Is breeding gopherus in CA legal?

[animateash]

To be clear, I am NOT interested in trying to do this or seeking to do this.

I ask because as soon as I announced having adopted a male gopherus, a guy I know through work connections posted on my Facebook saying his family has a female "if i ever wanted to breed them". I kinda wanted to slap the guy for suggesting it, what with so many existing gopherus in CA needing homes and the fact that captive hatchlings can't be returned to the wild. I want to say the adoption CTTC adoption agent who helped us told me breeding them is illegal, but now I can't recall exactly. I already told the "match maker" no thanks, but I wondered if breeding them is frowned upon if I should tell him so he isn't throwing that offer around to anyone else and creating more homeless tortoises.

 

[Yvonne G]

No,not legal. Can't even artificially incubate eggs if a new to you tortoise happens to lay some.

 

[animateash]

No,not legal. Can't even artificially incubate eggs if a new to you tortoise happens to lay some.

Thanks for confirming, Yvonne. That's what I thought I remembered, but I wanted to make sure before I gave this guy a sermon.

 

[Tom]

Beyond all sense and reason, yes, our government has decided that it is illegal to propagate this endangered species. Then in the next breath they tell us how they've got to raise taxes and create more land use restrictions to save this species, all the while allowing our military (who I generally support…) to destroy prime DT wild habitat, instead of simply building their stuff a few more miles this-a-way or that-a-way, where DTs don't and can't live. Its an endangered species! How is making more of them illegal? It should be encouraged!

Do I sound frustrated? Yep. I am. There are thousands of DTs in private hands. There is not a shortage of homes for them. I would like to see people breeding more of them. This species is especially cool in this regard because they cannot be bought or sold, only given away, which means anybody engaging in breeding and the substantial amount of work needed for starting hatchlings correctly is doing it out of pure love and passion for the species. It costs time and money to get all the stuff and put in the time to incubate eggs and start babies correctly. People would have to spend their own money and take a loss to propagate this species with no chance of breaking even or recouping some of the money spent.

And while we don't have a system in place right now, there is no reason we couldn't set up a system, with all the necessary quarantine and testing procedures to begin repatriating this species back into the wild in areas where the problems that have driven them to the brink of extinction have been dealt with.

 

[ddunaier]

Agree. I've had two DTs for 20 plus years and they were always together and I never new or looked to see if they were male female. The. Five years ago my kids spotted a baby walking around my backyard, then two more and I saw one coming up out of the ground and dug up 4 more. We had nine the first time. I never saw her dig a hole or them mate. Have every year since. I let nature do it all and each year I get babies. Last year I didn't see her dig a whole and thought she wouldn't have babies, then I found just two and the others must have just walked away as I dug the hole up and doh d shells but no torts. They find there way back to nature. My parents have lived in the same enclosure for 25 years and I would feel terrible separating them so I don't.

She dug two nest this year and first nest hatched 8 out of nine. The second nest I found had 4 eggs but not buried as deep and after 80 days I recently dug them up and place in about with dirt 10 inches deep and placed in warmer spot.

Anyone think they will hatch this way??. All 8 hatchlings are in good homes, like every year I give them away to good families.