[split] Wild caught or Captive bred?

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RedfootsRule

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Ascott, I can't tell if your agreeing with me or not?

Your right, captivity is no heaven either. Another reason why we shouldn't force WC animals to live there...

No, we humans are definitely NOT qualified to make the decision of taking animals out of the wild. We are NOT qualified to mess around with the natural food chain. I agree; if humans had not ruined the wild to begin with, things would be better. But now, its our responsibility to fix what we started, and taking animals from the wild doesn't help anything.

As your signature says, when one tugs at a single thing in nature he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

Honestly, I couldn't agree with you more. We need to clean up our messes. Not continue to make them.
 

StudentoftheReptile

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I think everyone knows my stance on this matter. It would be fine if we stayed where we were thousands of years ago; all the animals lived their wild lives in their natural ecosystems and we were still dragging our clubs and barely learning to build a fire in the cave. Then we could have a more even keeled perspective on the ethics of taking a wild animal out of its natural element just for our own pleasure.

However, even if you put an end to the entire pet industry, you would still have a lot of wild tortoises disappearing off the face of the planet by the hand of mankind due to massive habitat destruction, as well as people eating them in impoverished countries. Personally, while we can argue the ethics of what we do all day long, thousands of tortoises are still going to bite the dust each year even if everyone on this forum decides never to buy WC ever again.

We're never going to change things, folks. I wish people would just get off their high horse, and feel good about caring for an animal. Yeah, some of it may be selfish, but everything dies someday, people. A tortoise could perish to disease in the wild, or get picked off by a predator. Or it could rot in a pet store's filthy cage from neglect and improper care. Or...it can have a chance to live a halfway decent life in one of our homes where it gets its food brought to it everyday, little risk of getting eaten by a predator, and a better chance at medical care of something goes wrong with its health.
 

Tom

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Peter, what you are doing is called projection and anthropomorphism. This is a forum for people who keep tortoises in captive environments. If you are THIS opposed to keeping reptiles captive, I would suggest you get the necessary permits and take a trip to the native land of your chosen specie and reintroduce yours into the wild where they can be eaten, bulldozed, parasitized, killed by cars, starve to death, or possibly, if luck is on their side, survive just fine and even reproduce.

It is completely hypocritical to have captive animals and then rant about how they belong in the wild. Just because you didn't abuse the goose, doesn't make you any less responsible for the abuse of the goose when you ordered and paid for the foie gras. Captive bred animals, ALL of them, are the offspring animals that were, as you say, "kidnapped" from the wild. When you paid for or simply took in and started caring for a tortoise in captivity you made yourself the essential and most important link in a chain of people who are responsible for taking that animal from the wild. You may not have actually taken your tortoises parents from under a bush in some forest, but YOU are the primary reason that those who DID take them out of the wild, did their deed.

I am not saying you are right or wrong about your FEELINGS. I am saying that your feelings do not coincide with the spirit and intent of THIS forum and most of its members. Your expressed feelings also do not coincide with your choice to keep an animal in captivity.
 

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+1 Reputation point for Tom and Jacqui. Hey whatever happened to reputation points, anyways?

And yes, it is different then CB animals. CB animals are born into captivity; its all they know, they don't spend the days dreaming of what it was like. But WC are taken out of a beautiful (yet dangerous) life to live one of confinement.
How fair does that sound?

I was born with the intent of wandering naked around the desert eating red meat, coconuts and bananas near the oasis surrounded by beautiful women; but I didn't exactly get my opportunity, either. I'm now taxed against my will and I get a letter in the mail every time I leave my garbage cans out past 1:00 PM on garbage day.

I prefer wild caught tortoises over captive bred for a few main reasons, some or most of which have already been stated here. I like getting them "closer" to breedable size. I bought CB when I had to (cherryheads, burmese blacks, radiateds, several others that are no longer imported) and now I'm suffering through the misery of years of babysitting baby tortoises dreaming for the day that I can leave them outside all year and not under artificial conditions indoors. I prefer WC animals because they have clean smooth shells. I prefer WC because I feel like I'm getting a "fresh start" with them, and not having to hope that someone else raised something right prior to me getting the animal. I prefer WC animals because I can buy 10 of them this year and 10 of them next year and they all look the same. Buying CB animals that's impossible unless you start with babies and raise them all.

The species that are still imported are generally not threatened in the wild. When they get threatened, their native countries or the international community generally shut down exports on them or limits the amounts of them that can leave. Russians, redfoots, Greeks, etc have massive natural ranges, and they are heavily populated in their ranges. I don't know the exact numbers, but a huge number of the imported redfoots aren't WC at all; they're farm raised in South America (you can tell by their slightly pyramided shells). Hermanns aren't WC and imported anymore; they're "farmed" at least on paperwork (their native countries don't allow export), and most imported hermanns have the "look" of being raised in captivity. There's debate whether some hermanns are WC and imported illegally, but most of what I've seen (and purchased many of) in the past 2 years looked farm raised. Sulcatas and leopards aren't imported at all and haven't been in a long time. There's really very very few species that are actually caught in the wild and imported still. Besides maybe pancakes (which are imported in comparatively very small numbers), I can't think of one that I would consider "at risk" in its native range.

On a final note, I have very few losses from recently wild caught animals.... The idea that "most die within a few months" I'm just not seeing.
 

RedfootsRule

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Tom said:
Peter, what you are doing is called projection and anthropomorphism. This is a forum for people who keep tortoises in captive environments. If you are THIS opposed to keeping reptiles captive, I would suggest you get the necessary permits and take a trip to the native land of your chosen specie and reintroduce yours into the wild where they can be eaten, bulldozed, parasitized, killed by cars, starve to death, or possibly, if luck is on their side, survive just fine and even reproduce.

It is completely hypocritical to have captive animals and then rant about how they belong in the wild. Just because you didn't abuse the goose, doesn't make you any less responsible for the abuse of the goose when you ordered and paid for the foie gras. Captive bred animals, ALL of them, are the offspring animals that were, as you say, "kidnapped" from the wild. When you paid for or simply took in and started caring for a tortoise in captivity you made yourself the essential and most important link in a chain of people who are responsible for taking that animal from the wild. You may not have actually taken your tortoises parents from under a bush in some forest, but YOU are the primary reason that those who DID take them out of the wild, did their deed.

I am not saying you are right or wrong about your FEELINGS. I am saying that your feelings do not coincide with the spirit and intent of THIS forum and most of its members. Your expressed feelings also do not coincide with your choice to keep an animal in captivity.

Tom...

What you are doing here is calling being assumptuous....Name where in my posts that I am "this opposed" to keep to keeping reptiles captive? You won't be able to, because its not there. I am opposed to keeping WILD CAUGHT reptiles captive. (Only of certain species however. I did recognize the need to take certain species that have not yet been bred to have assurance groups out of the wild.)

Anthropomorphisism is applying ones feelings to an animal...In a way, I suppose you can say that. But I'm not applying "my feelings" to them. I'm understanding theirs...I've grown up with animals my whole life, and have been in the rescue business for some time. In all this time, I feel I have a very good understanding of how animals feel.

Hypocritical would apply to me if I was "ranting" about keeping CAPTIVE BRED animals captive. I'm not. I'm "ranting" about keeping WC animals in captivity! You have ignored to read my posts if you're assuming this about me; nothing I said applied to captive bred animals. Not a single word of it.

Yes, in the beginning ALL captive bred animals were wild. But as I've seen others say, when the first tortoises entered captivity it was a MUCH different scenario. The wild is not the same now as it was 30 years ago. 30 years ago many species that are now in critical endangerment were plentiful in the wild. So, if you take one second to look at the facts, you'll see that what happened back then, and what happens now, have nothing to do with each other.

I literally can't even begin to grasp how you come to the conclusion that I'm the primary reason the first tortoises were taken from the wild...I guess I can then say; Tom, if you eat bagels, you are the primary reason there are bagels in this world. Does that sound feasible in any stretch of the imagination? Personally, I don't think so.

My feelings about WC animals do not, in any stretch of the imagination, coincide with the choice of those on this forum to keep, once again, CAPTIVE BRED animals in captive. They do however, coincide with the choice to keep WC animals in captivity.

I guess I'll end with this. It can be argued and spun in whatever people wish it to be, but its undeniable. The next time we hear about 400 radiated hatchlings being smuggled illegally into an airport in america in a suitcase...Why do you think it is? How many people in the U.S eat tortoise soup? None that I'm aware of. Those tortoises entered America to satisfy the demand for WILD CAUGHT tortoises. Thats the primary reason. So if you buy WC animals, your responsible for those tortoises.

Well, I've made my feelings clear. And they appear to be meant with a lot of hostility. So I'm going to make the choice to leave this thread before it turns into a flaming war. By guys!
 

Yvonne G

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Peter:

Anthropomorphism isn't applying YOUR feelings to an animal, it means giving "feelings" to an animal. Animals don't have "feelings." They look for food...they satisfy their need to breed...they rest...they warm themselves in the sun...they protect themselves when they are threatened...but they don't "feel."
 

RedfootsRule

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emysemys said:
Peter:

Anthropomorphism isn't applying YOUR feelings to an animal, it means giving "feelings" to an animal. Animals don't have "feelings." They look for food...they satisfy their need to breed...they rest...they warm themselves in the sun...they protect themselves when they are threatened...but they don't "feel."

I know I said I was leaving this thread...But I really must say something about that.

If you even begin to state animals don't have feelings then you share the same opinion as animal abusers. (Not saying you are one, I know you aren't). But you share the same opinion: animal's don't have "feelings". Animals feel on every level as humans...To say they aren't capable of emotion is a very uneducated, unexperienced statement.

If you say they don't have feelings, then I guess we can abuse and neglect animals every way we like, right? There's nothing wrong with it?The situation where 18k rodents and 600 snakes were euthanized because of such extreme neglect; I guess that doesn't matter right? Because they don't have "feelings".

To say animals don't have feelings is to say that an animal can't like one person over another. My sisters macaw loves her, yet he bites me. What does that mean? He has certain feelings towards me, and certain feelings towards her. My cat loves me, yet dislikes other people. Doesn't that sound like feelings? No, its not just because I've raised her. I could give you a million example about animals having very complex feelings. But you've made up your mind in that matter.
 

Yvonne G

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Because in my opinion, animals don't experience the "feelings" such as humans experience, doesn't mean in any way shape or form that it is ok to abuse them. I have no idea where in the world that is coming from.

A human body in a vegetative state doesn't have feelings, but the caregivers wouldn't dream of abusing that person (normally).

Wow. I'm just speechless.
 

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RedfootsRule said:
I would believe any WC animal would rather die free then live caged for the rest of its life...

And yes, it is different then CB animals. CB animals are born into captivity; its all they know, they don't spend the days dreaming of what it was like. But WC are taken out of a beautiful (yet dangerous) life to live one of confinement.
How fair does that sound?

THIS. These two paragraphs above are what I'm referring to. Few animals, and certainly not tortoises, have this human concept of "freedom". You are ascribing human emotions to animals that simply do not have them. Have you asked many tortoise if theyd rather be in a south American stew pot or my back yard. If I were a tortoise and had feelings and rational thoughts using deductive reasoning, I'd feel a lot better about living in YOUR back yard or mine. I simply don't agree with you that a wild caught tortoise in one of Tyler's large well designed well planted pens, sits there and dreams about what it used to be like out in the wild... If you do, that's okay, I'm just pointing out the differences in our ways of thinking for the purposes of this discussion.

I think I need to make my other point a little clearer: A man in the native country has a reason for removing that tortoise from the wild. He does it for money. A local exporter buys it from him. The exporter sells his tortoises to other countries for money. The importer/wholesaler buys them low and sells them high to retailers. The person you bought your CB hatchlings from, bought their foundation stock from one of these wholesaler/importers. Why did they buy their foundation stock? So they could breed them and sell their babies to people like you and me. So if you follow it back, it should be very obvious that YOU and anyone else with a pet tortoise, captive bred or otherwise, is responsible for those original animals being removed from the wild. Every person in the chain did what they did for financial gain. YOU, the end user, are the ultimate provider of that financial gain. The buck starts and stops with YOU Peter. The consumer. I don't understand how people feel totally innocent and uninvolved because the animal in their house or yard is captive bred. They are here because WE fund their removal from the wild.

Don't misunderstand. I'm not encouraging removal of tortoises from the wild. I also prefer CB stock in most cases, but I am honest and aware of my complicity it he WC pet trade too. As Tyler pointed out, the species that are still imported are NOT endangered in any way in the wild.

As for the suitcase full of radiateds... Those are almost certainly captive bred. They have to be smuggled because of stupid laws that don't help the animals in the first place. According to the people who have been to Madagascar to study wild radiateds the populations are doing just fine and hovering at around 6 million animals. Radiateds are seldom removed from the wild anymore because they breed successfully in captivity so well. There is no need to remove anymore BECAUSE we removed enough in the past. I would like to see this eventually achieved with all species, and I'm doing my part to contribute too. I just don't have all the fantasies about the thoughts of formerly wild tortoises that you do.

Further, there is no hostility or animosity here either. Just several people, including you, expressing their points of view. We are all friends here and we don't have to agree on everything all the time. Nobody is mad at you, and I hope you are not mad at anybody. I hope we can continue discussing this and exchanging our thoughts on the matter.
 

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Lets set the whole "anthropomorphism" idiocy aside....(Not a single word makes me angrier then the implication of animals having a "lack of emotion"). Heres my opinion in a nutshell (a few things stated I disagree with, but the over-all idea is VERY true.)

http://www.journalmcd.com/index.php/mcd/article/view/mcd.v6i2.3/257

And for those who insist on perpetrating the lies that animals do not have emotion, heres for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOLqVshIM4w

http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/stories-that-prove-animals-have-souls

The proof of emotion in animals has been studied in fish, whales, canines, birds, felines, rodents and primates. There has been a lot of scientific evidence (since apparently what we see every day in front of our eyes isn't enough) done within the field of neuroscience of animals to prove they are capable of emotion....Also, with rodents and primates, tests were done to prove that they would work to prevent the pain of another, e.g a macaque would not pull a chain that delivered food to itself if it caused a slight electric shock to another. Does this sound like just "looking for food, breeding, resting and warming themselves"? No study has yet been done (that I am aware of) of emotion in reptiles, but I believe it would be foolish indeed to assume they alone are void of emotion...


Tom, I'm quite sure if a tortoise had the choice, it undoubtedly WOULD choose the one that doesn't lead to the stew pot. But your still believing they would go to the stew pot...

If the importer doesn't buy the animals from the exporter, whats the exporter going to do? He's going to have a bunch of tortoises he doesn't know what to do with. In other words, he just made a bad investment, which he will not do again. In which case, he will not buy more tortoises from the man that captures them. You have successfully broken the chain. The chain can also start with those who buy the tortoises from the importer...or the importer...But it takes a group effort here; not just one person can make a difference...This is why I wish people would understand.

The opinion seems to be that if the man doesn't collect tortoises for money, he'll just keep collecting but putting them in the stew pot...This is completely wrong. Comon guys...how easy is it for the man to go out and find a wild impressa/kinixys/, any other rare species? And how many OTHER options does he have for food? All of the native flora and fauna (the COMMON and easy to find kind) Is he really going to pick trekking through the jungle for hours on end to get the tortoise (which undoubtedly has very little meat) or rely on that big river full of big fish that make a big dinner? (Okay, we can say there might not be a river...Lets not get caught up in that. There is THOUSANDS of other options of food. Most native peoples are very resourceful...)

There was recently a survey done of intotestudo fortenii in the wild, and zero specimens were found. To me, this indicate they are very hard to find. (I have never been to these countries looking for tortoises myself, so I'm not going to give my "personal experience".)

Lets put this in familiar terms...Say your really hungry and you want cheese. You can go out to town and look for hours in different stores for a rare cheese (probably one thats growing mold :)), or you can buy that nice big hunk of mozzarella....Which is at every supermarket in America :)!

I agree Tom, we don't have to agree on everything all the time. (Oops...I just agreed.) I feel like there is some hostility here, but maybe I'm wrong. I'm not mad at anyone, and I apologize if it came off that way to any of you.

So, if anyone would like, lets continue to express and contribute new thoughts to this debate....
 

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I don't know that I can comment here. I love eating meat. Many developed nations culturally consume turtle/tortoise. It's not a matter of going around looking for them, it's jus going to the local equivalent of Safeway. I know. I've been to the Hong Kong supermarket and gone to the meat department just to look for the turtles they offered. Imagine, if you will, soft shells bigger than dinner plates, swimming in over crowded tanks like cows at feed lot beef ranches. I love Ava my dog. Yet there are dog ranchers in Indonesia. If either could perceive life and death, I think they would all prefer safety.
 

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Cowboy_Ken said:
I don't know that I can comment here. I love eating meat. Many developed nations culturally consume turtle/tortoise. It's not a matter of going around looking for them, it's jus going to the local equivalent of Safeway. I know. I've been to the Hong Kong supermarket and gone to the meat department just to look for the turtles they offered. Imagine, if you will, soft shells bigger than dinner plates, swimming in over crowded tanks like cows at feed lot beef ranches. I love Ava my dog. Yet there are dog ranchers in Indonesia. If either could perceive life and death, I think they would all prefer safety.

I'm having a hard time understanding your meaning...If I understand you correctly, your correct, they do consume turtles and tortoises. In fact, that is the number one reason so many species of soft-shell are more or less extinct...(Tell me, WHY must they eat them!) Your right....they can go to the local supermarket to get tortoises and turtles, so why would they look for them? However, this doesn't at all apply to the more primitive areas (which are likely the ones supplying the exporters) where there is no supermarket. Hong kong is not one of those areas however, so it doesn't well apply....

All animals can obviously perceive life and death...I'm saying death by stew-pot is not so common as people seem to believe.
 

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Peter, I'm sorry that you have some sort of preconceived emotion attached to the word "anthropomorphism" that makes you angry, but that does not make you any less guilty of it. It also does not make it "idiocy", because in fact anthropomorphism leads to a lot of stupid decisions and causes harm to animals. Two examples: All the people who get a second russian tortoise because they think their tortoise needs a "friend". Example two: The youtube video of a leopard tortoise "helping" another tortoise who was flipped on its back, by flipping it back over. We actually argued this one here on the forum. It was obvious that these were two males fighting. The upright male had likely flipped the other one just before the video starts and he was showing every sign of male tortoise aggression in the book. He simply rammed his helpless upside down rival and it happened to turn him right side up. He then proceeded to attempt to chase his rival out of his territory. The "animal lover" crowd saw this as one tortoise helping another. Anthropomorphism. Any beginning student of tortoise behavior could see that it was one tortoise ATTACKING another. I will pre-grant you that a lack of anthropomorphism can also lead to bad decisions regarding animals. I've seen that too.

No one is arguing that animals don't have emotions. I'm a freakin' animal trainer by profession. You think I don't know more about animal's thoughts and emotions than your average Joe on the street? What I am arguing is your assertion that any tortoise would have the ability to reason the difference between "die free than live in a cage the rest of its life...", or the "fair"ness of being brought into captivity. Do animals have emotions? Yes. Do they have the ability to use logic and deductive reasoning to compare and contrast their current captive situation with their former wild situation and formulate a list of pros and cons? No. No they don't. Some people do not read enough into animal thoughts and behavior. YOU are reading TOO MUCH into it, in my opinion. Apes, elephants and dolphins can, to some degree, reason. Tortoises and other reptiles, not so much. Bugs? Nope. Parrots? Certainly. Alligators? No. Dogs? Sure. Etc... In short saying that it is sometimes a bad thing when humans incorrectly ascribe human emotions to animals is NOT the same thing as saying animals have no emotions. You made that leap for some reason, and that is part of why we are arguing. I'm not saying that animals don't have "feelings". They do. I'm saying that tortoises do not have the ability to use reason and logic as a human does, because they don't.

As for your attempt to absolve yourself and others from blame for tortoises being taken from the wild? I say, "supply and demand". With no demand (which is ultimately what you, me and other pet keepers offer), there would be no supply offered. Sure this vehicle has lots of parts, but you and I are what DRIVE this vehicle. This vehicle (the pet trade: all of it, CB and WC) would not exist without you and me and others like us who spend money on pets and pet supplies. Whether YOUR particular animals are CB or WC is irrelevant in my opinion. We ALL fuel the fire. We are ALL part of the same culture or demographic group. If you me and all the others did not like keeping tortoises in captivity and spend our money on it, none would ever be removed from the wild for the pet trade. But we do, so they are. BTW, I find it noteworthy that I have no WC animals. The two species that I currently keep have not ben WC or imported since the 90s. Yet I still feel the way I do about this issue. Again, I believe CB to be superior for many reasons, but I do not share your across the board condemnation of any animals being removed from the wild. Endangered species (truly endangered ones, NOT stupid politically listed ones, like radiateds) sure. They should be restricted, regulated and protected. But common, non-endangered ones like pancakes or russians, I have no problem with in controlled numbers. No species should be depleted from the wild ever, but I have no problem with a carefully observed and adjusted "harvest" of species that can handle it.

And to reaffirm, just conversation here, no hostility. Just making my points and taking in your rebuttals. I think discussions like this are very beneficial. Everyone learns from it. Everyone sees new thoughts and points of view. Everyone will see where different people stand on different issues. Some will agree with either side, and that's okay, but we all get to see and experience each others side, and THAT is what I find beneficial. I may not agree with all of your points, but I do like to hear them. This back and forth "arguing" or discussion, helps me (and others) better understand exactly where you are coming from and what, specifically, you mean by some of your statements. Its all good, in other words.
 

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RedfootsRule said:
I'm having a hard time understanding your meaning...If I understand you correctly, your correct, they do consume turtles and tortoises. In fact, that is the number one reason so many species of soft-shell are more or less extinct...(Tell me, WHY must they eat them!) Your right....they can go to the local supermarket to get tortoises and turtles, so why would they look for them? However, this doesn't at all apply to the more primitive areas (which are likely the ones supplying the exporters) where there is no supermarket. Hong kong is not one of those areas however, so it doesn't well apply....

All animals can obviously perceive life and death...I'm saying death by stew-pot is not so common as people seem to believe.

Have you not had Cajun snapping turtle? Not pretty, but reality. The most successful turtle, the red ear slider, has now made its way to every continent on earth, (except that frozen one). While the exporting from the USA of res adults has remained steady over the years, exports of young ones, presumably for pets is on the rise. I mention this because although beef is a wasteful, heavy impact animal for us Americans to eat, we have a hard time changing this very young culture. That's why turtles and tortoise continue to be eaten in their native lands or wherever they are most easily procured.
And there is the very real concept that the rarer something is, the tastier. I don't share any of the views of the people's I've been talking about, I'm just trying to share the views because you asked why.
 

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Ascott, I can't tell if your agreeing with me or not?

Absolutely I am with you Peter....also, animals do feel, think, calculate, harbor memories that cause them to change their behavior---react to loss of environment---loss of companions---and change in their world. Nothing anyone here says will ever change that belief with me (so don't bother trying ;))

Also, it is so easy for we "humans" to say that if it were not for us the world would go to hell in a handbag...seriously, I say we perform as both hell and the handbag....so, yes, if we stopped slopping around in the remaining natural parts of the world-- raping and pillaging from the other creatures --with just as much equal rights as this human species, then we would be able to give our human egos a rest....however, it is so easy for folks to say now that well things are so messed up now, why bother? Bother folks, bother.....

So Peter, yes---I am with you.
 

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What would you say to somebody who gets a tortoise and then wants to put it into a 10 gallon tank? Would you give him your own tortoise? I think you would want to know he has the correct setup to give that precious tortoise you care so much about a chance at survivial would you not? For me personally, I see leaving the wild tortoise out in many of it's natural habitats as just that. I would like to see us fixing the problem and then putting the wildlife both plants and animals that are in danger, back in. Too many times we say we are working on correcting the problem only to have it take so much longer to correct, to be more complexed a problem then first thought, or to be unfixable at the time. Meanwhile those animals and plants are ever losing the struggle to survive out there.


Cowboy_Ken said:
RedfootsRule said:
All animals can obviously perceive life and death...I'm saying death by stew-pot is not so common as people seem to believe.

Have you not had Cajun snapping turtle? Not pretty, but reality. The most successful turtle, the red ear slider, has now made its way to every continent on earth, (except that frozen one). While the exporting from the USA of res adults has remained steady over the years, exports of young ones, presumably for pets is on the rise. I mention this because although beef is a wasteful, heavy impact animal for us Americans to eat, we have a hard time changing this very young culture. That's why turtles and tortoise continue to be eaten in their native lands or wherever they are most easily procured.
And there is the very real concept that the rarer something is, the tastier. I don't share any of the views of the people's I've been talking about, I'm just trying to share the views because you asked why.

I live in Nebraska, were we love our beef. Yet, snapping turtle is also on the menu. A couple of years back I recall seeing an outing the state's Game and Parks was putting on for women. One of the things they were going to be doing was catching soft shelled turtles and eating them. I think even in America, turtles are being consumed one by one much more often then we like to think.


ascott said:
....however, it is so easy for folks to say now that well things are so messed up now, why bother? Bother folks, bother.....

I think everybody in here is "bothering". It may be they are "bothering" at the level of just keeping their own animals living in as high of a quality lifestyle as they can. It may be those who are "bothering" by sharing their knowledge or even just by giving each other encouragement. They may be "bothering" by donating money and time to nature saving causes, by breeding these animals to take pressure off the wild ones, or they may be breeding to keep some of the more rare animals surviving so they may on day go back to the wild. They may be "bothering" by experimenting to unlock the secrets to what makes these animals tick and what they really need to survive. They may be "bothering" by going out and teaching non-tortoise folks, especially the children. There are just so many ways everybody in here are already "bothering". I think sometimes we fail to be aware of those ways or to give credit to those folks. Success in keeping areas natural or getting them fixed, is not going to be coming from the folks "on the frontline", the ones who will get all the credit when and if it works, but rather from all the folks on the lower levels of "bothering" who are often made to feel like they are not "bothering" so why do it.
 

Cowboy_Ken

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Something I realize that I left out in my late night, Christmas candy altered state rumblings, is that the critters offered in the markets are often collected from the wild by native people for survival cash. Yes, there is little incentive to eat a wild caught tortoise from a food quality stand point when that same tortoise will provide cold, hard cash to buy dry goods or other more practical food stuff and at a better price. The choice animals are sold as food, the lesser ones sold as pets. No one raises a bummer calf to eat it when a strong healthy one is offered. And food animals sell at a better price at the beginning of the loop. Kerosine and gasoline are expensive needs in the bush. Here in the states, faced with a home foreclosure, think how tempting it would be to collect fence lizards if they brought in $10.00 each.
 

Jacqui

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Cowboy_Ken said:
Something I realize that I left out in my late night, Christmas candy altered state rumblings,

:D Are we going to have to limit your holiday candy intake?
 

Tom

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Cowboy_Ken said:
Jacqui said:
:D Are we going to have to limit your holiday candy intake?

Normally, I don't eat candy. Lately I've been grazing alot and candy and cookies seem to be everywhere!

I have no will power against holiday treats...
 
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