Reptile Fight Club - Legality & Herp Projects w/ Billy Sveen

Episode Date: December 10, 2022

In this episode, Justin and Chuck tackle the topic of Legality & Herp Projects w/ Billy Sveen.Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comFollow Chuck Poland  on IG @ChuckNorriswinsFollow MPR Network on:FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQMore ways to support the shows.Swag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Welcome to the MDR Network. All right, welcome to another episode of Reptile Fight Club. I'm Justin Julander. I'm here with Mr. Chuck Poland. How are you doing, sir? Hi, Justin. Hey, how are you? Oh, doing all right. It's getting cold out here, so I don't know about that.

Is it? The ski resort opens in a week. Snow or what? Yeah. Oh, that's all you care about is fresh powder. Well, you know, I always say if it's going to be cold, it might as well snow, you know. That's fair. I guess if I lived in Utah, that's how I'd feel too, but I don't, so I don't feel that way.

Yeah. Yeah. My in-laws were big time in the skiing. Have you skied this year or snow? Have you skied this year? No. The resort we got a season pass to opens in a few days so we're uh okay so it's not even yeah i gotcha i gotcha how does that uh work out but yeah i'm excited to board again this year

i'm uh sorry go ahead oh man dude you're freezing i know it's i think you're glitching out probably my my uh signal here but we'll we'll uh proceed maybe maybe oh we're definitely blaming it on you okay that sounds good i hear you now i moved my computer a little bit and i fixed it right that's all you got to do yeah you just it's like it's like resetting your satellite dish you just don't know how to go to your roof yeah i'll blame the snow there's there's too much snow on the roof right is it is that what's going on that's what we'll say sure the ski resort's not even open yet i don't buy that yeah it's uh we ours are uh the ski local ski resort is just 15 minutes down the road, so it's nice and easy to get to.

And it's kind of lower elevation, so they usually open a little later. But they're opening the same time as the big one up an hour away up in the mountains. So I'm excited. It should be fun. The kids enjoy it. Nice. It makes for a good time. But my in-laws were always into it, and they were always trying to get us to get season passes.

But they live like they're going to this resort that's an hour and a half away and is extremely expensive. We could never afford it. So finally we got something that we could afford close by home. And that's the nice thing is it only takes 15 minutes. So you can go do a few runs and then go back home, and it's not a big deal. So that's the way I like to do it do it you ride the bunny hill or what oh man i'm shredding man i don't know you're shredding i'm kind of an old man now so i don't take too many risks i'm not no no more mo no more mowing people over and and uh do it probably jumps and probably not.

A few jumps here and there, you know, as long as it's not too nuts. Yeah, I don't know if I've told you this story, but I have an uncle who, they were avid skiers. And he's too old now and kind of you know do the whole sideways thing on skis and totally like shoot snow all over my aunt and he plowed her over and broke both of her legs yeah that's that's not good not good well they're divorced now and he probably doesn't feel quite as bad as he did at the time. So, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, I mean, you can get hurt pretty well. We've taken to wearing, like, helmets and being safe and all that kind of stuff.

So doing it right. But, yeah, we'll see how it goes. Watch out for them trees. Yep. My daughter's coming back from Costa Rica next week, so that'll be fun to see her again. Nice. That was fast.

Yeah. Is she, like, just in for a minute or she was there for a semester so back three three months since August so she's done she's not going back no it's just a yeah just a brief stint and she I mean she wants to go back she's already talking about her next adventure so she's nice is she next adventuring somewhere else probably most likely trying to like yeah we'll see where she what she does next but yeah Nice. Is she next adventuring somewhere else? Probably. We'll see what she does next. Are you coaching her so you can make a herp trip out of it? Oh, always. Admit it. Admit it.

There you go. That's what I like to see. Got to plan around the herp trips, you can say what you want. We all know the truth. But, yeah. I try to hide it, but, you know. I think my wife's on to me, so. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I think she's on to me for a few years now.

Yeah. We've been married 25 years, so I think, yeah, she's well aware. The jig is up at this point for sure she even gets in on it a little bit lets me uh you know get out and do it so she's a trooper dude and i she's the best uh yeah yeah well she's into herping more than some herpers are she's she's a great herping partner i really enjoy herping with he. Yeah, she stays awake. She keeps me alert. So, yep, she's worried I'm going to crash the car if she goes to sleep.

Or get knocked out by a crowbar. There you go. That too. There you go. Yeah. That's a great story. Yeah. Yeah, well. Anyway, so.

Man, I've been battling rodents this week. The downside of keeping rodents is when rodents escape. And, I mean, I have, I had, you know, a few rats loose in my rodent room. And rats are ridiculously just destructive creatures. And they got up, so I had, you know, insulation all up on the ceiling to try to keep the heat in. So let me understand this right. So you had the studded walls, and then you put the insulation in, and it has the paper front that you staple, right? But you didn't cover it, so it's just the insulation where they can kind of get through the paper and get back there.

That's right. Yep, that's the problem. Make craziness. Yeah, because I was going to buy the OSb sheets or something to to put over the insulation but then that it went up to like 50 bucks a sheet so no go yeah and uh yeah i've like half the insulation is down you know they've just knocked it out or it's hollowed out behind the paper because they're pulling it and making little tunnels and nests and through the walls i think i've got them all like i i had traps and poison bait and all sorts of stuff to try to get them you know get them back and and i think i'm finally there what was the what was the trick everything was there a

trick i i think the poison bait did the best job but yeah yeah, I felt bad. Like, I hate, you know, but man, they've cost me hundreds of dollars, you know, the damage they've done. So I don't feel that bad. So when are you going to, are you going to have to re-insulate? Yep. Yep. I brought, I bought some spray insulation, so hopefully that'll be a little more durable. We'll see. We'll see how it goes.

Isn't that, I mean, the spray insulation is kind of, you're just, what, you bind it in the can? Like, most of the places I see do that, they come in with a sprayer on like a big. Yeah, I'm going to just do the cans, see how that goes. I bought some of that. Oh, my gosh. You're going to spend some money, dude.

Yeah, I'm curious to see how it goes. I've still got some bats, and I'll probably put those up after I spray a bit. But I don't know. I'm just like, I ordered it in my fit of rage. And so, okay. Isn't it cheaper? I mean, I get what you're saying. But aren't they just going to chew through the foam stuff if they get back out again if you didn't cover it?

Like, isn't the key? What I'm saying to you, Julinder, is isn't the key to get some sheeting on that stuff no matter what you do? Isn't that the fix to the problem? Have we not learned our lesson here? All right. I'm just. I'm just. No, I'm saying. This is two episodes in a row

we were talking about rodents, and I want to give our listening audience more. You know what I mean? So they're not in the perpetual state of your rodent room. Your escapees. Your jail-break prison guards of rodent rack.

Okay. Yes, the plan is to put up some sheeting, get it secured. But even if I put up the sheeting, they can still get between the bats and the roof. And so I thought if I spray it and it adheres to the roof, then at least they'd have to get up there and chew it out or something. Wait, so they get up above and go down? Because I did have some sheeting over part of it,

just that thin eighth-inch whatever, and they still got under that and made little tunnels through it. So it's hollowed out, so it's not functioning as insulation anymore. It's just hollow know yeah no no under there so i probably have to pull off the sheeting and fix it and then yeah so yeah it's all like warm pink blankets for rats yeah okay so i don't know we've spent enough time talking about that frustration all right yeah well i'm sorry you're still going through that, and we all want you to fix it. Well, the problem is hopefully fixed. I think they're all gone. So just the ones in the bins now.

So that's a good thing. So hopefully it stays like that for a while. But, yeah, rodents. Fingers crossed. I mean, they save a ton of money. Fingers crossed. But I don't know. We might have to.

Oh, yeah. We still have to debate that one. Or is it better to buy rodents? I heard Owen complaining about the cost of rodents on carpets and coffees. Oh, yeah. Well, Owen's got to be spending. Man, especially with colubrids, man. They eat you out of house and home, right?

Yeah. Crazy. He just did a wedding. I know what those cost. Jesus. Yeah. Probably borrowing money he doesn't have at this point. I don't think we'll see him on many herb trips in the near future.

No, dude, no. He's locked down with a rodent bill. All right. Well, anything going on in your life in the realm of reptiles? No. Oh. No. Same, same. I pulled the trigger on a pair of diamond pythons. Oh. No. Same, same. I pulled the trigger on a pair of diamond pythons, so.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I should be getting those in a couple months when it cools down a bit. Nice. Or warms up a little. Warms up a bit. It's already cooled down. So, yeah, that should be fun.

Do you have some pictures or what, man? Take notes for me. Are they pretty are they pretty yeah typical looking uh pretty typical looking uh diamonds or no the female has some cool striping elements so that's kind of oh neat yeah nice yeah they're from uh terry terry burwell so yeah yeah do you know do you know what the lineage on those things is? I think it's that Swiss zoo where all the Carinata and everything came from. Nice.

Through Bushmaster. Sweet. I'm still getting a delay from time to time. Like it'll catch up and then it starts again. Yeah. I kind of get it too. My computer is not working out here. So I don't know. Is it you? It's you. It's always you.

Anyway, we'd like to take the heat for it. You should. Sorry. I'll stop talking. Yeah. We've, we finally brought another guest in. We've got Billy Sveen. Am I pronouncing that correctly?

Sveen? It's close. It's Sven. Sven. Okay. It's as if it only has one E. Yeah. Yeah, it's tricky.

Oh, that works. Yeah. So Billy sent us a message with an idea for a show. So we're like, come on and talk about it. So, yeah, why don't you introduce yourself kind of tell where you fit into herped culture and get to know you a little bit yeah um yeah so my name is billy i've been uh into reptiles ever since i can't really remember kind of similar story to everybody got my first uh bearded dragon for my 11th birthday and soon had a room full of geckos

in high school kind of got rid of everything when I went to college except for my parents kept my bearded dragon which was amazing and then kind of a long road of education and postgraduate training stuff moving like every three to four years and so really just had a bearded dragon until he died and when he was like 14 and then i got i needed something else but wanted something a little bit less uh um needy than a lizard so i got a ball python because it seemed like an easy thing to do and I've had that ball python for like eight years now and then a year and a half ago finally got my like adult job and bought a house have this office that I get to do what I want with and so I'm slowly turning into a jungle so I have my first tank of poison dart frogs so I have the dendrobates lucumellus which are the black and yellow bumblebee ones so I have them right here and then I got a little lagodactylis

Kenraui Cameroon dwarf day gecko and so the poison dart frogs I had for right about a year and then that little guy I've only had for a month and so planning to slowly expand and turn the room into a jungle. So I've been paying attention for the last almost two decades. The first decade it was me reading every Reptiles Magazine article I could find and keeping things in my room as kind of cheaply as I could. And then a few years of break. And now hopping back in and trying to do things as, I don't know,

like responsibly and thoughtfully as I can. Nice. Right on. Well, yeah, Where are you located? I'm in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Okay. Minnesota! It's cold there. True north. Yeah. Really cold.

So you know the joys of the cold and snow. Uh-huh. Yeah. I've already had the snowblower out this year. Nice. Don't rub it in, man. I bought this house and we bought a snowblower out this year nice don't don't rub it in man i bought this house and we bought a snowblower with it and was only a year old and i cannot get the stupid thing to start we've been here like three winters so it's just taking up space it looks really good like it's looks brand new but for some reason that thing won't start for me i've tried a lot of things but yeah i'm not much of a gearhead. So I, I gotta have somebody smarter than me. Check it out. No, that would be me too.

Mine just happens to work. Yeah. So what, what do you do for your job? Um, I am a pediatrician and I specialize in, um, ICU medicine. So I only work in the ICU. Um, so you're a busy guy. Uh, yeah. So it's really hit and miss. So I have weeks where I work a ton and then I have a few weeks where I'm mostly in my office doing research. So I'm in, I'm in academic medicine. So I do, um, a fair amount of research too um nice but yeah it's been a busy fall with uh viruses yeah yeah thank goodness man that's my uh that's that's my job security i'm a virologist so you know there's viruses out there then then the NIH is going to fund for viral work. If you can find a RSV vaccine, we'd be very pleased.

That would be nice. Yeah, we don't do a lot of work with RSV. We do a little bit of in vitro work, but yeah, that's not my specialty. I work with all the viruses nobody cares about. Yeah, I looked through some of your stuff to be honest uh before doing this uh looks like some yellow fever and dengue yellow fever is kind of my bread and butter zika yeah yeah that's cool so are you i like how academics stalk each other yeah i know it is how we stalk each other yeah did you go the md go ahead or uh so i have an mdma and then my master's is

in bioethics and health policy oh cool that's awesome so i do medical clinical ethics okay very cool nice yeah all right well um so it took up a fair amount of time and I was like Chicago, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, back to Minneapolis. And so, you know, all of those steps,

uh, didn't make sense to acquire more animals. So it was pretty much just the bearded dragon and then the one snake. And, but now we're, now we're here. This is where we're staying for the foreseeable future. Are you interested in more Legodactylus, or what's your...

Yeah, I know you keep the Williams eye. I do. Yeah. The Conraui, I, the way they look. Yeah. Um, their, their body form is like a little bit, um, I don't know, like a little more like swift looking to be a little more agile. They, and I like how, uh, variable they can be can be um some of them have like those like

oscillated patterns and some of them are really um almost patternless um so i'm excited to see uh what comes of that um i'm definitely interested in maybe other felsuma and maybe other um like gunnatodies or spirodactylus. We'll see. I don't know. I'm doing it one step at a time. This is me dipping my toe in the water. So far, it's fun.

Barbonica, ornata, those are two I really like in felsuna. Yeah. And I've got barbonica, but I don't have ornata. But they're out there. Yeah, definitely, definitely. That's cool. You just, you know, I like the Ligodactylus. And there's some, they're not very, you know, some of the other species are not, you know, readily sold, but they're out there.

So that's cool. That's a good, that's a good. How are they? I mean, it's just lightning fast and skittish or what's that? Yeah. Yeah. Super bold. And I just have the one.

It's like three months old. And I have it in just like a one gallon, like plastic jar, essentially, that I modified. Actually, I just built this that I'm putting it in. So it's like a little six gallon, little B slide opening, front opening. But still a work in progress, but that's what's gonna go in as it continues to grow bigger.

So it's almost always at the top completely visible yeah and then i open up the lid and it scurries down the you know it's like a slanted cork bark is how i have it essentially and it scurries like halfway down and then you feed it and it runs around and comes right back to the top as soon as i put the container back where it's used to being yeah Yeah, that sounds pretty typical. They're interesting, right? They're flighty and kind of nervous, but they're also really curious and right there.

So it's kind of a fun mix. Cool. Well, anyway, you hit my peak interest button. For sure. Cool. It's always cool you know, you hit my peak interest button, so. For sure. Cool. Yeah. It's always cool to find kind of those common interests and species and things.

Yeah. There's a lot of cool reptiles out there. Yeah. I wasn't sure how many species there are in Legodactylus. I'm not familiar. A lot. A lot. Yeah.

There's a lot. A diverse group. Yeah. I'm not as familiar with that. They not australian so yeah yeah they're kind of throughout all of africa um and some of like madagascar and seychelles and stuff um like i want to say it's like 50 75 something like something like that, like a lot. That's cool. Yeah, I think you're right, but I don't want to misquote myself right here on air and look like an idiot. And a lot of them are pretty brownish. Yeah.

Yeah, not – yeah. There's a lot of – Lilian Tsai, Kunraui, Pictoratus are prettier. Okay. And maybe some others. Yeah, 72 species. Cool. Nice.

Okay, well, so William's Eye are maybe the exception to the rule. I guess they're kind of the exception to a lot of rules with geckos. Yeah, I mean, there's some pretty, I mean, some of them have their moments, but, yeah, by far I would say William Sy is like the poster child. The sports car, yes, the sports car. He's a glamour model for F. I do think Kunraui with the yellow that goes to the green to the red is pretty. The males are really pretty.

But they're not, there's something about how striking that blue is like almost like highlighter blue but like like billy said there's a bunch that are just brown brown tiny geckos and it's like oh okay you know nobody cares about brown tiny geckos right they want they want electric blue and you know they want the volume turned up on everything so anyway i digress all right well uh let's let's introduce the topic today so um we're we're we're going to discuss the uh legal uh ramifications of different projects in the hobby so as we know, you know, some, sometimes things come in under less ethical or less legal routes, um, into the hobby. And,

and a lot of times, you know, it's, it's just kind of simply overwhelms the system. And so they get established and, and then there's a ton of them around and, and they're freely sold. And even though maybe technically they they might be illegal and um or or they come through europe where the countries might have less stringent uh policies on upholding other countries laws or or kind of ignore the the smuggling that may go on in their country and then we can you know sometimes get them from those countries. And so we're going to kind of discuss whether or not... Oh, whoa. You okay? You got a little cold there, Chuck?

Yes, yes, this is my RSV. We're going to discuss kind of the pros and cons of having that happen in the hobby, or maybe not pros and cons, but discuss the two sides of that issue. This is Billy's brainchild, so we'll go ahead and flip to see who gets to debate him. Why don't you call it, Chuck? Tails. It is Tails.

Do you want to go for the debate, or do you want to let me do it? I'll let you do it. Okay? I'll let you do it. Okay. I'll let you do it. As long as I win the coin toss, you can do the hard work. I know that's a... Is that fair?

You won last time, I think, too. I did. I did. I'm on my way back. It's your Christmas... I'm back, baby! ...your Christmas present. That's right.

Okay. That's right. Well, Billy, you can call the next one, see what side of the topic you, or see who decides which side. It is heads. I'm a double loser this week, so what side do you want to go? I think your New Year's resolution is going to have to be not to lose coin tosses. Um, I'll say, I'll highlight the downsides of having herps of questionable legality in the hobby. Okay. All right.

And then as the coin toss winner, you get to decide if you want to lead out or if you want me to. Make him go. Yeah. I'll start. Oh, wow. He anti-chucked. Yeah, always uh makes me go first a few i always make justin go first yeah i do i i do the same yeah go go for it yeah sure so um with my interest in poison dart frogs um they're kind of the notable example is Brazil

never legally exports anything. So all these CITES-2 animals never get permits. And so pretty much anything that's exclusively from Brazil has never been legally

exported. There are some exceptions and things leak out from zoos and such, but then Brazil says they shouldn't have been leaked out of zoos. And even pretty recently, there's some quite notable examples of a new locale of a species being found in 2012, and then six months later it's in Germany like that's the actual example and and then since that species is established they can get

the export papers to send it to the United States as captive bred individuals and everyone knows that it didn't legally leave Brazil, but you're not going to be able to get in trouble for having it, even if it's technically legal. I think that's debatable whether the technical legality of it But realistically, you can go into a specialty shop, you can go to a reptile expo and find all of these frogs. And some of them have been here for decades. And I guess I am not going to throw a flag down and say we should get rid of anything that didn't have, like,

a perfect permitted process of getting into the hobby. But I do think there are ramifications of having animals, especially recently, come into the hobby with questionable means when there are other animals that are available to us that are excellent, and we could focus on those instead. Instead of getting a bad rap of being associated with animal smuggling. Yeah. That would be my opening argument. No, that's a very good point. And, you know, it's almost like it's kind of too late for that because, you know, reptile people have been involved with or, you know, loosely associated with or sometimes directly involved with smuggling for decades and decades.

We've been fucking it up for years. It's hard because... It's cheaper to be caught with a snake than with drugs. Yeah. Reptiles are a slap on the wrist compared to cocaine. A lot of judges, yeah, kind of like, what are you wasting my time with some snake? Who cares? You know, that kind of thing.

And, you know to to some extent i think that's probably true the the i think the they like to overblow how much of an impact smuggling has you know on on the wildlife and and things like that now for some that's probably true you know if you have a rare animal that's that's endangered in the wild and people are taking them out of the wild. I think a much bigger problem is road deaths or the people of that country using them as a food source. Habitat destruction. Yeah, habitat destruction. Those kind of things are going to impact wildlife far more than some reptile nerd going over and doing that. And, of course, the best, you know, the funnest joke with smuggling is, you know,

what's the first thing that happens after a new paper comes out about a new reptile species? You know, two Germans buy a plane ticket. But, so, I love Germany and I love my German friends., so I'm not going to say too much more about that. But that's kind of the joke. And there is a little bit of truth to that. And we hear some of those tragic stories like in Stolen World with the Germans that were over in Madagascar. Were they German? I think they were German, right?

Yeah. Or there was maybe a Frenchman there or something but anyway they got a couple of them got shot and killed I mean that's yeah that's pretty uh yeah serious uh I was not laughing at their misfortune I would hope not Chuck I would hope you're not breaking I just liked that you threw the Frenchman in there like well we don't want to lump everybody into one category here. So let's put a Frenchman in with them. It seemed like they were a few different places. Of mixed origins.

I got you. No, I got you. You're good. You're good. And I had a friend that got caught with some – well, he got turned in by his ex-wife. And he was, I guess guess doing it the right way you know i i think i really have issue when people just smuggle stuff out just to sell it and make a quick buck you know um he was bringing it in to to establish uh breeding populations so there would you know

never be a need to smuggle anything i mean who's gonna smuggle a bearded dragon or uh you know a wheeler eye knob tail gecko you know they're they're just like 150 or 100 animals and they're commonly produced and they're some of the most prolific animals in the hobby and to say oh well you know they're all legal technically so we're going to confiscate everything and, you know, that kind of stuff. And especially where there's kind of some mixed, you know, history where within my lifetime, it was legal to import things from Australia. And then they changed the laws. And at first, the laws were kind of weak and they weren't really enforcing them. And so people would go over and bring stuff back all the time and or or just send it over you know and and to an extent that still happens today i mean anytime there's a new morph project all of a sudden it shows up either over here or over there

you know from wherever it came from and you're like hmm they just happened to come up with the same morph you know a year later so hmm but uh so you know it happens but i think overall like you know i'll use shingleback skinks as an example i was over in australia and saw in one like one mile stretch of road there were probably 30 shingleback skink carcasses in that one mile stretch of road. You know, there's that. And granted, they probably don't, you know, deteriorate and go away very quickly. So they've accumulated over the years maybe. But still, that's a lot of dead animals on a short stretch of road.

So we need to, you know, take those kind of things with a grain of salt, but the same, you know, I, I think if, if there, if there's a means to, uh, establish populations, so there isn't a need to take them out of the wild, I think that's a great thing. So that would probably be my, my initial argument that even if it is, you know, somewhat technically illegal, I think kind of the end justifies the means and you've got established populations of all these different species that never need to be taken out of the wild again, because there's no monetary incentive to do so. Yeah, I think there's clearly a difference between flipping something because it's rare and someone can quickly ship it and sell it versus establishing it. And, I mean, it would be ignorant and pretentious of me to suggest all of the established species

that we don't know all the origin to, we should question and not continue to perpetuate in the hobby. That'd be really pretty silly. Um, and then, so I think what I'm most interested in, uh, are, are these ones that are newer where,

um, you know, you can get a, going back to poison frogs, you can get a frog of pretty much any color of the rainbow and that call a certain way, look a certain way, behave a certain way, and yet the new one comes up and we want that one. Or, yeah, and so that mentality does bother me a little bit because I think it can give us as a whole

hobby, a bad rap in, um, our ability to turn a blind eye to the situation could imply an incentive for future smuggling is an issue that i have like i agree like the stuff that happened in the 70s 80s 90s like that's in the past those most of those animals are long gone and either their um progeny are all over and we should take advantage of that or they are, you know, yeah, or they never got established. Yeah, I think one of the gray areas is when, say, you know, they're brought into Germany illegally, but then they're captive bred over there and the captive bred offspring are sent over here. Um, you know, I, I have no problem with that. Now it might be difficult to determine, you know, this is wild caught or this is captive bred, you know, so there, there could be some requirements of like show pictures of, of them, you know, with eggs or with offspring or

something like that. And, you know, some of them were pretty obvious that they were trying to just lie and put that they were captive bred, but they have scars and things that only look pretty fresh out of the wild or they're heavily parasitized or something like that. So there's ways, I think, that they kind of push the envelope and that usually results, and I think this is kind of cyclical where, you know, there's, there's a big kind of, they get a little more lackadaisical about enforcing the laws or enforcing what comes in.

And then all of a sudden you've got like this huge influx and it includes illegal stuff or, or, you know, questionable things. And then all of a sudden they're like, wait, hold on, let's clamp down again, and then nobody's going to risk doing that because they'll lose their animals, they'll lose their money, that kind of thing. And sometimes it's a little sketchy buying from overseas because if they screw you over, what are your repercussions? You're not going to be able to sue them or something.

So they kind of know they have you where they want you, I guess. So there is some risk to that. And I think reptile people and money are kind of not easily separated. But there has been a lot of kind of that swindling mentality that goes along with kind of the smuggling mentality. So, you know, you read about Hank Moult and some of that nonsense. So, you know, I think people become less risk-taking when there is kind of those clampdowns. And so I think we just saw one of those a few years ago, um, with all the Gurnea species coming into Europe from Australia, you know, people were smuggling those out pretty

fast and furiously. And, you know, the Asian market is really big for, you know, like the shinglebacks and some of the blue tongues. And I remember my first trip to Western Australia, we went out to Rottnest Island and we saw one of the, uh, Rottnest Island shingleback skinks, kind of a subspecies of rugosa. And, and, uh, it was, uh, really cool. I mean, they have this kind of greenish color to them. They're really awesome lizards and there's, they're supposed to be all over Rottnest. And we saw one and I was kind of like, you know, and I didn't spend a lot of time cause I thought, Oh, we'll see more of these, and that was the only one we saw.

So I was happy to see one. But then when we got home, somebody had been arrested for trying to smuggle like 50 of them that they'd caught in the preceding weeks. And so I'm like, no wonder I didn't see any. This guy from, you know, Southeast Asia. That guy ruined it for me. Exactly. He had them all in his suitcase trying to bring them back to asia or whatever to sell them you know so i i do take issue with that of course

because you know if you want to see them in the wild you don't want somebody kind of clear cutting the the forest so to speak and and just taking those out and you know sometimes i wonder how shinglebacks are so populous over there anyway. I mean, they're pretty common. Maybe they're just tough and they live a long time or something. But, like, it seems like they have low fecundity and they take a little while to mature. So it's interesting to see the population densities in some of those areas. And over in Australia, they're, you know, not the most exciting animal.

A lot of people don't really care about keeping them because they're kind of looked at as the garbage, you know, the cheap species or whatever. So, you know, but when they're brought over to the Asian market or U.S. or Europe or whatever, they command very high prices. You know, over here, you're going to spend $10,000 on a single animal. They're kind of like that bull and eye for lizard lovers i guess but so you know that's we as as hurt people a lot of times we just want what we can't have and that's kind of like our yeah dream species you know a lot of times are the ones that just are not going to be easily to easy, and if they are found, they're probably illegal. And I don't know.

For me, in my collection, I don't want to risk that. So if there is kind of that questionable nature, whether it's legal or not, I would tend to shy away from those things. But there's plenty of people that say, nah, you know, I'll take the risk. I want the glory. And a lot of times they get caught because they post that because they're so excited to have it and they want to share that with everybody right that's usually how they how they get caught but um so i that's kind of i kind of

think yeah i kind of think to uh ron saint pierre who was just on uh lizard brain radio and uh you know if you listen to Ron St. Pierre and you've heard Bill talk about Ron, you know, Ron thinks of reptiles as a counterculture and, you know, kind of the, I don't want to say break in the law kind of, you know, but, but if you think about it and you think about, um, you know, smuggling and governments and what, you know, governments do all of these ridiculous things that are capricious and arbitrary and intrusive and ridiculous. And they do it with wildlife, introducing, you know, non-native wildlife. So, so you know as a counterculture to say no you know what what you do is wrong too we will not follow your stupid rules like is there a place

for that you know is that a is that a valid and is that why maybe you know maybe maybe wildlife regulators say yeah this is this is kind of tough for us sometimes. What do you guys think? I think so. I think you're helping me get back on topic a little bit. I'll let Billy go, but yeah, I've got a few things to say about that. I mean, a couple comments. I completely agree that smuggling and poaching on most species is not the main reason for population declines. And that habitat destruction is by far and away the reason that populations are going downhill.

And with some exceptions and poison dart frogs have some of those because some of their localities are so small so isolated and so specific that someone going in a few years in a row and finding out taking all the calling males really does like destroy a population yeah and there are some examples of that um and then uh you saying the um using some type of sustainable eco-commerce model i think is also very well illustrated in poison dart frogs with two companies in particular that are um breeding the frogs in their native country and then exporting them so wikiri in ecuador and tesoros in colombia and tesoros has some pretty interesting data of taking the um phyllobates terabilis, the orange one, the most toxic

vertebrate, and those ones were an example of some of their locales being so heavily poached that there were low numbers, like truly low numbers but they now have essentially flooded the market with captive bred ones and are actually using a lot of the proceeds to sustain and prevent habitat destruction

where the animals are found such that barely any terabilis are taken from the wild anymore and their native populations are increasing so that is the type of sustainable yeah bio commerce that i would love to see her her pedaculture do more of. But exactly what you're saying, Chuck, governments don't cooperate. And from the little bit I've heard from, I don't know these people personally by any

means, but Tesaros and Wakiri, huge amounts of risks and paperwork of setting up these facilities, not knowing if the paperwork is going to go through not knowing if they're going to be able to export these hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of live animals in order to make the last five years worth it um and you know at this point there's no way brazil is going to do that um and so yeah what do you do do we do we say no more brazilian animals should enter the hobby um it's kind of a hard line um yeah and to chuck's point about maybe we don't want the normies to accept us right maybe we don't maybe we want to stay a counterculture and you know there's nothing ethical about obeying a bad law and so I've actually had this thought

and discussion with some people of, you know, when they discover a new poison dart frog locale, maybe the best thing would be to take 20 pairs, bring them to someone who is very good at breeding them,

not release the information for two, five years with publication of the not release the information for five years with publication of the location of them and then you flood the market with captive-bred individuals at the same time that would require huge amounts of coordination or some

risky adventurous explorers shipping the animals to Europe illegally and doing it covertly. But we essentially saw that with Blue Galactodonis, one of the specific poison frogs where there was orange and red ones in the hobby since the 90s. The blue ones were discovered in the early, I think it was like 2012. And within six months, they're in Europe. Clearly someone broke the law doing that. But to my knowledge, they're not poached from the wild very often because you can just go get them from uh hobbyists yeah yeah and that's always been kind of that that rationale you know as uh uh

conservation through propagation i i hear that you know from tom crutchfield yeah like that where um you know that's kind of the the end justifies the mean argument, you know, where, uh, see everything worked out. Now they're readily available. Nobody has to take them from the wild. So it worked out, you know, and, and granted, there are definitely examples where that doesn't work and where we keep having to bring them out and like Bolins or something, you know, they're not readily available and people still bring them in and, you know, they're, they're, they a lot of cases and so right um but you know australian stuff yeah i would say that's the i would i would say that like those frog um companies are an example of truly um like commercialization like conservation through commercialization because they're taking the money and putting it back into actual

conservation versus like, you know, it's, it's mincing terminology, but you're preserving a species in captivity. You're not conserving it. Like no, none of our animals are going back to the wild.

We're not going to rewild our captive animals. Yeah. Um, you know, they're not, and you know know most conservation doesn't want animals they want money so they can do you know whatever they land yeah exactly they they it's not generally necessarily the animals that trying to conserve the animals yes that's the goal but that's not the the means or method that they you know breeding and repot and i mean in some cases i suppose but you know i i but but yeah a hundred percent are animals right right

um and and just as as a note um you know uh ron saint pierre's heavily talked about reptiles being a counterculture but i in no way am saying that that Ron St. Pierre endorses smuggling as a part of counterculture. That was, that was me kind of drawing that together. So I don't know, you know, Ron can speak for himself, but I didn't, I just didn't want anybody to think Ron had ever said that. And I had repeated something Ron had said. That's, that's, you know, me putting those things together. So just to be clear. Good, good catch. Good catch. Yeah. And you know, me putting those things together. So just to be clear. Good, good catch.

Good catch. Yeah. And, you know, I do think there is something to that because, you know, I've heard stories of people that have been over, you know, in the habitat of their favorite animals and seeing locals just murder them, you know, kill them because they're on their property or something. And he's like, well, these people don't care about what's around them. So why should I care about their laws that are keeping them here and not allowing me to take them home and give them a good home or whatever? And I think, again, if there's no legal recourse, of course you're going to promote. By making everything illegal, you're promoting illegal activity in some way. Absolutely. Because people are going to want it regardless of if it's legal or not, and so they're going to go to great lengths.

And I mean, that's very obvious, and especially if there's money involved, if these animals are in high demand. I mean, we saw that with rhinos. You know, there's a couple species that are either functionally extinct or extinct extinct because there's money, because some idiot thinks that, you know, ingesting a rhino horn is going to make them more virile. And so, you know, all the efforts to try to save those rhinos and, you know, they're still either almost extinct, very, very highly endangered. You know, there's just nowhere to protect all the time unless you're just putting them in a barn. But, you know, I heard some plan, let's move all the rhinos to Texas and just breed the heck out of them in Texas

and just let them run wild in Texas. And you're like, well, you know, there might be a point to that. But at the same time, as soon as you take them back to their native land, they're going to be shot and, you know, sold off for, for their parts. So, um, it's, it's a really a tricky thing because, you know, I, I do think that the lawmakers can protect an animal to death. And I think that's, you know, the case with a lot of the mammalian mammals in, in Australia, where if, if they would allow hobbyists to keep them they would spend their own resources and time and effort to to propagate those animals and then they'd have a have kind of that population of of animals that could be rewilded if their

habitat is made safe you know but if you just say nope absolutely not then all the you know ones in the wild are going to get picked off by cats or some other introduced predator and then they're extinct you know then what what good do you have there's no options really you know and and conserving a species in the zoos and things is extremely expensive i was reading a study where they tried to conserve what the christmas island geckos and and i heard i heard somebody interview about that you know on um one of the podcasts and he was saying it was you know several million dollars to protect and conserve this this tiny little gecko or skink or whatever and you know it's like can you put a price on a species i don't i don't think

so i think it's probably money well spent. But at the same time, do we have the resources to do that for everything? And the answer is probably no. So are there other ways to do it? Probably. We could have handed out Cialis and saved the white rhino. Yeah, I did like... Yeah, I think buck for buck, just preserving land and pouring money into the local economy so that they don't need to strip the land of its resources.

And we could get all kinds of political about global warming and the things that developed countries are doing to, you know, like we have stripped our land and incentivized the deforestation of other people's land. And now we're telling them to stop without helping them or, you know, we are, but like not nearly to the extent that, you know, we're still keeping, we're still widening the gaping the gap of achievement of what we're able to do. And so I don't blame those people by any means. When I was in college, I studied ecology down in Ecuador for not long, just like a month. Um, but like seeing their banana plantations and their rose plantations, um, was really quite sad and really still sticks with me.

But then you come back to the United States and realize that's most of our country yeah we wiped out uh the the native landscape and altered it to fit our means um yeah i think um there's a bit of a double standard there um it's it's hard to be the villain and the savior in the same story right right? Exactly. I do like having returned from Costa Rica. They've set up a pretty good program over there in regards. I mean, I think I read it was over 70% of their land is preserved and protected for wildlife and to keep it wild forests and stuff. And they're even rewilding some areas to turn them back into primary forest or, you know, let the secondary forest fill in or whatever to allow, you know, wildlife to live there. And I think what a great model. It's interesting to see, you know, different, different countries taking different approaches. And I really liked that idea of, you know,

setting up those dart frog farms, you know, and seeing, seeing that contribute to, to, and I, and I think along the same lines as if, if they can,

you know, promote tourism or, you know, like, yeah, I think in local jobs, actually, I think more,

more reptile people need to, you know, spend that money on that latest morph, buy a plane ticket instead, and go see the animals you keep in a box in their native habitat. And you'll care about them more. You'll be more excited about the animals that you have because you see them in the wild. I don't know. There's just something about seeing them in their native environment that makes you appreciate them more and and care less about if they're a morph or not you know and just care about that animal and and what it's doing in in the wild and and wanting to see that in your

own herp room now i think that kind of goes hand in hand with with conservation to some extent because if you're there um spending money in their country and going out into the wild and seeing stuff in the wild and you know supporting local economies out there they're going to be more interested you know if they have all these snake people you know in in their area saying what are you here for oh we're here to find snakes oh well maybe i'm going to stop killing snakes because people come looking for snakes buy a you buy a beer in my pub or whatever, you know, and they're they're promoting the local economy in this little out of the outback town or something. So, you know, there could be, you know, simple ramifications for us wanting to to go see him in the wild, you know, that can, that can promote, uh, their, their, uh, persistence in that area. Um, you know, I don't think just, just having them in a box is all that fulfilling. And usually when

you get a new or even a rare species after a few months, you're like, okay, what's next? You know, what don't I have now? You know, what's the next big goal on the, on the list. So I think I'm, I'm kind of arguing your side here and me, you know, but, but I think, you know, that's, uh, that's something to think about, you know, um, but, you know, by the same token, you know, we, we do care. It kind of feeds on itself because if we do keep them here, then that will make us more interested in their native habitat. And so it can promote that tourism. So I think it works for both sides. Yeah, no, I agree.

But I do think the idea of we need to think about, in herpetoculture, we need to think about the way we're keeping our animals more broadly instead of just I want two of of everything breed it one or two times sell those make some money get new projects and you know like instead of that hedonic treadmill which and then as a whole group looks like how do we keep getting more different species in instead of thinking about all the species that we have available that if we don't focus on won't be here in 10 years or all the species that we can legally get from other places and establish um instead of focusing on trying to get something that's of questionable background. Not to say that the laws of Australia or Brazil are sacrosanct

and that I like them or think that they're good, but why tarnish our reputation further? but i guess i i guess you know like you said the idea of eco-commerce and and and having an aussie who can go ahead and and set up a breeding facility get sanctioned by the government uh breed uh you know take and and get legal expert permits out of Australia. Send them to the United States. A portion of that money the breeder keeps and then a portion of that goes to the government so that they can put it into a fund for wildlife or whatever. If that's really their concern, if that's really their – we want to protect wildlife.

Well, what is just saying no on its face? How does that protect wildlife? I mean, you know, it doesn't make any sense that Australia doesn't let things that have been captive bred for generations not leave the continent. And I think that's where everybody struggles. I think that's where everybody says, you know, fuck it. I'll smuggle because this doesn't make any fucking sense, right? And I mean, Brazil, under their last leadership, and maybe things will change, burned historic amounts of the rainforest, of the Amazon. And while saying, you can't take our animals because how dare you? Yeah, exactly.

Um, our, uh, national jewels. Um, while they roast on an open fire, so get bulldozed. Exactly. And so I,

I, yeah, I don't know. Um, to me, for me personally, um, to me for me personally um instead of getting mad and upset about that i would rather support some people i know are doing a great job yeah and maybe that's not always an option right well i

think that's the only option we have in a lot of cases is is putting our money where our mouth is you know putting our money where our beliefs are If you think that this is an important thing, buy the stuff that's legal. Support the legal trade. Now, the other tricky thing is the legal trade kind of prevents us from establishing, I mean, not prevents, but it makes it very difficult. I mean, how do you justify setting up a group of savannah monitors and breeding them and spending all the money and resources that it takes to breed a savannah monitor only to compete with 30 imports you know or 10 imports or however much a savannah

monitor costs and so you know the the i guess the import trade it's it's almost like a separate entity in a lot of cases because yeah it kind of prevents us from conserving those species through captive propagation or making you know those uh captive offspring available and that that's kind of a tricky thing and so i think a lot of times we focus on the stuff that we can't have because there is money to be made in that area. And unfortunately, everybody's got it in their mind that if you're a reptile breeder, you've got to be rolling in the dough. You're not successful or you're not doing it right. Or you can just be not good. I have a coworker who was really into blue tree monitors right and i uh i had seen joey had put

one of his captive bred uh tree monitors up and i i i sent her the link and she was just like oh my gosh this was like you know you wanted like three grand or something for it and uh which is pretty much going right for for captive bred tree monitors uh but she was just like oh my gosh this is so much more expensive than i remember seeing them at triple l4 and i'm like oh yeah well they're captive bred and you know i was showing her different stuff like oh you check these out check this out and she was all like man everything here is so much more expensive than i'm used to so it kind of like reinforced my whole idea that there's just this is like this too it's like a static you know it's it's a status uh outset of reptiles you have your cheap imports

which are affordable for giving the the the you know the the non-highbrow money you know pinky up people a chance to work with these animals. And then you have the captive bred, you know, really, you know, top, top end animals that, you know, you'll have to pay an arm and a leg for, and you'll have to be a real reptile person for that or something, you know? And I think Bolin's pythons fall into that category too. But, you know, I just, I think, I don't know, I digress and we're kind of off topic, but, you know, it's just, I think imports are a really tough nut to crack. Really tough nut to crack. And I think some of it is the species that you're importing too, right? minor example they're massive and it's hard to convince someone to care for them appropriately

let alone people to be breeding 10 pairs and then finding appropriate homes to then establish them versus um poison dart frogs i'm going to go back to the example that I know. Um, they are almost all CITES too. And so there's a controlled import and export of them. And, um, they're pretty easy to breed. If you, you know, I have mine in like a custom, it's 40 gallons, but it's pretty vertical. And that's big. That's huge for them. And so you're establishing a different market. And so I don't know how much, like with those orange Blackfoot Terabilis, I think those were like a few hundred when they were first coming in,

and now they're about half that, and people buy them. And it worked, you know, for that. And it's a model that seems to work well for frogs. I know Tesoros just announced a few other species that they're planning. I think they've already started breeding them in their facility, and then they're planning that they've already i think they've already started breeding them in their facility and then they're planning on releasing in the next like one to two years

something like that timeline and uh people are going to be spending a lot of money on that and they're going to be happy to and then five ten years later it's going to be half a third or whatever for other people to get. Yeah. Yeah. From local breeders. I think another difficult one are the tortoises where, you know, for example, the radiated tortoises where they made that huge bust and there were, what, 10,000 radiated tortoises in a building that were kind of languishing and almost dying.

I mean, I almost think they should have taken those 10,000, you know, got them cleaned up or whatever and just flooded the market, you know, sold them, you know, just flooded the market so they weren't worth a ton. But then, you know, hopefully somebody could get them. But then again, you know, if you do that, then they become a trash species and then people don't care as much or whatever. I don know you know there it's such a i just don't know how you get 10 000 i don't know how you get 10 000 of anything in a building and not be like i'm a fucking horrible human being for no they were they were in the illegal trade that was that they

busted them they were they were gonna sell them overseas or something like that. This was a holding facility until they could get them out of the country. So, I mean, this was a local person or somebody associated with some kind of smuggling thing getting caught with 10,000 animals in their house. I'm not sure I retract my statement. Yeah. I mean, no, it's a bad thing. And most of them had to be euthanized because they were in terrible shape so exactly i don't know but yeah that's gross but i mean you've got like places like the the tortoise concert the durell tortoise trust or you know things like the the tortoise conservation institutes kind of these private things that

are doing really good work and helping to, um, you know, conserve some of these species. And then you have people breaking into these places and stealing some of their offspring and stuff. And it's like, well, you know, if, if, if some, like you said, some were made available and, and the money that was sold, you know, use or gained from selling those animals was put back into conservation or buying land or you know protecting them some way in madagascar um you know there there is a there is an avenue there and i

think you know these these places that you're talking about with the dart frogs is they gain a better reputation maybe someday brazil says oh these guys are doing it right we can send frogs to them and let them captive breed them and sell them you know and then then we don't have to worry about people smuggling them out of out of brazil and coming in you know and ruining populations in brazil and so that takes a lot of cooperation and a lot of i mean it's it's almost faster and easier and cheaper if the smugglers just take care of it and i mean i definitely yeah i had somebody uh because i i bought some um riverine leaf tail geckos and they were probably the most commonly available leaf tail gecko at the show when i got mine and and i had some of my australian friends like oh well

wow i'm glad you guys have those there because they're illegal to keep here. And I'm like, well, nobody's ever going to smuggle them again because they're very commonly available here and they're very easy to breed. So there's no reason for it, you know, but they can't even have them over there. And, you know, these leaf-tailed geckos are kind of like island species. You know, they're just in very small ranges at the top of the mountain or something you know and so it but i i mean i see them you know there there's there's probably 50 at the tinley show and i'm like how is this a bad thing you know it's like yeah they were smuggled but now nobody's ever going to need to smuggle those again so i did get some of those um you know and so i guess technically those would be illegal but they're captive bred they're healthy they do great and you know what how do you argue against that it's really a tricky

thing yeah i mean i can go down to this uh specialty shop the specialty pet store that I think is a high reputation place and get dart frogs that are from Brazil that have been here for three decades. So they're F10 or something. But they're technically not legal but anyone

can walk in and buy them. They're not like behind a counter or you ask somebody, right? People don't even know. Isn't that kind of where the whole, like what's legal and what's not legal gets so funny that it's kind of like, all right, when,

when do we draw the line of this isn't okay. And this is okay. Like, and I think that is where it gets silly. Yeah. What bothers me is the, the chase for something new without thinking about it. Yeah.

And I think if someone was really thinking about it, and I mean, I know like Philippe de Vaugelais has talked about like from the few, you get many, right, to establish a cattle population. And again, I'm not saying he would condone smuggling animals just like Ron St. Pierre. But that idea that we've been talking about, you grab a couple, and you could never have to grab them again. I just think often the people that are doing the grabbing aren't interested in that. Right, right, right.

I read an interesting book that had nothing to do with herpetoculture initially but um had to do with australian bio-commerce that i thought was interesting where they were talking about um nile crocodile not nile crocodiles whoa saltwater crocodiles and um the the skin trade in the leather industry and how they initially didn't let them trade them at all. And it became a big problem because they were overrunning places and now they have a controlled harvest, like a lot of hunting and stuff. But it was more dramatic because they're massive, dangerous animals.

And it gave me, I just looked it up, it was Monster of God. It's about animals that eat humans. And so it was like focusing, there was a section on tigers and lions and uh if you say bears i'm gonna say oh my i know um and then uh crocodiles sorry no for sure um but yeah the in the australia section of, where they're talking about these crocodiles, they were talking about how, essentially, Australia saying you can kill some of them has saved them and has also saved the economy by aligning the incentives for the local people to farm them and harvest them.

Essentially, raise babies, release them, keep the population going, don't kill the biggest one, kill sub-adults, and have a harvest in that way. And I was just thinking, well, if they can arrange that, they should be able to export some some third generation bearded dragons and carpet pythons um but i don't know it's clearly not the same people thinking about the problem well i kind of want to go back a little bit to to chuck's statement about kind of counterculture and uh you know some of these laws especially you know i seen Australians that are flagrantly breaking the laws, smuggling stuff in and out, doing all sorts of illegal activities, and they get a slap on the wrist.

Basically, they're making probably $50,000, $60,000 off of this bearded dragon morph that they smuggled in, but then they get a $5,000 fine, you know, and they get like told not to breed for a couple of years or something. And it's like, oh no, you know, I, 10% of my profits have to go to, you know, paying the judge. I just see that as like, what's the incentive not to do it because you're still making a lot of money and, and being able to just kind of, yeah, here's your fine, take it. Here's a little extra for yourself kind of attitude about it. And I think that kind of counterculture attitude of like, yeah, I can break the law and I just get a slap on the wrist, so what's the big deal? I'm going to do it again. And there are definitely repeat offenders that just keep doing it. They don't care what their punishmentsments are what the law says or whatever and and so you know I think that kind of goes hand in hand if you're if you're not able to enforce a law why why make the law if you're not able to you know have have a reasonable outcome

for these laws and so I think a lot of these laws are seen as jokes or or something like that doesn't matter and so you think a lot of these laws are seen as jokes or or something like that doesn't matter and so you know like you said before what's what's the benefit of upholding a stupid law you know that makes no difference you know so i think that that probably plays into a lot of the mentality of these these smuggling episodes you know where i think you know there can be a lot of people like some of my friends that were like oh you have this illegal leaf tail gecko and we can't get them over here how dare you smuggle our wildlife it's like well it was probably one of your own that

smuggled it out and sent it you know overseas or something like that or or whatever but you know it's it's hard to hard to track that and see where they came from, and they probably made it over to Europe first, so they didn't care, or they went out and collected it or something, but I've heard it's pretty difficult to get to the habitat of the riverine leaf-tailed gecko, so whoever did it probably expended some effort to do so, but anyway, whether it's right or wrong, I mean, the outcome is almost inarguable. And the fact that these laws, they don't really punish their own people for breaking the laws,

so why should they expect foreigners to be punished any worse? I don't know. It's an interesting thing. It's funny how they also will allow the export of fish and spiders, but they draw the line at reptiles for some reason. Or, you know, birds, they have all these cockatoos that are devastating fields and the farmers hate them and shoot them and stuff. And then people over here pay a couple grand for one. You know, it's like, hmm, I see a solution to your problem of too many cockatoos. You know, send some over here or whatever.

It's a fun problem. So often the laws are misaligned with our incentives. But if we can align them, I think that's a better solution. Oh, definitely. So, like, you know, if a government agency is well aligned with the hobby, is well aligned with the economic incentives, that's when things work smoothly. And so I tend to agree with you on a lot of your points, and I'm not, like, a hardliner on a lot of this. But to say that we should, you know, since some of the governments don't make sense, we should burn it all down. I think instead it's like, how do you continue to support the ones that are doing it right?

So that playing a long game, hopefully more people come around. Yeah. While still not trashing the species that have been established by whatever means they have. That's definitely true. And of course, I'm playing devil's advocate. I agree with my friends in Australia. We shouldn't be smuggling their leaf-tailed geckos over to here. And they're completely right to say, hey, wait a second. Why do you have this thing that we can't even have?

I agree with that. That's a frustration, and do you have this thing that we can't even have? I agree with that. That's a frustration, and it's not a good thing. Yeah, so I'm definitely playing devil's advocate. And I do agree that playing that long game and working with governments is much preferable to supporting any kind of smuggling or illegal activity. But when there's no option, it's, it's hard to, hard to complain. You know what I mean? Like that's the only option that's left is, and especially when they're already here. Yeah. And I think, I think most people say, look, man, we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way, but we doing this,

right? That's, I mean, that's, that's kind of the the the the issue and and i think you know it's it's it's when you can and this is just my opinion but you know smaller governments uh that that have you know an ability to enact something that works are a great model uh for other governments to look to so it's kind of like if you know if you can do something like that and and then get other go you know it's just like it's just like zoos don't listen to herpetoculturists right they listen to other zoos so if the zoo you know does something that champions something really great then all of a sudden all the zoos want to do it right is oh this is working really well for us. It makes money.

It takes it back into the economy for wildlife, and it allows – it cuts down on smuggling. It does – it provides a legal means of exportation so that we can – we have control of that, and it takes away, it disincentivizes smuggling. I think governments would do that if they saw a working model that would, you know, that they could be shown. But, you know, most of the time being a government employee, no is the easiest thing to say. Absolutely. Because it's the status quo yeah absolutely yeah that's there's there's definitely no easy answer and i think we've we've brought up some great points you know and this has been a really productive and good good discussion so i really appreciate you you bringing, you know, on the show and coming

on and putting up a really nice fight on for your side. And I think, you know, it's I would, I would love to see more, you know, legal channels to do this the right way. And, you know, I don't know that, you know, this discussion is going to have any impact on that. But, you know, hopefully somebody can listen and maybe be in a position to do things. And I do think a lot of times it's hard to get buy-in from institutions like zoos because they've had such a spotted past in regards to getting animals from smuggling efforts. And so they want to avoid any of that kind of black eye. And they're very tightly scrutinized where their animals go, where they come from. And so

it's really disappointing because they could play a huge role in this because they have the facilities, the know-how, the expertise to do it. And, you know, it's almost like that bridge got burned down a while ago. Now there are some institutions, some zoos that are a little more willing to work with hobbyists, and especially those that have good reputations or have been around for a while, you know, that do things the right way, or nonprofit organizations that contribute to conservation and sometimes can breed and sell offspring and things like that. So I do think there is a good middle ground, and I would hope that anybody setting up something like this would have all aspects of this in mind. Help the trade.

Help the herpetoculture aspect of this because they're going to be your biggest fans and biggest supporters if, you know, if you keep them in mind. Keep the zoos in mind. Help them show a good face of conservation. Keep the governments in mind. Help them make money to support, you know, protection of wild lands. There's a lot of good that can come from these things. And I think, you know, if somebody said, Hey, you know, this animal is going to cost twice as much. Um, but just know that half the money is going to preserve their

natural habitat. I think a lot of people would be like, yeah, I'm, I'm on board with that. That sounds good. I would do that. I would do that. Especially if it means you don't have to purchase a smuggled animal or offspring of a smuggled animal. You can purchase from a legitimately set up institution that's in the country. If it gave me the opportunity to turn around and breed it and sell it and recoup some of my money. Not worry about getting confiscated. Yeah, yeah, or – yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I think that would fly and I – frankly, I think that we look at smugglers and people who do it the wrong way and we say, oh, it's an unfixable problem, blah, blah, blah. But I think if you were to give people a model that was ecologically responsible

and beneficial to all parties involved, they would participate. I think that this idea that people don't at heart want to do the right thing is just on its face flat wrong. I mean, you will have those people, but by and large, it's not been my experience. Got aligned incentives from all the parties. Any kind of final thoughts? I mean, I think we've said a lot of them. So yeah, I mean, I would say so much of life in general is all shades of gray.

And so, um, this is another one of those, but I think the more we can think big picture focus on, um, supporting the people who are doing the absolute best and, um, focus on preserving the animals that we already have established is probably a better route for

the for the long term for the hobby yeah here here i agree with that well and thank you so much for letting me come on and uh inviting me onto your podcast this has been no this has been awesome man we'll have you back we'll have you back that sounds fun yeah yeah this was really fun really fun yeah thanks for coming on um we kind of wanted to to start a little bit of a new segment here and you know i can't i think we've kind of done this on past episodes but kind of talk about some you know things that we've learned in the last uh week or or cool things we've seen and, you know, herp, herp, the logical news or, or herp to culture, um, and just kind of share those things. Uh, I don't know what you got anything for us, Chuck, you hear anything good this, this week or, um, I heard that you don't like Slayer,

uh, which I know you need to address. Um, but yeah, no. Uh, so I, I alluded to it earlier, but, uh, Ron St. Pierre was on lizard brain radio. And if you guys have not caught that, uh, go over and check that episode out. Uh, Ron and, uh, Bill are two of my favorite people. Uh, I value both of their experience and just insight and, you know, their contribution to herpetoculture. So I found that really interesting. I enjoyed listening to Ron. You know, he kind of went in depth and, you you really, I, I don't think I've ever heard Ron talk that personally, um, about, you know, some of his struggles and how not easy, you know, how not easy and, and, and how much he does it for the love, you know, he, he really, you know, he, he, he, you know, it's not a, it's, I mean, I – I mean, I hope that in his coming projects he takes the money because he deserves it because he's done so much in helping, you know, herpetoculture get to where it is today that I want to see him prosper for that.

So, yeah, I just – you catch that episode or – Oh, yeah, yeah. I listen to it. And I'm like sitting there going, wait a second. I think, Bill, you're remembering the story wrong. So I did go to a Slayer concert because I carry kings into carpet pythons. But I did go to the concert and I stayed for the whole thing and hung out with him after the show. And was just amazed at his skill and playing prowess.

I mean, it was really fun to watch him. Now, I will admit that Slayer's not necessarily the music for me. I do like some good hard rock, but I don't include Slayer in my playing routine. I know Chuck is a big fan, and I'm a big fan of Kerry. He's a great guy and just really a cool guy. I'm a fan of Kerry as well. He's treated me and Heidi and treated us very well and just's a great guy and just really a cool guy i'm a fan of carrie yeah he's treated me and

heidi and you know treat us very well and just a really great guy so um yeah he gave me tickets to a concert when they came out to salt lake and so i went and watched him and brought my cousin and stuff like that so it was a lot of fun but i don't care who you are if you have the opportunity to sit and watch a slayer show you have to take that in because that is a thing that is a thing yeah right especially if you can see it for free yeah yeah and you know i i do admit i'm you know i'm a little more i guess clean cut than some of the guys in the hobby and and i i actually gave ron a call today after I finished the episode because – You were like, hold up a minute.

Wait a second. I've got to clear the air here. No, but I was really excited. Like listening, I got some ideas for shows, and Ron said he'd come back on and talk about them. So we'll have to – Cool. Yeah, he's a great guest and just a great guy. I mean, he's one of the few that, you know, he'll go on podcasts, you know, and he'll talk to you. You can call him on the phone and he'll pick up and answer.

You know, he's just down to earth. He's been around for forever and he knows this hobby inside and out. I mean, how many species? And I feel like I get a real sense of history of when Ron was a young guy, how the hobby was, what was going on. And you really get that kind of visceral feel of where the hobby was when Ron talks stories and reminisces. So it's always fun to listen to him talk about that stuff. My thing is always hanging out with the old-timer Herp guys

because they've got the best stories. It's just so interesting to hear the evolution that got us. I think people take so much for granted, um, that we have today. And, you know, um, and, and, you know, it's just cool to hear stories about guys like Burt Langworth and, you know, like just, yeah, you meet people who know all these people who you idolized and then you're like, holy shit, these are like really people who were like not that long ago, all hung out and did reptiles together. And then I came along.

You know what I mean? I don't – maybe that sounds silly. But yeah, it's just a cool – I just – I don't know. I love listening to – and Bill does such a good job in his interviews and giving – just really, really kind of picks apart a question and asks very focused questions to get at some of the really interesting kind of why do you do what you do and how do you do that and what was the rationale from that and where do you see that going and all the minutia of question asking to really get it some interesting answers. Yeah.

Yeah. That was a really – so again, that's Lizard Brain Radio. So check that out. Yeah. He's done some really good shows. Chuck was on one not too long ago. I have. Yeah.

And Husam. I listened to Husam's episode. Husam did a great – yeah, that was great. Husam's a. Hussam did a great, yeah, that was great. Hussam's a cool guy, yeah. And he's done some really good stuff in herpetoculture as well. So, you know, Lizard Brain Radio is a great podcast. And then I was actually on Animals at Home Network, the herpetoculture, Project Herpetoculture. And that's Phil Leitz and i see arthur blodgett

another really really great podcast and i you know i really like the animals at home network i was trying forever to find the podcast and because i i knew phil was doing a podcast and so i'm like looking for it and trying to search project herpetoculture and it kept bringing up animals at home in my search and i'm like you're like why is this and then i'm like oh i just have to look a little closer so yeah i my interview just came out so shameless plug if you want to listen maybe maybe everybody who wants to listen to right reptile fight club keeps finding npr and it's, this is not what I asked for. Hopefully you found us and you're here. And hopefully you love NPR as well.

Animals at Home has some really great interviews. They do a great job too. That network's another good one. not to detract from the NPR family, but they're worth your time to listen to, the Project Herpetoculture guys as well as the Animals at Home podcast as well. And, I mean, the Project Herpetoculture has just started. I mean, they had Frank on there, Frank Payne. I listened to his episode. It was really good. I mean, he always makes me think.

And I really like some of his insights. We probably ought to have him back on again and get some more discussion. Every time I listen to one of these, I get the wheels churning about different topics for episodes. But, yeah, they had Philippe on there. They interviewed Philippe on the project Herpetoculture he was one of their earliest interviews I think episode number 11 was Philippe and I mean it's it's always nice to listen to the

kind of that the godfather of Herpetoculture he may have even I don't know if he coined the term but he definitely popularized it if he didn't come up with it. So another just pioneer in herpetoculture that's willing to come on podcasts and chat with people. What a wealth of information.

So that's another one to check out. You got anything you're listening to, Billy, or reading or anything? I've actually listened to all of those pretty uh, pretty much in this past week. Um, yeah, I, I'm, I love project herpeticulture.

Um, uh, and shameless plug, I'm on one of those episodes. Um, so that's been fun too. Um, but,

and, uh, yeah, animals at home network I think is, um, doing an amazing job. Um, um, I also really enjoy Amphibicast,

which is the other side of herpetoculture with the amphibians instead of the reptiles. So our friends with permeable skin. But I think Dan does a great job of... He talks with not only hobbyists, but also conservationists and scientists, too. And so those have been a lot of fun to listen. But I, yeah, completely agree with the other things that you've been saying. what book is it the Marcochet's like all of the

families of lizards or I'm getting a mix of the taxonomy but it's so much fun to flip through the lizards of the world yeah

it's like the follow up of the snakes of the world one it's so much fun I think I preferred the snakes one a little I think he's a snake guy and so the snake one was a little more yeah detailed a little more thorough and the lizard one i was like

oh it was a little bit of a letdown compared to the snake yeah it would i like i like the lizards and how um like some of the snake stuff I felt like when you're narrowing down to species by species, then it got a little repetitive and superficial. The lizard stuff, like, every sentence I feel like is amazing, but I wish it was more. Like, I wish, like, maybe not, like, this is going to be my bias, but, like, maybe not on all of, like, the slow worms

you go down to the genus level but maybe for like all of the geckos and all of the agamids and all of the veranda you you know you go i guess rams are genus but you go down to like that genus level more or something um but yeah i i think it's a lot of fun i'm definitely a little bit more of a lizard person than a snake person personally. That's cool. Yeah. There's a lot of good content out there. It's really hard to catch it all.

But, yeah, I just have an excitement for all the different kinds. I didn't really realize there was. I should have known, but I haven't gotten into any of the amphibian podcasts. But that sounds like it would be fun to listen to. We saw a few different species of the poison arrow frogs on our Costa Rica trip. So, you know, and I kept tinks for a while back in the day and had a pair of those and produced quite a few little froglets and stuff. They were a lot of fun and just shocked to realize that dart frogs can live for 20 30 years it's pretty insane and uh kept those for quite a while it's all in the setup they're not

actually that hard to take care of once you get it set up as long as you don't let your fruit fly cultures go downhill which yeah that was part of my problem with some of the times you know and but yeah they're they're a lot of fun and I loved seeing them in the wild that was really exciting to see Alfago Pimilio were the ones that you were seeing we saw I'm not too great on the scientific

names but yeah the red and blue the blue jeans what's the scientific name I just get them confused Alfago Pimilio and then we saw the gulfal duche i think some people do debate whether those are different species same with like azurius whether it's part of cantorius or not um the gulfal duche uh poison arrow frog uh um they were they were pretty neat looking and then we saw what one or two other species

out there so that was pretty neat cool yeah excellent it's so cool made me uh made me really want to see more you know they're cool cool to see them in their natural environment they're so bold they're just hopping around in the middle of the day you know no big deal don't mess with me i'm poisonous you know know, it's pretty cool. Are there great pets? So many, so many cool animals out there for sure, especially in the reptile and amphibian world.

So, yeah. Well, we'll, we'll have to have you back, Billy. It's been a lot of fun and thanks. Yeah, that'd be great.

And, um, I guess, uh, check out, uh, the Morelia pythons radio network. Uh,

I had a good time listening to Carpets and Coffee. I was on the live cast for that one, at least for the first half of it, and they were talking a lot about Aspidites. They had Brett Bender on there. Brett's a great guy. That's another one we need to have on here. Yeah, he's cool. And then, of course, talking Aspidites, blackheads, and womas.

That's always fun. Some of my favorite animals, especially now that I have blackheads under my belt. Whole two offspring. But hopefully that's still a good thing. Still counts, man. Hopefully it continues and I can have more luck. That's better than a zoo tick. Yeah, better than taking off a desert iguana at Bob's place.

At Bob's place? Sorry, Phil. Who would do such a thing? Who would do such a thing? It's so fun to bring that one up. Sorry, buddy. Phil's a great guy. Yeah, check it.

I wasn't going to say his name. I'm not sure if I'm still in trouble with Phil or not I don't think so he's pretty forgiving no I know he messaged me we're good I just don't want to be associated with you and your defamatory

comments about Phil thanks again to Eric and Owen and the rest of the NPR crew for all they do and for hosting us and allowing us to record this fun podcast. And check us out on our social media, JGJulander on Instagram and Justin Julander on Facebook. Chuck Norris Wins on Instagram and Chuck Poland on Facebook. And Reptile Fight Club. And check us out.

We will catch you again next week. Oh, what are you pointing at? Do we want to put out Let Billy Put His Deets Out There? Yeah, of course. Oh, sure. Creepers Herpeticulture is my Instagram handle. Naturally the only place I am. I don't have a

particularly big presence. Just getting started again. Cool. No worries. Bringing friends together. a particularly big presence, just getting started again. Cool. No worries. Bringing friends together. That's what it's all about. Exactly. Uh, and, uh,

with that, we will, uh, catch you again next week for another episode of reptile fight club. Keep your dukes up. Thank you. Outro Music