sychoram said:
Thank God I live in MO. These agents up here for the most part couldn't tell a Ball python from a burmese or a milksnake from a coral snake
Yes, that is a big problem. One of the other problems I've run into is officers not knowing the correct scientific answers about how to actually practice effective wildlife conservation. As well meaning as it seems, relocating animals any significant distance or turning animals loose in the wild which have previously been in captivity is actually a pretty horrendous thing to do for the animal and for the ecosystem.
One real horror story was told by a kindly, well meaning officer who described catching an illegally kept indigo snake with a noose pole and confining it in a plastic garbage bag in his car so he could drive it down the road and release it. The snake tore out of the bag and ended up in the engine compartment, where it again had to be retrieved with the noose pole. This officer was very regretful when I explained that he had almost certainly killed this rare and endangered animal due to inappropriate handling equipment and an equally inappropriate policy on relocation.
I think most of these officers do the best that they know how to do, and they sincerely mean to do a good job for conservation and for the animals' welfare. Unfortunately their training and knowledge is just woefully inadequate when it comes to reptiles. I help out when I can, and I've handed out a lot of free training manuals and snake hooks, but many officers simply don't feel comfortable with snakes at all and it is hard to get them to learn anything.
When they are in doubt, I refer them to their own state herpetologist, Paul Moler, for the best and most up to date scientific information that should be influencing their policies on relocation and on the disposition of confiscated snakes. Most of them have no idea who their state herpetologist is, let alone what he has to say about appropriate policies for conservation efforts.
Fortunately there are a few F&W officers who have enough experience to make the right decisions for conservation and animal welfare. When I say right, I don't just mean the ones I agree with, I mean in accordance with data gathered and published by professional wildlife biologists.
Adult snakes get sick and die if you dump them off in the woods too far from their capture site (example: Reinert telemetry study on C. horridus, 1988). Reptiles that have held in captivity with other reptiles are not okay to release indiscriminately into the wild due to concerns about disease transmission to wild populations (example: Jacobson on URTD in gopher tortoises, 1992). These are well known published studies, long accepted and verified by the scientific community, and yet some Fish and Wildlife officers are clearly not aware of them and are acting directly to the contrary in a misguided attempt at practicing good conservation.
So yes, lack of education and training is a problem. I don't really know how to address it, except to keep preaching to every F&W officer I come across and urging them to get better educated about how reptile conservation really works.
