Protecting the indigo to death.

The discussion of just how successful repatriation and translocation are as conservation tools comes up quite often. Unfortunately, the largest study dedicated to the topic indicates such are not viable tools for conservation efforts. For more information to this regard, you may wish to review the work of Dodd and Seigel 1991.
The ability of zoological entities to develop species survival plans for all endangered species of herpetofauna is greatly lacking, many have given a great amount of consideration to opening up such programs to herpetoculturist and some private herpetoculturist take part in the AZA’s studbook program.
I often find it ironic that herpetoculturist who push for conservation often criticize the government for not allowing them collect the species being granted protections for conservation efforts. The issue is a double edged sword, but so long as there are viable populations, I do not believe in the removal of specimens in the wild, as doing so, as I have said before, makes the individual removed ecologically extinct. Also, I believe there are enough wild specimens confiscated by G&F officials each year, which are then passed along to zoological and academic entities, to negate the wild collecting of D. couperi for the benefit of the captive gene pool. Trust me, the zoos are willing to work with private herpetoculturist in regards to breeding loans and I have been preaching such for quite some time, but I know of only a single breeder, other than myself, who has taken the initiative to knock on some doors…

Best regards,

Jeff