Quote:
Originally Posted by Outcast
Now what they need to do, is start a captive breeding program for the pet trade. Then start selling them and using the proceeds to help conserve what little habitat those little guys have left. All but killing two birds with one stone.
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But how could one reasonably accomplish either one of those things?
A. No one in the pet trade would consider for a second donating the proceeds of their sales of anything. If that was the requirement for trading a certain turtle, no one would. That's true for any industry, and the pet trade really is an industry more than it is a hobby. B. Keeping people from using land in a fairly overpopulated country because some turtle lives there is going to be impossible.
The best thing we could do is let them use the land as they please [they will anyway] and let folks freely trade these animals in captivity. We'll at least ensure that these animals continue to exist somewhere. But trying to conserve land in Madagascar where 90% has already been deforested is just fighting the inevitable. Endangered species "protections" tend to actually work against adding more of the species they're intended to protect into existence.
Imagine how many Indigo snakes there would be in captivity right now if we could freely trade them without all of the hoops to jump through because they're endangered. Endangered species regulations tend to be ineffective for preserving their populations in the wild and extremely harmful for preserving their populations in captivity.