HELP fight back against the attack on reptile keeping in Qld

[Elcho]

I think some of the big breeders have probably not helped the situation. Don't have a full time job but selling reptiles worth 5k+, the government want their cut. This will drive a lot of people to have off the book reptiles. I don't see people with 10 reptiles paying $700 for 3 years. Also a lot of reptiles being release into the wild because they didn't have the right license. A lot of the common low end reptiles will not be bred because breeders will want the return on increase costs

 

[cris]

In general I think it's moving in the right direction.

They are going to make it legal to breed hybrids, albinos etc. that will probably win some support.

 

[Elcho]

It's said that hybrids are still illegal but morphs will be allowed. It's already being done on a huge scale so at least they can now be labeled correctly.

 

[longirostris]

I think some of the big breeders have probably not helped the situation. Don't have a full time job but selling reptiles worth 5k+, the government want their cut. This will drive a lot of people to have off the book reptiles. I don't see people with 10 reptiles paying $700 for 3 years. Also a lot of reptiles being release into the wild because they didn't have the right license. A lot of the common low end reptiles will not be bred because breeders will want the return on increase costs

Yes I think you are right, so how is this "moving in the right direction". It is without doubt the biggest retrograde step by a wildlife authority in any state of Australia since wildlife licensing was first introduced over 30 years go. How can any changes that push people underground and increase the risk of poaching and black market activities be a step in the right direction. The focus of these changes is just ridiculous. There are hidden agendas in play at DES driven by animal rights loonies that should not be there and the sooner the minister responsible pulls the plug on these outrageous proposals the better off everyone will be including the wildlife.

Just as a matter of interest how big do you think the market in Australia is for $5000.00 reptiles?? This market and the market generally in Australia for reptiles is tiny compared to overseas. There are very few people making enough money out of reptiles in this country to say they are actually earning a living. The few that are in it as a business though, generally struggle just trying to cover operating costs. I can think of only two or three individuals around the whole country who actually earn enough through their efforts breeding and selling reptiles that they can pay themselves a modest wage and not actually have to work another job. These people are beyond reproach as far as the legality of their operation is concerned. One of these people is the current supplier/source for most of the Moloch's that go into wildlife displays in zoos and wildlife/reptile parks around Australia, which means that no one needs to go and collect Moloch's from the wild for zoos etc any more. The ones being bred are actually better adapted to display. What is really ironic is that the original breeding group for the successful breeding operation now based in SA actually came out of QLD, yes QLD and yes perfectly legitimately on proper purchase receipts and permits and with full knowledge of the same organisation (DES) that now wants to ban them. Talk about trying to piddle on the fire after the house has burnt down. What is really sad is that they don't even recognize or realize the positive outcome and the longer term even more positive ripple effect of this purchase of a breeding group of Molochs by a South Australian breeder from a QLD breeder all those years ago. Only made possible by sensible wildlife regulations that allowed for the keeping of the species in that state (QLD) when virtually every other state would not and did not allow it

For me over the years QLD has been a pillar for sensible regulation of its wildlife activities albeit with its problems some of which they say they are trying to address with these proposals. That sensibility is now seriously threatened with probably some of the worst proposals ever suggested to fix a system that largely does not need terribly much tweeking at all. The stated aim of these changes is to shut down an activity (the illegal taking of wildlife from the wild) that is almost universally agreed by experts to have little if any impact on the wildlife populations they are proposing the changes for.

There is a lot of QLDer's money being spent to peddle an agenda that has as its route a biased and flawed view of a cause and effect problem that I have already said largely doesn't exist or is overstated in its impacts on wildlife populations affected.

Mark Hawker

 

[cris]

The focus of these changes is just ridiculous. There are hidden agendas in play at DES driven by animal rights loonies that should not be there and the sooner the minister responsible pulls the plug on these outrageous proposals the better off everyone will be including the wildlife.

There was one of these idiots giving a presentation at the sustainable use of wildlife conference. If you heard that you would not think it was a hidden agenda. I don't think it is just animal rights though, they genuinely see almost any use of wildlife as a problem that needs to be restricted as much as possible. If they could completely stop it, I'm sure they would.

The other thing to keep in mind is that if they didn't make up problems that don't exist they would not have a job.

 

[Elcho]

Yes I think you are right, so how is this "moving in the right direction". It is without doubt the biggest retrograde step by a wildlife authority in any state of Australia since wildlife licensing was first introduced over 30 years go. How can any changes that push people underground and increase the risk of poaching and black market activities be a step in the right direction. The focus of these changes is just ridiculous. There are hidden agendas in play at DES driven by animal rights loonies that should not be there and the sooner the minister responsible pulls the plug on these outrageous proposals the better off everyone will be including the wildlife.

Just as a matter of interest how big do you think the market in Australia is for $5000.00 reptiles?? This market and the market generally in Australia for reptiles is tiny compared to overseas. There are very few people making enough money out of reptiles in this country to say they are actually earning a living. The few that are in it as a business though, generally struggle just trying to cover operating costs. I can think of only two or three individuals around the whole country who actually earn enough through their efforts breeding and selling reptiles that they can pay themselves a modest wage and not actually have to work another job. These people are beyond reproach as far as the legality of their operation is concerned. One of these people is the current supplier/source for most of the Moloch's that go into wildlife displays in zoos and wildlife/reptile parks around Australia, which means that no one needs to go and collect Moloch's from the wild for zoos etc any more. The ones being bred are actually better adapted to display. What is really ironic is that the original breeding group for the successful breeding operation now based in SA actually came out of QLD, yes QLD and yes perfectly legitimately on proper purchase receipts and permits and with full knowledge of the same organisation (DES) that now wants to ban them. Talk about trying to piddle on the fire after the house has burnt down. What is really sad is that they don't even recognize or realize the positive outcome and the longer term even more positive ripple effect of this purchase of a breeding group of Molochs by a South Australian breeder from a QLD breeder all those years ago. Only made possible by sensible wildlife regulations that allowed for the keeping of the species in that state (QLD) when virtually every other state would not and did not allow it

For me over the years QLD has been a pillar for sensible regulation of its wildlife activities albeit with its problems some of which they say they are trying to address with these proposals. That sensibility is now seriously threatened with probably some of the worst proposals ever suggested to fix a system that largely does not need terribly much tweeking at all. The stated aim of these changes is to shut down an activity (the illegal taking of wildlife from the wild) that is almost universally agreed by experts to have little if any impact on the wildlife populations they are proposing the changes for.

There is a lot of QLDer's money being spent to peddle an agenda that has as its route a biased and flawed view of a cause and effect problem that I have already said largely doesn't exist or is overstated in its impacts on wildlife populations affected.

Mark Hawker

The "market" for higher end morphs are still there and I know of several people that sit at home on welfare and breed reptiles. The step in the right direction is stopping people paying $65 and going out to buy the biggest monitors or pythons.

 

[cris]

The "market" for higher end morphs are still there and I know of several people that sit at home on welfare and breed reptiles. The step in the right direction is stopping people paying $65 and going out to buy the biggest monitors or pythons.

So paying about 10X more for the government to do nothing for you and having perenties banned solves exactly what problem?

 

[Scutellatus]

The step in the right direction is stopping people paying $65 and going out to buy the biggest monitors or pythons.

Let them do I say.
Natural selection at its finest.

Seriously though, increasing the cost isn't going to do a thing these days. It isn't hard for someone to scrape together $650 to get that big snake or monitor.
Scrapping the licence fees altogether would be better, considering they don't use them to police the system anyway, it just goes to the government coffers.
Now they are going digital there will be less expenditure in the department on wages, it is just a cash grab.

I believe this change has come about partly because of greedy pet shop owners wanting to sell more species of reptile. I was talking to one the other day who was happy because she will be able to have more species on the shelf. I wonder if she anticipated the licence fees going up and then keeper numbers going down.

 

[Mick666]

So the deadline has been and gone. Has anyone here heard any news?
[doublepost=1530846821,1530760649][/doublepost]I received a response. I've tried to attach the file.

 

[Murph_BTK]

So the deadline has been and gone. Has anyone here heard any news?
[doublepost=1530846821,1530760649][/doublepost]I received a response. I've tried to attach the file.

So its a case by case on the reptile?? I own GTP rough scales and the uncommon yellow spotted monitor is my case going to be heaps more ... wait & see i guess.. lets hope they leave it all the same..

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

 

[Pauls_Pythons]

Progress has been made together with a stay of execution.

https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/work-of-assembly/petitions/petition-details?id=2964

 

[Mick666]

signed the petition.
[doublepost=1531788887,1531088493][/doublepost]Just sent my response to the response to my letter to the department...

I'm not the best at writing letters, I get side tracked a bit and ramble on, but hopefully I asked the right questions.

Hi, I have read the response to my letter and there are a few things that haven’t been addressed. Such as how increasing the fees is going to have a positive impact on poaching from the wild. To me that is ridiculous and will have the exact opposite effect. How is restricting captive breeding going to help wild populations? I would really like a detailed explanation for this, because again this makes zero sense. I think if we really cared about our native wildlife, a step in the right direction would be reducing land clearing in sensitive areas and reducing populations of feral cats. Has anyone even thought of the idea of restricting pet cat ownership? Seriously? And why not? The impact is huge, and for some reason cats are acceptable to keep as pets completely unregulated, and yet we’re worried about the impact of people producing native reptiles. Really? How is that at all logical? I could have a hundred cats destroying the countryside and no one cares, but if I reproduce a threatened native species I have to pay a huge fee and have an advanced licence. How about we start making cat owners pay a fee? I think if cat owners had to buy a licence to keep their exotic, nature destroying vermin, maybe the problem could be slightly reduced, and we wouldn’t have to charge so much for people to produce native wildlife, because the millions of cat licences would be a far greater income for the department than a few thousand reptile permits. Is there any explanation as to why cats are not regulated? I don’t think that’s an unreasonable question.

I am going to be greatly effected by the massive jump in fees, as I own over 40 pythons and intend to breed some of them every year. I don’t make a profit from them, I don’t even come close to covering my expenses. The impact analysis was way off. I only own one Woma python at the moment, but I’ll still need an advanced licence because of the number of snakes I have. So I’ll be transitioning from $78.60 for five years to $682.90 for three, that’s a much larger increase than the $2.10 from the impact analysis. I think the impact analysis is dishonest and misleading. Again the logic behind the restricted species list is flawed, I would love an explanation of how reducing captive numbers and breeding programs will help declining wild populations. That makes absolutely no sense to the point of alarm bells going off, because the only explanation I can think of is some strange hidden agenda. Maybe there’s money to be made by keeping species on the threatened list, I don’t know, but it’s completely illogical. I hope someone takes the time to read this and actually take into consideration the points I’ve made, because this affects me a great deal and there seems to be no rational thought going into these decisions that I’ve seen.

 

[longirostris]

signed the petition.
[doublepost=1531788887,1531088493][/doublepost]Just sent my response to the response to my letter to the department...

I'm not the best at writing letters, I get side tracked a bit and ramble on, but hopefully I asked the right questions.

Hi, I have read the response to my letter and there are a few things that haven’t been addressed. Such as how increasing the fees is going to have a positive impact on poaching from the wild. To me that is ridiculous and will have the exact opposite effect. How is restricting captive breeding going to help wild populations? I would really like a detailed explanation for this, because again this makes zero sense. I think if we really cared about our native wildlife, a step in the right direction would be reducing land clearing in sensitive areas and reducing populations of feral cats. Has anyone even thought of the idea of restricting pet cat ownership? Seriously? And why not? The impact is huge, and for some reason cats are acceptable to keep as pets completely unregulated, and yet we’re worried about the impact of people producing native reptiles. Really? How is that at all logical? I could have a hundred cats destroying the countryside and no one cares, but if I reproduce a threatened native species I have to pay a huge fee and have an advanced licence. How about we start making cat owners pay a fee? I think if cat owners had to buy a licence to keep their exotic, nature destroying vermin, maybe the problem could be slightly reduced, and we wouldn’t have to charge so much for people to produce native wildlife, because the millions of cat licences would be a far greater income for the department than a few thousand reptile permits. Is there any explanation as to why cats are not regulated? I don’t think that’s an unreasonable question.

I am going to be greatly effected by the massive jump in fees, as I own over 40 pythons and intend to breed some of them every year. I don’t make a profit from them, I don’t even come close to covering my expenses. The impact analysis was way off. I only own one Woma python at the moment, but I’ll still need an advanced licence because of the number of snakes I have. So I’ll be transitioning from $78.60 for five years to $682.90 for three, that’s a much larger increase than the $2.10 from the impact analysis. I think the impact analysis is dishonest and misleading. Again the logic behind the restricted species list is flawed, I would love an explanation of how reducing captive numbers and breeding programs will help declining wild populations. That makes absolutely no sense to the point of alarm bells going off, because the only explanation I can think of is some strange hidden agenda. Maybe there’s money to be made by keeping species on the threatened list, I don’t know, but it’s completely illogical. I hope someone takes the time to read this and actually take into consideration the points I’ve made, because this affects me a great deal and there seems to be no rational thought going into these decisions that I’ve seen.

Hey Mick,

Do what I did. Send your commentary to the Minister responsible. Ms Leanne Enoch. DES are not interested in what you have to say. The only way to bring pressure to this process is to go straight to the top. She needs to be bombarded with people expressing their concerns. But that is the problem here. There just simply is not enough of you in QLD expressing your concerns and so DES will get what they want and the hobby in QLD and elsewhere will suffer for it. You need to form herp groups with strong membership that can express concerns with a collective voice, but unfortunately I think for you guys it is probably too late. As someone said in another post on this forum recently there is just too much apathy up there and an attitude of stuff everybody else so long as I'm alright. It is easy to regulate a hobby or activity when there is little or no voice against it.

Unfortunately in my case because I am not a resident of QLD I pretty much got a response from DES along the lines of thanks for your submission but it is not what we asked for so we will be proceeding with what we are planning for. In other words go and get knicked you haven't responded to the review in the format we asked you to so your comments are not relevant to the review and public consultation process.

There's not much more I can do except resend my submission to the minister again with some further comments about the poor response from DES, but at the end of the day I wonder just how many people up there have even bothered to actually voice their concerns through a submission process apart from yourself. We are not going to even get a look in if there are only a handful of people lodging submissions. There needs to be hundreds if not thousands before your authorities and Government are going to take any notice and quite frankly as I said I don't believe that has, is or even will happen. As I said in a post on this subject some weeks ago elsewhere on this forum, reptile keepers in QLD will get exactly what DES are proposing if you don't mobilise and fight. Its great that some of you such as yourself are, but unfortunately I fear it is all too little and too late.

Mark Hawker

 

[Mick666]

Yeah, I sent my first letter to her, but I think she may have hand balled it off to an assistant or something. The response came from someone completely different. I don't think they give a rats' about the environment, it's all about getting votes. Maybe I should write to her again. I don't know what to do really, they seem to have their minds made up. it makes me upset when people in charge have no investment in the decisions they make that severely effect others who have no control. I don't have the internet at home so I'm limited to what I can do in regards to spreading the word and organizing other keepers to join the fight, but I'm doing what I can.

 

[longirostris]

Yeah, I sent my first letter to her, but I think she may have hand balled it off to an assistant or something. The response came from someone completely different. I don't think they give a rats' about the environment, it's all about getting votes. Maybe I should write to her again. I don't know what to do really, they seem to have their minds made up. it makes me upset when people in charge have no investment in the decisions they make that severely effect others who have no control. I don't have the internet at home so I'm limited to what I can do in regards to spreading the word and organizing other keepers to join the fight, but I'm doing what I can.

Mick,

That's exactly what I got. My email hand balled to DES, so what, send it to her again, along with your comments here, they are extremely valid and very pertinent. You make a strong case for these people actually taking a step back and actually having a look at what they are proposing. Don't give up, you are doing a great job. I wish there were more of you having a crack.

Mark Hawker

 

[Mick666]

Thanks mate. I will forward my response to her.

 

[LizardLad]

If you have Facebook, like and share the site “Queensland Fauna Lobbyists” they are trying to mobilise people and are regularly posting the link to fill out the petition. There’s already a group of people fighting
https://m.facebook.com/Qldfaunalobbyists/

 

[Mick666]

Yeah, I've signed their petition.
[doublepost=1535331000,1531861243][/doublepost]here is the latest response from the minister for environment...
again, she has hand balled it off to some assistant.

 

[marcus0002]

No updates since August?

 

[dragonlover1]

So the deadline has been and gone. Has anyone here heard any news?
[doublepost=1530846821,1530760649][/doublepost]I received a response. I've tried to attach the file.

So Woma's are "near threatened"? they are common as muck down here,$100-200 each. Where do these people get their "facts"?