their tank. And that is perfectly understandable. I'm sure all of us got interested in this hobby in a somewhat similar way...only we are alot more into it then most people ever will be.

I could see Pleurodeles waltl(can't think of another sp. that would be easy enough to rear), for example, competing very well against cynops orientalis in petstores. They get bigger, will likely look a lot spunkier than a mass of black blobs huddled in one corner, and likely are alot sturdier as far as petstore conditions(such as being given no land area). Someone just needs to figure out a system to mass produce them at a relatively low price, similar to how tropical fish are done. Perhaps then they would replace cynops orientalis as the typical newt offering at a petstore.

So hopefully in the future instead of "Help my firebelly!" it will be "help my ribbed newt!"...or with waltl it might be "we had these newt things we bought for a year or so and their is a big blog in their tank...are those eggs? How do we raise the babies?..."


It is the other way around with tropical fish. Newbies buy and kill farm raised ones, and specialists are busy working with WC.
 
I can also see P.waltl as a possible heir of the pet-shop wild caughts. It would certainly be great if it happened.

On a side note, i´d like to say the article is on it´s way. Peter agreed to collaborate, which i´m thankful for, and there´s always room for extra help.
I´m having trouble trying to put the idea i had in mind into paper. I thought it would be better to divide the article into two sections (CB/WC), and also divide it into two "topics", one of them being a simple explanation of what CB and WC is, the advantages, the disadvantages, and how it works. And the other one, being more centered in the morality issues, the state of amphibians in the world, the laws, etc. It´s proving hard to express myself correctly in english hehehe.
I would like to ask your opinion on this, do you think the article should only talk about non-opinion influenced facts, or do you think a section about the facts, and a discussion about the plenty other issues related to this, would be better?
 
Better than telling people what not to do, is suggesting people something positive to do. We should start a campaign (or at least promote at every opportunity) the perfect starter newts to be
P. waltl, and those things that Jenn breeds so well, what is it, cynops something or other. I seem to remember she said something like that in one of her ads for them one time (that she felt it was a great starter newt and also cb). Maybe when people ask what kind of newt to get we should say that. I seem to see a lot of ads for P. waltl, like they're not selling so well. How can we promote them?
 
C. cyanurus, since it has an aquatic stage, would also seem appropriate. I'm curious what price C. ensicauda woudl get if sold in fish stores at about the 1.5 year mark. Raising large quantities in a naturalistic terraria could make that feasible if you get a decent price for them.
 
sorry to bump the thread but its quite an interesting discussion.

its quite interesting to see how things work in america in concern to petshops, and reading about it on this thread id say its quite similar to the situation in england aswell. most shops you walk into are bound to have a tank of FBN's some where around.

im not too big on the mainland european herp scene as i dont tend to travel over there, but from what i know, the reason why theres so much captive breeding going on over there is that the amount of breeders is huge, they basically cut out the petshop 'middle man' and everything that comes into the countries generally goes straight into the hands of the breeders, so theres alot more stock about.

again, im not too knowledgable but from accounts with seasoned herp breeders that i know, there isnt too many pet shops around in europe, at least not like we have in england and the USA, they tend to breed enmasse and then have the good old mammoth sized hamm shows and other events like that.



to get a better view of CB caudates in a commercial setting, you need to look at other animals that are CB for the shops. take for instance cornsnakes, perhaps the biggest seller of all exotic animals in the pet trade (at least here in england anyway) the reason they are so popular as CB is because there easy to breed and people breeding them generally tend not to care once they leave there hands. they have a batch of between 7 and 14 babies and after a months inital care there usually ready for the shops.

the point is that to breed an animal in captivity commerically you need to loose the notion of decency and integrity towards the animal, how ever theres also two other options, the second one being that you breed animals so that you meerly break even with the costs of breeding, and supply the pet trade (in which case your making a sacrifice of time and effort but on behalf of the little critters) or we devise some sort of campaign that bumps up forums like this one and others where CB stock is the main seller.

to better understand this argument theres needs to be some research done into the commercial markets as i feel that this hobby is quite unlike any other, its so diverse in nature that to target every group would be almost impossible. youve got people who want a family pet, people with large collections who dont breed, taxonomists, large scale breeders and small scale breeders, and then people who breed animals of a specific genus or from a specific continent.

at one time when i was ignorant to the WC situation, my collection consisted of USA green tree frogs and indonesian whites tree frogs, but now that i know about these things, i rarely ever buy from petshops anymore, caudata wise especially.

the thing is though, that the majority of people who wind up on here were in one way or another influenced by the purchase of a caudate from a petshop. its then easy to say we are dedicated to CB, but if we try to alter the way of the petshops, the keeping of amphibians may quickly die out. keeping amphibians has only recently began to gin respect and be singled out from being a side line to fish keeping, so i think in terms of whats been acheived so far were doing quite well...
 
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