Another idiot gets caught

W

willbenn

New member
"44" WOW thats a lot of geckos to have in your underwear. as part of the sentencing, hope the guy told the nz authorities exactly where he found them so they can be taken home and safely released
 
G

gerhard

New member
Flyguy,

Why do you call the German and Jerry like an Idiot??? Where would be all the reptile keepers and breeders of Naultinus, Nephrurus, Strophurus for example, if not some guys take the risk on and try to get some animals.
Which animals do you keep??
For the future, please, switch on your brain before you post a topic and to insult other person.

Gerhard
 
heiser

heiser

New member
Gerhard,

Instead of asking others to "turn on their brains", I might ask you to turn on yours along with your morality. The man is a theif stealing another countries fauna because he greedily wants it for his collection or to make money from. If we didn't have your beloved smugglers/theives we would need to get our geckos from legitimate sources, such as zoo stock. Maybe this is harder to get for you or more expensive, but at least legal and obtained from a country with it's permission.

Think of how mad you would be if I came to your house and stole your geckos. You would demand I be arrested and punished. My justification is the geckos are hard to get and I wanted them. Why would this be different?

Funny thing is poachers are treated quite differently than thieves even though they are stealing from these countries. Think how outraged people get when they hear a collector or breeder had his/her collection stolen. This same outrage is less existent when considering poachers/smugglers. I often hear ridiculous arguments that I owe my gecko collection to poachers and smugglers....that's how they came to be in the herp trade. Many people aren't patient enough to get the animals from legitimate sources (e.g., Zoos or scientific institutes). There are legit avenues and these are the right way to get herps. Expensive at first, but prices drop as cb animals increase.

I strongly believe it is the individual countries right to determine how they want to go about conservering their natural resources and I have no right stealing animals simply by justifying it as "saving" them. if you want them that badly just keep offering money until they say yes and sell them to you. Not willing to pay a million dollars for a gecko...oh well get a leo. I'm not (yet) willing to pay a few hundred grand for that ferrari, but I haven't stolen one.

John
 
S

Sebastian

New member
This guy is thief, no doubt.
But, how many of the Australian/NZ herps came from whatever "legal" sources ? That for sure is the minority. So I think it is not rediculous to say that many (if not most) of our animals came from smugglers.
Do you honestly got all your australian herps from a zoo or scientific institute ? I don't think so, because there are many CB (now). But where did those animals come from originally ?

I think, everybody who has australian/NZ herps is a tad hypocritical by owning those animals and judging others who are stealing them from their home countries. IMHO morally it's not that big difference.

Best,

Sebastian
 
heiser

heiser

New member
Hi Sebastian,

I would only agree with you if one buys animals directly from a smuggler or known to be illegally obtained. I do not think it is hypocritical if my animals are descendents of smuggled or illegally obtained animals. I can explain my position via a drug dealer analogy. Here in the US local police confiscate money, homes cars, etc. that was used by drug dealers or obtained with drug money. This confiscated cash, etc. is then used by the police how ever they need in the police activities. I think it would be ignorant to equate, morally, the police use of this drug money as the police profiting from drug dealing. Rather the police are taking a bad situation (drug sales/use) that already occurred and trying to make the best future outcome.

We had a local case where a group of Phelsuma (serraticauda and flavigularis) came in illegally (falsely obtained government papers). The animals were confiscated and sent to several local zoos that specialized in phelsuma. This is typical; that the animals go to zoos and are not returned to the country of origin because the country of origin doesn’t want them back. The animals can’t be re-introduced to the wild for fear of diseases they may have gotten in transport with other animals. So, now a group of animals exist in zoos and it is legal for the zoos to sell their excess offspring. Now as a hobbyist I have "profited" due to a smuggler’s actions. However, morally it is not equivalent. The wildlife agencies made the best of a bad situation. They could have destroyed the animals but that punishes the animals and also keeps them rare in collections, which entices further smuggling. I have also gotten geckos from zoos that were obtained by the zoos from the country quite legally as many countries will export limited numbers to zoos to keep proper (bloodline registered) groups of captive animals or in exchange for animals from our zoos that they want. This later method of getting animals into the hobby is slower but exists.

Regards,
John
 
S

SDPete

New member
Hi John,
I don't mean to be an ass.. but long hard day and here I am.
Can you justify all of the animals you keep as being completely legal AND justifiable? I will admit I don't know the complete history of all of these critters in captivity...
BTW... your 'legal' methods of aquireing animals STILL REQUIRE SOMEONE to break the law.... it is okay if it is not you??????
Your:
L. williamsi? truely CB?
D. galeatus?
P. platurus?
-Peter
 
heiser

heiser

New member
SDPete said:
Hi John,
I don't mean to be an ass.. but long hard day and here I am.
Can you justify all of the animals you keep as being completely legal AND justifiable? I will admit I don't know the complete history of all of these critters in captivity...
BTW... your 'legal' methods of aquireing animals STILL REQUIRE SOMEONE to break the law.... it is okay if it is not you??????
Your:
L. williamsi? truely CB?
D. galeatus?
P. platurus?
-Peter
Click to expand...

Hi Peter,

No problem, we are all asses at one time or another. I'll take the easy part first. I don't need to justify my owning geckos any more than saying I like to keep them. I don't succumb to the HSUS or PETA anti-pet philosophies, so keeping them doesn't present any moral issue for me. I will caveat that with I do take very good care of them and while I have a large collection I limit it to the point that I do not sacrifice care of any of them.

If you were hinting at taking them from the wild might present conservation concerns, I agree. However, I generally leave that up to the country of origin. If they feel exports (hopefully limited numbers) are OK I see no problem with that. I do believe that cb stocks can remove the incentives for both poaching and exporting wc. So, I do believe cb programs are good. And, no, my first L. williamsi came in as exports. But they came in as legal exports. While I questioned (and still do) the sustainability of the wild population given the extremely tiny reserve they are associated with, apparently Tanzania felt it was beneficial to their country. Perhaps they sacrificed conservation over economics, I don't know. But, I do consider that their choice. BTW, I have done very well with my two trios and have given most of my offspring away to geckophiles I know will sustain the cb population. As cb stock rises, this will hopefully reduce the economic value of them and lessen the pressure on Tanzania to export them to extirpation (but that is a separate issue). I don't consider wc as illegal or immoral simply because they are wc and you will find that the US legally exported quite a few native wc herps (re: coleonyx). I can see that it could be considered immoral if the exportation lead to extirpation or extinction. Hopefully, the experts in a country will make good conservation decisions.. Do they always? No, of course not, they often balance economic concerns of the country and sacrifice natural resources. We all then need to decide how we want to deal with such matters, to buy or boycott. In this, each individual case needs to be considered seperately. I am OK with and would support a boycott on imports if the CITES experts felt the exportation would endanger a population.

Your last point being that I don't care if they were originally illegally gotten is an over simplification. If you read what I said you would see my preference is for LEGALLY obtained zoo stock. Zoos often can obtain what is unobtainable to you or I. These are fully legally obtained animals and when a zoo sells excess offspring (which is becoming more common as they realize income from this) I see nothing wrong there.

As to those animals confiscated from smugglers, I thought I made my point fairly clear. I do not see a problem with the authorities giving the animals to zoos and then offspring eventually making their way to the pet trade. If there were no poachers and smugglers stealing these animals, you are probably right; many would not yet be available to the pet trade or in zoos as they are not "major attractions" for zoos. So, they would not be in my collection. I think to assert that any societal gain from criminal proceeds is immoral is asinine. It is not immoral to return illegal proceeds (in this case, geckos) back to society. This might allow that society to prevent future crimes (in this case further smuggling). That the harm done by criminals is partly off set by small gains to lawful citizens seems right to me.

Regards,
John
 
seonage

seonage

New member
heiser said:
Gerhard,

Instead of asking others to "turn on their brains", I might ask you to turn on yours along with your morality. The man is a theif stealing another countries fauna because he greedily wants it for his collection or to make money from. If we didn't have your beloved smugglers/theives we would need to get our geckos from legitimate sources, such as zoo stock. Maybe this is harder to get for you or more expensive, but at least legal and obtained from a country with it's permission.

Think of how mad you would be if I came to your house and stole your geckos. You would demand I be arrested and punished. My justification is the geckos are hard to get and I wanted them. Why would this be different?

Funny thing is poachers are treated quite differently than thieves even though they are stealing from these countries. Think how outraged people get when they hear a collector or breeder had his/her collection stolen. This same outrage is less existent when considering poachers/smugglers. I often hear ridiculous arguments that I owe my gecko collection to poachers and smugglers....that's how they came to be in the herp trade. Many people aren't patient enough to get the animals from legitimate sources (e.g., Zoos or scientific institutes). There are legit avenues and these are the right way to get herps. Expensive at first, but prices drop as cb animals increase.

I strongly believe it is the individual countries right to determine how they want to go about conservering their natural resources and I have no right stealing animals simply by justifying it as "saving" them. if you want them that badly just keep offering money until they say yes and sell them to you. Not willing to pay a million dollars for a gecko...oh well get a leo. I'm not (yet) willing to pay a few hundred grand for that ferrari, but I haven't stolen one.
John
Click to expand...

Absolutly agree.
 
Justin

Justin

New member
heiser said:
As to those animals confiscated from smugglers, I thought I made my point fairly clear. I do not see a problem with the authorities giving the animals to zoos and then offspring eventually making their way to the pet trade. If there were no poachers and smugglers stealing these animals, you are probably right; many would not yet be available to the pet trade or in zoos as they are not "major attractions" for zoos. So, they would not be in my collection. I think to assert that any societal gain from criminal proceeds is immoral is asinine. It is not immoral to return illegal proceeds (in this case, geckos) back to society. This might allow that society to prevent future crimes (in this case further smuggling). That the harm done by criminals is partly off set by small gains to lawful citizens seems right to me.
Click to expand...

This seems very morally ambiguous to me. To me you can't criticise that which you take advantage of.

My two cents.
 
DDReptiles

DDReptiles

New member
John I agree on many of your points, but I also see where Justin is coming from.

If the gecko trade, or even the reptile industry was dependent on what zoo's (AZA accredited) get in then we would be in the stone age as to what and how many species are available. As zoo's for the most part don't care much for the reptile dept, as not many reptiles are what people pay to see...people want your keystone species...lions, tigers, gorillas, rhinos, etc. First of all zoo's from what I read John, you assume that zoos (again AZA accredited institutions) do everything legally. I could cite you several books (not cases, but books of cases) as to how many times zoo's are just as irresponsible and ruthless as the common smuggler/theif. I could also go on all day about reports of what zoo's (again, major institutions like the National Zoo, Seaworld, etc.) have done to no longer needed animals...ex: selling old hoofed animals (zebra, giraffes, etc.) to big game hunters in Texas.

Anyways back to Justin's point......if we ( the gecko hobby) were dependent on only confiscated animals to get new bloodlines, species, etc. Then I think we would find ourselves begging for more smugglers to get caught. I think you could argue in your reference to common law, does a police station really want all crime to vanish as then we would have a lot of cops/lawyers out of work.

I'll try to post more later..gotta get to class, but interesting debate.
 
Last edited:
Riverside Reptiles

Riverside Reptiles

Administrator (HMFIC)
I have a busy day and don't have time to delve too deeply into this myself right now. But another thing to think of is that every time some schmuck gets arrested for smuggling herps, it gives the gov't, groups like peta, and the general public yet another reason to work against our hobby. It makes us as a whole look irresponsible and dishonest. These people are a reflection of our hobby. As for being a hypocrite...I don't see it. Because I work with levis or amyae that come from bloodlines that may have been smuggled 20 years ago does not make me a hypocrite. As long as I've done everything in my power to make sure that my animals are legal, I've done my part. Robin hood? I don't think so. These people do it for profit, not to feed the hungry. They do it for ego, not to serve the community or the hobby. They may be nice guys...you may have personal ties to them...you may own animals from them...but they're still breaking the law and reflecting poorly on us as a community.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top