I am given to wonder if my questions will be answered. In my experience, where controversial statements are posted and responses or queries related to these posts are not acknowledged by the original poster, it is invariably the work of a troll. [MENTION=21573]richoman_3[/MENTION], please respond and demonstrate this is not the case.
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Licensed takers are a ‘soft target’ for those wanting to shift the finger of blame away from themselves... poachers. And there are also those who have some sort of idealististic problem with wild taking and look to discredit it whenever possible.. Yet ask those spreading the rumours for a name... and all of a sudden the conversation falters!. Suddenly line of who told who told who becomes momentarily questionable.
Poaching in WA has been going on for a long time. There are individuals who have been making regular trips to WA for many, many years, only one of whom in recent memory has been caught and prosecuted. Then there are those who make the one-off trips, to collect as much as they can in the shortest possible time, solely for the money. To prove my point, you only have to look at the number of WA endemics (and locales) that appeared on legal keeping lists in the eastern states long before they were legally able to be collected in WA and then there are those that have never been legally allowed to be collected here. And the number of species has increaseds over time and continues to do so. And then there's the network of illegal keeping establish over there (and to a comparatively minor degree here) which includes rare WA animals and exotic reptiles.
If you are a poacher and want to take the heat of what you do, then the easiest way is to start rumours about licensed takers. Never mind that licensed takers have to account for every animal they collect, where and when, pay a significant royalty on each, are subject to random, surprise inspections, have to maintain animals for at least three months before they can on-sell them and also need to get them healthy, eating and adjusted to captivity or people won’t deal with them again. They also need to be able to collect animals on a long term basis if they want to stay in the game. Poachers don’t have to do any of that. Yet somehow people think it is reasonable that it is more likely licensed takers that rape and pillage habitat and populations in this state....
As an unfortunate yet inevitable down-side of legalising keeping in this state, we are now seem to be developing a new breed of home-grown poachers with links to those over east. This new breed have also contributed to the falsehoods generated. One particular taker I know of has been approached by a number of individuals to legalise illegally taken reptiles and refused. Sometime after he was he was anonymously ‘dobbed in’ by a few people for supposedly doing dodgy things, none of which were true. Unfortunately, if you throw enough mud, some sticks. It doesn’t take Einstein to work out who was behind it.
Unfortunately many people would rather believe ‘the goss’ than the truth... the truth is just plain boring. With respect to them, I know I am just spitting into the wind. Guess I shall just have to wear that rather than let such an injustice go unchalleneged.
