- Joined
- Nov 7, 2012
- Messages
- 5,173
- Location (City and/or State)
- South of Southern California, but not Mexico
Armchair forays into chelonian conservation.
“This will be brief, no matter how long it takes.” Former Mayor of Philadelphia, John Street.
My life has been a long and bumpy road, I’m glad to have shared it with so many chelonians
As a very young child, about 3 or 4, I had two red-ear sliders and two reeves turtles in a plastic bowl with a plastic palm tree and they were fed hamburger on a toothpick. My parents ‘disappeared’ their enclosure and deaths when I wasn’t looking, they knew I had become very attached in a short time. Later in my pre-teens I got to work for my Aunt and Uncle’s pet shop, my Aunt’s love for turtles was overly represented in that pet shop, and in her own animals at home.
As a slightly older preteen I would go the meeting of the Bay Area turtle and Tortoise Society, sometimes catching rides with older friends I could talk into the adventure some 50 miles away from home to Berkeley where the meeting were held. I found myself at this age wondering about the future of turtles in the wild. The pivotal awareness came from a manipulation of water reservoirs in Marin County CA.
Several reservoirs were drained during the fall of one year to prompt voters to pass a bond to support more reservoirs, unfortunately that winter provided little rain and several stabile populations of western pond turtles were disrupted. One member of that turtle club decided to solicit people who had to idle their swimming pools to keep the turtles for a year, until rain returned and the turtles could be returned to their reservoirs. My small role was to tag the turtles for follow-up. My typical teen interest led me to cute girls and fast cars, California living at its teen best, but no follow-up on those turtles.
During that same period early teens I had amassed a reasonable collection of pet turtles including what are now multi $$ thousand exotics as well as common domestic species. That collection was given away too many people as the cars, girls, a swim team, Boy Scouts and working odd jobs around my high school schedule took over. My Eagle project was to put a cattle exclusion fence up around the Fairfield Osborne Nature preserve in Sonoma County, there was/is a large population of western pond turtles there.
An initial interest to pursue zoology in college was dismissed by both academic advisers and family. Undergraduate college was a ‘no pet turtle’ or turtle conservation period of my life. Fast forward to post college, with a mishmash of schooling that ended with a degree in Agricultural Production. I became a volunteer at what is now the Fresno Chaffee Zoo, and had a great time being in that Reptile house with some truly unique and wonderful herps. A few turtles started coming back into my home around then, somehow like a pathogen or passion, the turtle interest was re-rooted into my life.
Some work related to animals husbandry in farming transitioned into an actual job at the Fresno Chaffee Zoo after enough volunteer hours added up to the requisite experience. At about the same time, I with a few others, founded the San Joaquin Herpetological society. The SJHS was a big instant success, still pre-internet; it was the go to place for people with a herp interest.
That’s where I met Yvonne who I now think of as my ‘turtle wife’. However I ended up going to the Philadelphia Zoo, and again, the collection of animals was paired down and Yvonne became a life saver for me, keeping many of the turtles and tortoises until I could sort things out.
These two collections built and dispersed and the few conservation projects I had been involved with set a stage for a third much more substantive collection and what I reported on elsewhere as the Asian Scholarship Program for In-situ Chelonian Conservation. That third collection was dispersed as I went back to school and worked multiple full and part time jobs to make up for the poor income zoo keepers are subjected to for virtue of the fun and privilege to work at a zoo. Not having a collection at home also afforded the time and resources to get a graduate degree in organismal biology.
Now back in California again and having Yvonne further help with maintaining a multisite collection I am again considering what kind of conservation initiatives I can become involved with. The local natural history museum and the local ‘authorities’ seem to have no use for someone like myself, with one foot in captive animals and one in native or natural populations.
I would like to more emulate those few folks who have been able to partially or wholly sustain themselves with breeding and selling with a pet turtle/tortoise enterprise, but still also be contributing to wild chelonian conservation. I have a strong idea about when conservation is hubristic meddling and ego empire building versus keeping wild turtles wild in the wild. This has brought some conflict, but I’m okay with that.
So - what to do?
I stumbled across something that I hope will set a trend.
When people use PayPal they select what kind of transaction it will be- commerce versus family or friend. PayPal charges 3% to those in commerce but leaves that money alone for the friend and family transaction. When I sell tortoises I noticed some people use the friend and family option. I get a small 3% bonus on the sale.
I have decided to give that bonus to turtle and tortoise conservation efforts. I prefer small one man shows, the bang for the buck is so much higher. Like in business it has the greatest ROI, and rarely a large overall return. I’ll ask that you trust me on this POV, I am very sure of my statement.
I will never ask a customer to use the friend and family method, because then they lose the ability to seek a refund directly with PayPal, it can be risky for a new relationship to hope for that much trust to work. But whenever that is the case that 3% is going to go to the conservation program of my choice. It’s a bit of a conservation “tax” funded by trust between the buyer and me. I’ll sooner or later offer information on where the $$ went, so that it’s not all suspected as feces to promote sales. The reckoning is never going to be public; it will always be private between me and my accountant. The recipient can talk it up or not - that would never be a condition, and the first recipient has been asked to keep it to themselves. I’ll out myself later when it seems appropriate to me.
I hope this can be a trending way to allow those of us who are small scale breeders to offer a bit back to the chelonians in the wild. It will not cost me anything, it’s $$ that is based on the trust a buyer has for me as a seller. I believe this could collectively make a substantial difference.
That’s why I call it armchair chelonian conservation. I collect some $$ passively, and send it on, all while sitting in a chair.
“This will be brief, no matter how long it takes.” Former Mayor of Philadelphia, John Street.
My life has been a long and bumpy road, I’m glad to have shared it with so many chelonians
As a very young child, about 3 or 4, I had two red-ear sliders and two reeves turtles in a plastic bowl with a plastic palm tree and they were fed hamburger on a toothpick. My parents ‘disappeared’ their enclosure and deaths when I wasn’t looking, they knew I had become very attached in a short time. Later in my pre-teens I got to work for my Aunt and Uncle’s pet shop, my Aunt’s love for turtles was overly represented in that pet shop, and in her own animals at home.
As a slightly older preteen I would go the meeting of the Bay Area turtle and Tortoise Society, sometimes catching rides with older friends I could talk into the adventure some 50 miles away from home to Berkeley where the meeting were held. I found myself at this age wondering about the future of turtles in the wild. The pivotal awareness came from a manipulation of water reservoirs in Marin County CA.
Several reservoirs were drained during the fall of one year to prompt voters to pass a bond to support more reservoirs, unfortunately that winter provided little rain and several stabile populations of western pond turtles were disrupted. One member of that turtle club decided to solicit people who had to idle their swimming pools to keep the turtles for a year, until rain returned and the turtles could be returned to their reservoirs. My small role was to tag the turtles for follow-up. My typical teen interest led me to cute girls and fast cars, California living at its teen best, but no follow-up on those turtles.
During that same period early teens I had amassed a reasonable collection of pet turtles including what are now multi $$ thousand exotics as well as common domestic species. That collection was given away too many people as the cars, girls, a swim team, Boy Scouts and working odd jobs around my high school schedule took over. My Eagle project was to put a cattle exclusion fence up around the Fairfield Osborne Nature preserve in Sonoma County, there was/is a large population of western pond turtles there.
An initial interest to pursue zoology in college was dismissed by both academic advisers and family. Undergraduate college was a ‘no pet turtle’ or turtle conservation period of my life. Fast forward to post college, with a mishmash of schooling that ended with a degree in Agricultural Production. I became a volunteer at what is now the Fresno Chaffee Zoo, and had a great time being in that Reptile house with some truly unique and wonderful herps. A few turtles started coming back into my home around then, somehow like a pathogen or passion, the turtle interest was re-rooted into my life.
Some work related to animals husbandry in farming transitioned into an actual job at the Fresno Chaffee Zoo after enough volunteer hours added up to the requisite experience. At about the same time, I with a few others, founded the San Joaquin Herpetological society. The SJHS was a big instant success, still pre-internet; it was the go to place for people with a herp interest.
That’s where I met Yvonne who I now think of as my ‘turtle wife’. However I ended up going to the Philadelphia Zoo, and again, the collection of animals was paired down and Yvonne became a life saver for me, keeping many of the turtles and tortoises until I could sort things out.
These two collections built and dispersed and the few conservation projects I had been involved with set a stage for a third much more substantive collection and what I reported on elsewhere as the Asian Scholarship Program for In-situ Chelonian Conservation. That third collection was dispersed as I went back to school and worked multiple full and part time jobs to make up for the poor income zoo keepers are subjected to for virtue of the fun and privilege to work at a zoo. Not having a collection at home also afforded the time and resources to get a graduate degree in organismal biology.
Now back in California again and having Yvonne further help with maintaining a multisite collection I am again considering what kind of conservation initiatives I can become involved with. The local natural history museum and the local ‘authorities’ seem to have no use for someone like myself, with one foot in captive animals and one in native or natural populations.
I would like to more emulate those few folks who have been able to partially or wholly sustain themselves with breeding and selling with a pet turtle/tortoise enterprise, but still also be contributing to wild chelonian conservation. I have a strong idea about when conservation is hubristic meddling and ego empire building versus keeping wild turtles wild in the wild. This has brought some conflict, but I’m okay with that.
So - what to do?
I stumbled across something that I hope will set a trend.
When people use PayPal they select what kind of transaction it will be- commerce versus family or friend. PayPal charges 3% to those in commerce but leaves that money alone for the friend and family transaction. When I sell tortoises I noticed some people use the friend and family option. I get a small 3% bonus on the sale.
I have decided to give that bonus to turtle and tortoise conservation efforts. I prefer small one man shows, the bang for the buck is so much higher. Like in business it has the greatest ROI, and rarely a large overall return. I’ll ask that you trust me on this POV, I am very sure of my statement.
I will never ask a customer to use the friend and family method, because then they lose the ability to seek a refund directly with PayPal, it can be risky for a new relationship to hope for that much trust to work. But whenever that is the case that 3% is going to go to the conservation program of my choice. It’s a bit of a conservation “tax” funded by trust between the buyer and me. I’ll sooner or later offer information on where the $$ went, so that it’s not all suspected as feces to promote sales. The reckoning is never going to be public; it will always be private between me and my accountant. The recipient can talk it up or not - that would never be a condition, and the first recipient has been asked to keep it to themselves. I’ll out myself later when it seems appropriate to me.
I hope this can be a trending way to allow those of us who are small scale breeders to offer a bit back to the chelonians in the wild. It will not cost me anything, it’s $$ that is based on the trust a buyer has for me as a seller. I believe this could collectively make a substantial difference.
That’s why I call it armchair chelonian conservation. I collect some $$ passively, and send it on, all while sitting in a chair.