U.K. Ban on newts

This article sends me into a state of panic. The immediate knee jerk reaction is an import ban. I think there are two issues here. Firstly, the great work serious amphibian keepers do with their stock and their unparalleled knowledge and expertise gained from their hobby and secondly, the disgraceful risks to wild life and our hobby caused by people who still find it acceptable to capture wild animals and distribute them via some (presumably) financial transaction. The people who push for import bans should more than anything work alongside the very people who know and understand these animals. Use!
 
Sooner we take action the better and those proposed measures do nothing about bd and bsal already existing within the hobby. We need cheap and reliable testing for infection , licencing of breeders who can guarantee non infected animals. The hobby can also act as a pathway for infecting local wild life, we need to start treating waste water, preventing escapees who may be infected, I don't know a single big keeper who hasn't had animals escape, even to the extent of having breeding colonies living rough in their surrounding area. We need to get organised, if we all love our phibs we can't just ignore these problems as they are not going to be around for much longer. UK alpines are already infected with bd, they are being collected and dropped into wholesale, they will be available in shops near you soon, this needs to stop.....
 
While large scale collecting is undesirable in general [I would encourage OVERharvest of introduced populations], I would suggest that the bigger issues are escapes/releases, and discharge of untreated waste water. Release to the wild is usually illegal already, while uncaptured escapes are also potentially illegal. Municipal waste water should already be collected and sanitized, but when water or cage waste are dumped outdoors without treatment, there's an obvious hazard. So there are two main issues - 1) enforcement of existing laws; there's no point in having more if they'll just be ignored as well, 2) proper ethics of keepers - ensure waste is treated (UV sterilization, sodium hypochlorite bleach, incineration/heat treatment, use of suitable municipal waste sanitation); prevent escapes and releases, ensure recapture. While escapes do happen, additional security is required. Outdoor terraria and ponds without secondary or tertiary containment are irresponsible.

Of course, apart from there being laws already, much of this is moot because the cat is out of the bag and legislators are going to react accordingly.
 
schmiggle said:
I just hope the UK doesn't end up with a ban like we do...
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I hope it does as a temporary measure until we can manage bd and bsal within our hobby. Sticking our heads in the sand is not going to help.
 
There's already a legal framework in place to ban species from import into the EU because they're likely to cause damage to wild species- imports of American bullfrogs and red-eared turtles have been stopped in this way already.

It would be relatively easy to add some or all Asian caudate species to this, and my guess is that this is the most likely outcome.

As I understand it, it would be against EU trade laws to prevent import/export between EU countries (including the UK), and so a blanket ban on import into the UK (or any other European country) seems unlikely.
 
The British collected Alpines have been for sale at my local herp shop for the last two years at least, they sell lots of them for £17.95 each! From what I can find out its perfectly legal as things stand.
I'm not anti pet trade, or even anti wild caught herps, but the way things are done at the moment is wrong. Hopefully, the import ban should be a wake up call to those of us who breed some of the banned species to pull together and take a look what we have between us. Apart from Pachytriton, all the common import species are bred in captivity at the moment, but only sporadically, so they could easily fade away if we're not careful
 
xxianxx said:
I hope it does as a temporary measure until we can manage bd and bsal within our hobby. Sticking our heads in the sand is not going to help.
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I agree with you. We need to be proactive.
A temporary ban, with all the paper work and legislation in place, will be the thin edge. Once legislation is in place, it'll stay. Why wouldn't it?
 
Blackbun said:
I agree with you. We need to be proactive.
A temporary ban, with all the paper work and legislation in place, will be the thin edge. Once legislation is in place, it'll stay. Why wouldn't it?
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This is a real danger, there are a number of organisations such as PETA, APA and RSPCA who will be rubbing their hands at the opportunity of destroying our hobby. On the plus side a ban on the importation of WC animals is something I would personally welcome.
 
Chinadog said:
Thritish collected Alpines have been for sale at my local herp shop for the last two years at least, they sell lots of them for £17.95 each! From what I can find out its perfectly legal as things stand.
I'm not anti pet trade, or even anti wild caught herps, but the way things are done at the moment is wrong. Hopefully, the import ban should be a wake up call to those of us who breed some of the banned species to pull together and take a look what we have between us. Apart from Pachytriton, all the common import species are bred in captivity at the moment, but only sporadically, so they could easily fade away if we're not careful
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The sale of UK WC non native species appears to be legal but it also masks the sale of WC EU alpines. I deal with aquatic wholesalers weekly, they quite openly say the get WC EU newts which I doubt is legal. There is nothing we can't breed if we put the time, effort and expense into. One benefit of a ban on wc imports would be to encourage UK cb, you yourself know how much you can get for a cfbn, less than a tenner after months of work and a whole lot of love, the reason is that wholesalers sell WC for £1.99, it depresses the price to such an extent that nobody will attempt to breed them commercially here. This goes for numerous species which breed readily, captive farmed hymenichorus and xenopus go for less than a pound, adult alpines a couple of pounds, croc newts around ten pounds. An import ban could potentially kick start cb .
 
I think the most reasonable request is that all animals that transfer between boundries must have a health certificate from a qualified vet that states they have been tested free of Bsal. High risk countries without qualified vets should probably be barred from importation until conditions improve.

However, the newt hobby is about as obscure as it gets and therefore of no real interest to politicians... easiest answer is ban it, collection the donations from animal rights organizations, and call it day.. win, win.
 
I think a registration of species in captivity and a strict testing regime would be a great idea.
For our hobby
 
mr cyclone said:
I think a registration of species in captivity and a strict testing regime would be a great idea.
For our hobby
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I think so to, is this ban onely for WC or for CB to?here in Europese we have a studbook.
It's for all newt and salamander specie's, WC and CB.

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xxianxx said:
The sale of UK WC non native species appears to be legal but it also masks the sale of WC EU alpines. I deal with aquatic wholesalers weekly, they quite openly say the get WC EU newts which I doubt is legal. There is nothing we can't breed if we put the time, effort and expense into. One benefit of a ban on wc imports would be to encourage UK cb, you yourself know how much you can get for a cfbn, less than a tenner after months of work and a whole lot of love, the reason is that wholesalers sell WC for £1.99, it depresses the price to such an extent that nobody will attempt to breed them commercially here. This goes for numerous species which breed readily, captive farmed hymenichorus and xenopus go for less than a pound, adult alpines a couple of pounds, croc newts around ten pounds. An import ban could potentially kick start cb .
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That's what I'm hoping. I always think of the ban on European tortoises, look what that did to the hobby. There was a period where torts were impossible to find, but nowadays pretty much all European species are produced in captivity in large numbers for a reasonable price.
Its possible to produce CB Cynops in large quantitys at prices comparable to the WC imports by delaying metamorphosis until they are fully grown. This means they can be raised on pellets in the water their whole lives. The Japanese raise them this way in laborotorys, I looked into doing it a while back. In the end I didn't have the heart to supply pet store fodder, but if there's any kind of demand after the ban I might re-read the papers and think about it again.

Here's the link. http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2108/zsj.29.293?journalCode=jzoo&
 
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In the good old days, when I was a lad in the UK, it was ok to keep wild caught British finches. Despite the doom and gloom a ban didn't wreck the hobby, it improved it. Avicultureists became specialists in their chosen species. Stock improved and went up in value which meant only those people who took their hobby very seriously were prepared to pay high prices and so it cut out those people who only kept the bird because it was pretty. Then there were other bans and the masses of waxbills and spice finches, which were a few pounds a pair, and totally freaked outin their over stocked cages, became rarer to find on the high street but there were the specialists who kept them. It wasn't that long ago you could pick up a pair of wild caught imported Pekin robins for £45. Then the ban came and now instead of seeing ten, poor conditioned, nonclimatised pairs anxiously fluttering about in a store cage you now go to a specialist and pay nearer £400 for stock more suited to avicultural conditions.
 
Yep, that's almost word for word how the tortoise ban panned out, apart from the fluttering bit, that is! At the moment the low value of the Chinese imports means they are treated as disposable commodities to be tossed into tropical fishtanks to either fade away in there or escape and die under the sofa. people seem disgusted at the Chinese for sealing them alive into key rings, but I bet far more have died a long lingering death at importers, wholesalers or petstores in Europe and the USA.
 
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Key rings? You have got to be kidding me! That says so much about the way some people value life. What hope is there for getting these people to protect habitats etc?
Incidentally, my first two pets were tortoises (some Greek species if I recall correctly). The pair cost my dad a fiver. Both ran away within a few weeks! I remember thinking then, as a ten year old, that tortoises were not for the clueless.
 
Difference between food and pets are the numbers involved. The pet trade is tiny compared to the skins and food trades. Actually a lot of herps in the pet trade were actually collected as food/skins initially.

Nonetheless, I don't think anyone really enjoyed the mass imports of species sold to clueless people.

Big question is this... since we really want to do something that will protect wildlife, when is the ban on breeding of humans to take place?
 
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