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I am in almost all cases against laws that protect individual animals. Joe blows kid should be able to waddle into an abandoned lot, pick up a toad, and bring it home. He should also be able to build a bug collection and take home that funny skull he stumbles on in the woods.
Really...it is all about habitat protection and encouraging instead of criminalizing interacting with nature.
In some areas there may be rules against picking up skulls and bones due to the fact that they add nutrients to the ecosystem but that would only be in very protected areas. Bringing home a toad might be fine for the kid, usually not for the toad. If the toad is an endangered species there is a very good reason for it not to be legal. Habitat protection is important but without wildlfie it will not be an ecosystem.
I would not take a skull out of a national park. We probably have two dozen skulls at home and our grandchildren are way past the waddling and interested in bugs stage. We just do not do it where it is not appropiate to do so, in a park leave the skull for the next hundred people to enjoy too.
PAhippo: you'd be surprised. For example-technically in Washington the capture of any nongame species requires a scientific collecting permit. Fortunately these laws are often not enforced-but kids have gotten tickets for catching bullfrog tadpoles before. Most protected land has strict laws against harm of wildlife or plants...of course what is harm? Is a kid harming a tree by climbing it? Jury is out on that one.
But-classic methods of interacting with nature-such as hunting and fishing, are no different. If anything fishing is much more destructive since non-native species are often stocked to encourage fishing. Not to mention snagged lures and monofilament line(I love fishing as much as the next-and am excited Eagle Claw announced biodegradable mono but I kinda doubt it will be adopted on a wide scale).
badlander: The common public misconception is that recreational collecting can decimate a species with no commercial value. If there are 100 toads in an area one year, and they breed and produce 100000 babies and providing no great changes to the habitat happen you should go back next year and find about 100 toads. The overproduction all died for various reasons(starvation, disease, exposure, trampling etc.).
I think the benefit to the kids learning about said toad is worth the life of the toad-even if it does die because the kid took it home. For a child to be able to closely observe such an animal and figure out how to keep it alive is an invaluable educational experience.
In a high traffic charismatic area I can understand a more leave no trace sort of ethic. But to say this is for conservation would be to fool oneself.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bornincali
Ok, now that I have your attention.
I am in almost all cases against laws that protect individual animals. Joe blows kid should be able to waddle into an abandoned lot, pick up a toad, and bring it home. He should also be able to build a bug collection and take home that funny skull he stumbles on in the woods.
Really...it is all about habitat protection and encouraging instead of criminalizing interacting with nature.
Thoughts?
What species of toad?
If it isn't an E/T/SC species, and it isn't collected from a protected area, most states I've reviewed regs by have an allowance for one to a few animals being kept as pets by minors (and often even as adults). This, of course, does not allow commerce in them.
timberline: WA is one that stands out-I'm sure their are others.
Most other states require the purchase of either a fishing or a hunting license-which I suppose means minors would be ok without one so long as their guardian had a license. Again doubt anyone is being a stickler for this.
Many public lands have blanket laws that protect wildlife except for game species. National forests etc. So it is completely legal and unavoidable to leave national forest land with some smooshed grasshoppers on your windshield or perhaps a toad on your tire, but technically illegal to have some in a container.
In many states many organisms also receive Species of Special concern listing. The only legal teeth this sort of listing has is requiring scientists to get additional permits before they can study them and prohibiting any recreational folk from touching them. Species of Special Concern have no habitat protection.
I wouldn't want anyone picking up animals in todays importing dangerous animals as pets! Too many turn them loose in the wild when people tired of them. A friend 10 years ago almost Died from picking up what they thought was a weird toad! Yellow & Black in color. Turned out it was a Poison Dart Toad from South America or some such place! Some one imported as a pet got tired of turned loose! Turtles use to be the rage when I was a kid till kids got sick & died from Salmonella.
LEAVE the Wild Life in the Wild! See something strange tell some one that knows how to deal with it. Laws protect Animals & People!
I wouldn't want anyone picking up animals in todays importing dangerous animals as pets! Too many turn them loose in the wild when people tired of them. A friend 10 years ago almost Died from picking up what they thought was a weird toad! Yellow & Black in color. Turned out it was a Poison Dart Toad from South America or some such place! Some one imported as a pet got tired of turned loose! Turtles use to be the rage when I was a kid till kids got sick & died from Salmonella.
LEAVE the Wild Life in the Wild! See something strange tell some one that knows how to deal with it. Laws protect Animals & People!
Poison dart frogs are only poison if in their natural environment, whereas the plants and insects they sit upon and eat, supply them with the toxins that are then utilized by their bodies in special skin cells.
After a few weeks in captivity, they are no longer poisonous. By the time they have passed through customs and then shipped to a pet shop, they are benign.
Not this one! So that's Bull! My gf spend 10 days in ICU
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