Is there anything wrong with having a wild caught tortoise? Because I know mine are captive bred but I got my sisters tort from a pet shop and she says that she also says it was captive bred but if it isn't Is it okay ?
Wild caught tortoises
- Thread starter rocky1998
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This is purely a personal opinion subject. We have a couple threads about wild caught versus captive bred in the debatable topics section.
Basically, if you take them from the wild, you are removing a large chunk from the gene pool and contributing to the demise of that species in the wild.
If you buy one from a pet store, the shop keeper will just order another to take its place.
If you don't buy it someone else will.
Personally, I would try to find captive bred first, but if I couldn't find one that way, I would buy one from a pet store, wild caught or not.
Basically, if you take them from the wild, you are removing a large chunk from the gene pool and contributing to the demise of that species in the wild.
If you buy one from a pet store, the shop keeper will just order another to take its place.
If you don't buy it someone else will.
Personally, I would try to find captive bred first, but if I couldn't find one that way, I would buy one from a pet store, wild caught or not.
I agree completely with Yvonne. I don't like the idea of taking tortoises out of the wild when there are plenty of breeders, but sometimes you can only find one in a Pet Store and they are almost always wild caught.
rocky1998 said:
Yes, it's okay. While buying a captive breed is the best option in most cases, why would you pass up a great tortoise just because it was once wild? Where do you think all those tortoises creating the captive babies came from? Once a tortoise has been caught, should it just sit out the rest of it's life in a pet store? I don't think so myself. I know the theory is if we don't buy it, then thestores won't get another one. First off, why make the one sitting there suffer for a possible saving of one in the wild? Are the genes and breeding ability of the now captive animal any less valuable? Can this tortoise still not do it's share to help it's wild relatives in the future by breeding and producing more captive young that may take the pressure off the wild ones?
Plus for me there is the side that there are very few captive adults for sale. I don't like raising hatchlings, so that limits my pool of possible animals a lot. Plus with some species like the hingeback, there are very few captives even being hatched.
Now let's go back to the wild tortoises for a moment. In many cases even if a single tortoise would never be caught again, at this time most wild populations have a slim chance to survive. Man has taken over it's environments and/or we have change the environment so survival won't happen. Such as we may have thrown out the balance of something like the predator population in the area due to the amount of trash we produce. Predator numbers may rocket off the easy food supply or instead maybe it was the killing of other native animals used for food by the predator, so it must turn to the tortoise or starve. We turn uncultivated land into cultivated. We turn open grassland into over grazed cattle pastures. We run over them as the cross the roads. The list goes on. Life is the wild is a shaky thing and getting more shaky each day.
Then there is the economics part. In some places money to feed the family comes from catching tortoises and turtles. If they can't be sold to the pet market, then they can still either be sold as food or eaten by the natives themselves for food. Personally I would rather see them as pets then in the stew pot, how about you?
Add wc can also be more stressed and hold illnesses not seen, they may have to he treated which can be costly, wc isn't a bad thing cb is a safer way especially with beginners
I tend to think that a 4" wild caught Russian tortoise is easier to keep and hardier than just about any new baby that is CB. While CB may bypass some of the risks of a wild caught animal, small babies certainly carry their own set of risks (fragile, high water requirements, etc).
I think catching pets from the wild should be curtailed, but this can probably only be done at the regulatory level, and not at the level of the individual consumer. Either way, we can't keep taking them from the wild, because they will go extinct. We need to set up stable captive populations, and perpetuate them.
GeoTerraTestudo said:
The best thing that ever happened to radiated tortoises was catching wild animals and sending them to the US. The only reasonable way to set up mass breeding of something like a Russian tortoise would be to start with originally wild-caught animals. There's simply not enough CB Russians (for example) produced to get anywhere near the numbers needed for even a small or medium breeding operation.
TylerStewart said:
We need to have viable captive populations and phase out wild collection as soon as possible, or else wild populations can die out due to over-collecting, over-hunting, and/or habitat loss.
Yvonne G said:
Absolutely! And not only are you removing the one tortoise you purchase, but you are also removing the others that died before they ever made it to market.
Agree...just because we CAN dominate the moment does not mean we SHOULD....we are but mere humans and know not what we destroy---we are simply just not qualified to decide....
I have to strongly disagree here. There are TOO MANY Horsfields in the UK at present, people cannot rehome them fast enough. I know a lot of breeders have had to start destroying eggs as their is not a big enough customer base. Same thing has happened with Thb, and some species of graeca but not as badly. Now fair enough, you can say 'they're not common in the US though,' but frankly that doesn't matter! There is a big enough gene pool of CB Horsfields in the UK to last ages. And of course, if people were really interested in the conservation of species, you could always ship species to the US and we could ship species from you guys to the UK. I will not deny there is a need for CERTAIN species-Hingebacks of certain kinds, Forstens, Tents, Chacos, Padlopers etc.- that are under threat to be WC, but there exportation needs to be limited in numbers and sent to people who have the intention of breeding them. My reds are all CB, and although my hinges were almost undoubtedly WC-the previous owner got them from a pet shop plus I'm not sure if CB Erosas have ever been for sale- I am hoping I will be able to breed them, something which is sorely needed.TylerStewart said:
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