CDTs For Sale?

[RonHays]

I don't see how law enforcement can control it there in CA. With all the other things they having going on there, I bet there's a lot of people that are illegally selling them and breeding them. Not saying it's right, but I just don't see how they can strictly force it.

 

[Tom]

I don't see how law enforcement can control it there in CA. With all the other things they having going on there, I bet there's a lot of people that are illegally selling them and breeding them. Not saying it's right, but I just don't see how they can strictly force it.

There is no market for selling CDTs here. In all of my years of dealing with tortoises, I have never once been offered a CDT for sale. Many have come my way through donation though. When the occasion person tries to sell one on craigslist, the ad gets shut down right away as everyone in the world emails and tells the person they are not allowed to be traded for monetary gain in any way, even if its called a "rehoming fee". I know lots of people that have them and it seems to me that the vast majority of people know they are illegal to sell and don't try.

 

[ascott]

So far, if I am reading most folks' posts correctly, those of you against the selling of captive bred DTs, it is the belief that by allowing them to start having a monetary value, folks will start doing more taking from the wild. Correct? So what if the law were changed so they could still NOT be sold, but could be given? Thus they would have no monetary value. Then also, at the same time rewrite the law so it allows folks who want to breed them and help the eggs to develop into hatchlings to do so. Then also allow folks who live outside of the current "legal" area to be given these CB hatchling DTs. For example, Tom has some babies to give away, in this scenario he could legally send me some and Kristina some. Would you agree to that? If not, why not?

No Jacqui, my concerns are not monetary....I believe the world and its creatures are too easily dismissed...are too frequently brought to little or no value...we are rapidly out populating our own habitats and are moving down our own created checklist of other spaces and places to take over....to disturb and devastate in a way we are not qualified nor equipped to fix. I just don't believe we have the right to do this.

We are only one species of many that have this one earth to preserve and conserve for us all....and I get sad when I hear the thought of yet another species we think we can claim and own as some crazy way we think. I am what some refer to as a "tree hugger" (incase you all have not noticed ) from way back and I am rooted deep.

I can take a walk tomorrow through the desert and be blessed with nature all around...I also visit places from my childhood and stand and look in sadness when those beautiful places are no longer there..but rather filled with housing tracks, strip malls and the like....those places will never be there for my son or his children to take in as a calming memory, ever.

So, while the thought of legalizing the topic of this thread may seem trivial to some, it is the larger picture I see that always stings in my heart.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.
John Muir

 

[GeoTerraTestudo]

Tom, I'm inclined to agree with you. As you say, it is imperative to ban collecting wild California desert tortoises (and indeed, any wild animals). At the same time, though, it is imperative to establish thriving captive populations of tortoises, including CDTs ... and while we're at it, ditto for the other three Gopherus species (gopher, Texas, and Bolson tortoises). Aw heck, that should be happening for every tortoise species, if at all possible.

Market forces are powerful, and can be channeled for either good or bad purposes. If wild-caught tortoises made people money, that would be devastating for wild populations. However, if captive-bred tortoises made people money, that would be good news for the species in captivity.

I guess the reason US states have laws against selling Gopherus tortoises is that they think it's hard to tell where a tortoise came from, and what rather be prudent than permissive. I can understand that, and to an extant that's true. However, I would be in favor of laws that would, for example, require breeders to keep records or take "mug shots" of their hatchlings, to prove that they were indeed hatched in captivity. If they do that, Gopherus tortoises might be rising instead of declining.

 

[Terry Allan Hall]

Seems to me that one simple solution is the requirement that all DTs in captivity have ID implants, much like is required in many European countries...then, it'd be easy enough to tell if a given tortoise was captive bred (one type of implant), or was from the over-populated Government "rescues" (different type of implant) or is wild cauight (no implant).

The cost of such a program could be pretty much financed by the tortoise owner/breeder, and would surely save the considerable $$$ spent on keeping the Government rescues in over-crowded, less than optimal, conditions.

Now, how do we convince the PowersThat Be?

 

[GeoTerraTestudo]

Seems to me that one simple solution is the requirement that all DTs in captivity have ID implants, much like is required in many European countries...then, it'd be easy enough to tell if a given tortoise was captive bred (one type of implant), or was from the over-populated Government "rescues" (different type of implant) or is wild cauight (no implant).

The cost of such a program could be pretty much financed by the tortoise owner/breeder, and would surely save the considerable $$$ spent on keeping the Government rescues in over-crowded, less than optimal, conditions.

Now, how do we convince the PowersThat Be?

Good idea.
Signed petitions and letters to your representative.

 

[Tom]

No Jacqui, my concerns are not monetary....I believe the world and its creatures are too easily dismissed...are too frequently brought to little or no value...we are rapidly out populating our own habitats and are moving down our own created checklist of other spaces and places to take over....to disturb and devastate in a way we are not qualified nor equipped to fix. I just don't believe we have the right to do this.

We are only one species of many that have this one earth to preserve and conserve for us all....and I get sad when I hear the thought of yet another species we think we can claim and own as some crazy way we think. I am what some refer to as a "tree hugger" (incase you all have not noticed ) from way back and I am rooted deep.

I can take a walk tomorrow through the desert and be blessed with nature all around...I also visit places from my childhood and stand and look in sadness when those beautiful places are no longer there..but rather filled with housing tracks, strip malls and the like....those places will never be there for my son or his children to take in as a calming memory, ever.

So, while the thought of legalizing the topic of this thread may seem trivial to some, it is the larger picture I see that always stings in my heart.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.
John Muir

Angela, your view of things is a bit dismal. I too am a nature lover. I detest big cities. New York, Chicago(Sorry Barb), Paris, Cape Town, L.A.... They are all the same, big stinky, cesspools of human depravity... (How's that for a dismal view?)

Way back in high school, I was quite a tree hugger myself. One day while lamenting about the woes of gross human overpopulation and destruction of our planet, I was given a bit of a revelation by a young woman who had just transferred to our school from Utah. I was saying how disgusting human cities were and how we were crowding nature out of existence, and she looked at me funny and asked, "You've never been outside of L.A., have you?" "Haven't you ever driven across the country before?", she asked, so innocently. And then she walked away and left me standing there to absorb the gravity of her words... Changed my mind forever. For every big nasty smelly crowded city, there are millions of square miles of completely untouched wild country. There is so much room for us to expand that its ridiculous. People tend to all crowd together in our cities, but have you ever looked out the window of a plane while over any place in the entire US? Yes, you can see a big sprawling disgusting city from some points, but you can see a thousand times more completely raw untouched land as far as the eye can see. Much of this land doesn't even have so much as a small dirt trail on it.

I guess my point is that things aren't as bad as they seem sometimes. Just depends on how you look at it. We have horrible stories, like the decimation of our wild CDT populations over the last few decades, and the horrible spotted turtle story earlier in this thread, but there are many more good stories too. Sanctuaries that have been created (Channel Islands, innumerable wetlands, etc...), species that have been saved and brought back from the brink of extinction (Peregrin Falcon, CA Condor, several sea turtle species, etc...).

Now for my last point, why on earth would somebody, buying, caring for, loving, feeding and enjoying the company of an amazing CDT baby, be considered a "dismissal" of a species by you? I don't see that as a dismissal. Quite the opposite, I see it as honoring a species and an individual. To spend all that time, money and effort on trying to make a "perfect" habitat, either growing or buying all the right foods, growing an animal from baby to a healthy, long lived adult, spending time every day admiring and interacting with them... How is this a dismissal?

Angela, you are a wonderful person, and I love our tortoise forum conversations, but it seems like YOUR glass is half empty today.

 

[ascott]

Sanctuaries that have been created
species that have been saved and brought back from the brink of extinction (Peregrin Falcon, CA Condor, several sea turtle species, etc...).

Ah Tom, my wish is that there would be no reason to have to designate spaces to try to clean up after ourselves....the species listed here for example, are due to human interference...

I do believe enough in the power of our species...the problem I see is that unless a shift of thinking among all of our species evolves, unless we learn to use less and to in turn conserve and preserve, this beautiful planet will slowly continue to suffer along with all of its inhabitant...I don't know if dismal is the word I would have used maybe more like hopeful, wishful and yes, sometimes sad....you know, all of the emotions this squishy gal goes through....