I certainly was not chewing anyone out, I'm not much into cannibalism. :)Education is key to anything, without education we can never cure ignorance. Without educating people, you will never be able to help those who WILL care about what their doing and are willing to learn. So even though there are so many who won't care (and I do agree with you there since I do see it in person all the time. Numerous of us have, since there are many of us on this list who have done rescues, so we aren't blind to this point.). But just because there are a few irresponsible people out there, does not mean we should give up hope on the entire population. There have been many 'pet havers' out there that made me want to give up on educating people and think of becoming a sniper to rid the gene pool of these heartless people, but then a good animal lover comes around....and I calm down. (NO, I am not serious on the sniper thing, it's just a way to express the frustration one feels when faced with a heartless individual).No matter what you do, there are those animal cruelty people out there. Whether they have reptiles to do it to, fish, birds, or any other 'exotic' they'll still do it. If they can't get to those they'll do it to dogs and cats, and some even go to the extremes of children later on. (Sorry I don't have the statistics, but in one psychology book they have it about how children who abuse animals often move to abusing human beings later on.) It doesn't matter what they are doing it to, it's wrong. They've something messed up in their heads, or someone didn't teach them the value of a life. But we can't rid the world of people like that, we can only work around them and help those who do care, and eventually, the others might get the hint that being cruel to anything just isn't right or cool.About good shop vs. bad shop scenarios, I'll still encourage the GOOD ones. When the bad ones lose business (since that's what they care about) to the good ones, they'll have to change their ways to suit eventually, particularly if their flaws are pointed out to them. It won't always work, I know...but there is no harm in trying.It's obvious that to maintain captive-bred species, you would have had to take wc specimens to breed in captivity. For newer species, yes I'm sure that will happen on a big degree, even some leopard geckos are being taken from the wild on occasion (though pretty minimal because what is the point of taking them from the wild when there are far too many being bred every year. Heck, the demand for leos has dropped severely in the last few years...why? Because there so darn easily accessible. EVERYONE is breeding them..). Though from what I understand the majority of rehabilitated animals put back into the wild were by private breeders, not zoo's and such. I'll have to go hunting on that one since it was told to me a couple years ago.I do agree that most people who claim they'll breed to keep the species around aren't really going to help out. Since it's not helping the wild ones unless you are putting those babies into the wild again (with their compromised immunity systems, which would logically happen with CB species..). But I believe most of these people just mean 'keep the species on the planet'. Many of our endangered species of today will probably end up only existing in zoo's and private collections many years down the road. It's sad, but...just look at the Spix macaw...you don't see them anywhere except in breeding programs now and I only know of a handful of them.Countless animals die every year due to our human greed to want to keep the pretty animal that has captivated out interest. One more reason why I prefer animals to humans, we are a greedy little parasite that rape the land of what it has to offer, and only leave a scar behind that we build massive ugly polluting buildings on.No matter what we do, even if we stop exportation/importation of animals, they're all going to die because of US somehow, someday. Either from the pollutants we put in the earth (amphibians and birds will be effected pretty quickly due to that, fish as well), or because we are destroying their natural habitats to build one more mall, another building complex or cinema. Heck let's make a new city...Not that this by any means makes whatever else we do completely correct.No I don't have things to support everything I say, but I generally chose the obvious that we see with our eyes every day. Right next to my house is a nature reserve, and every year the guy who owns most of it (this is in Canada, and the guy who owns most of it is an American) sells pieces of it so some other guy can build houses on it. (which is the dumbest thing ever because it's a bog and those houses aren't built on a solid foundation...but whatever..) or so there can be another landfill, or another mall...then people complain about the raccoons and bears that are now in their back yards and raiding their garbage. They complain about the skunk that sprayed their dog on their front porch...all sorts of things. Then they kill the bear or cougar because it's coming too close to the towns...meanwhile their building a condo over where his den used to be....riiiight...who's fault is it really for the cougar coming close to home?If you didn't take away their homes...they wouldn't be invading yours.....Sorry, I ranted...(nothing new)And I know I went off on a tangent, but I just woke up...forgive me.-PC
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