Leaving Nature in Nature
As a reptile enthusiast, I used to love to collect the animals I found in the wild. There was something rewarding about finding the animal, successfully capturing it, and then maintaining it in a miniature version of its natural habitat. But more rewarding was being able to sit and study the animal for hours on end, just watching it peruse its glass prison, mistakenly thinking that I was giving it everything it needed.
These days I have an entirely different outlook on the same hobby. I've experienced the dark underbelly of the reptile trade, the side that thrives on money and recognition, not the love of the animals. I've seen starving cobras languishing in their cages. I've seen dehydrated vipers fresh off an airplane from Africa, destined for a freezer or backyard burn pile. I've seen perfectly healthy rattlesnakes taken from the wild, crammed in pillowcases and thrust into the pet trade, where they quickly died from stress, or contracted disease in someone's outbuilding. Outside the live animal industry, I've also seen the slow decline of animals in the wild due to new housing developments and shopping malls.
The part of Florida's population fighting to preserve its natural habitat is losing ground. Every day, more land plots are bulldozed, more swamplands are raised with fill dirt, and more pesticide run-off is seeping into our waterways. Our wildlife is perishing from loss of habitat, pollution, and human ignorance. And yet people that claim to love reptiles are taking them out of the wild, intentionally disturbing their habitat, and stressing animals that should never be handled by any human hand, and for what? For the envy of their friends......."Look what I caught!" For the almighty dollar, to sell an animal at a reptile expo. Or just the sheer thrill of it all--the handling of a venomous snake, or the final discovery of one's own "white whale" after a 5 year search.
At some point, we as humans need to look at our actions and our impact on our environment. There's big talk on the reptile forums right now about whether or not it should be lawful to collect snakes from Florida's national forests and wildlife management areas. The old me from 6 or 7 years ago might have argued that it should be allowed......that it's a sustainable action and that it's far less detrimental than all the hunters driving through the forest roads intentionally running over every snake they see. But the me from today (the wiser and kinder me) thinks Florida Fish and Wildlife SHOULD crack down on the collection of reptiles in these areas. It seems only logical to me that there should be safe havens for Florida's wildlife, somewhere outside of zoos.
It took me roughly a decade in the reptile hobby to realize where I wanted to focus my interests. I've adopted the outlook that wild animals should be left wild, and my enjoyment now comes from photographing. This has been my passion for the last 2 years, and I don't miss having captive specimens at all. It makes me MORE happy to find an animal in the wild, spend a few minutes with it taking pictures, and then leave it as it was, to do what its instincts tell it to do. I only hope there will not come a time in my lifetime that it will be impossible to find snakes in the wild. But as Florida's population explodes, and fewer people care about habitat preservation, this is a sad realization that I may be forced to endure.
The above photo is a young canebrake rattlesnake that I found crossing a dirt road in Osceola National Forest this past March. The animal froze when my car rolled up, and didn't even need to be manipulated for this picture. After taking about a dozen photographs of it stretched out on the road, I nudged its tail with my foot, and it crawled off the road into the woods.
This photo is of a young eastern diamondback rattlesnake. I found this animal on a cool day last February. It was mid afternoon, and the animal was curled up atop a trash pile on an abandoned golf course. It was clearly trying to soak up every ray of sunshine it could, so I chose not to disturb it and stop it from its natural basking behavior. The animal knew I was there, but because I didn't poke and prod at it, I was able to leave it exactly as it was once I was satisfied with my photographs.
These days I have an entirely different outlook on the same hobby. I've experienced the dark underbelly of the reptile trade, the side that thrives on money and recognition, not the love of the animals. I've seen starving cobras languishing in their cages. I've seen dehydrated vipers fresh off an airplane from Africa, destined for a freezer or backyard burn pile. I've seen perfectly healthy rattlesnakes taken from the wild, crammed in pillowcases and thrust into the pet trade, where they quickly died from stress, or contracted disease in someone's outbuilding. Outside the live animal industry, I've also seen the slow decline of animals in the wild due to new housing developments and shopping malls.
The part of Florida's population fighting to preserve its natural habitat is losing ground. Every day, more land plots are bulldozed, more swamplands are raised with fill dirt, and more pesticide run-off is seeping into our waterways. Our wildlife is perishing from loss of habitat, pollution, and human ignorance. And yet people that claim to love reptiles are taking them out of the wild, intentionally disturbing their habitat, and stressing animals that should never be handled by any human hand, and for what? For the envy of their friends......."Look what I caught!" For the almighty dollar, to sell an animal at a reptile expo. Or just the sheer thrill of it all--the handling of a venomous snake, or the final discovery of one's own "white whale" after a 5 year search.
At some point, we as humans need to look at our actions and our impact on our environment. There's big talk on the reptile forums right now about whether or not it should be lawful to collect snakes from Florida's national forests and wildlife management areas. The old me from 6 or 7 years ago might have argued that it should be allowed......that it's a sustainable action and that it's far less detrimental than all the hunters driving through the forest roads intentionally running over every snake they see. But the me from today (the wiser and kinder me) thinks Florida Fish and Wildlife SHOULD crack down on the collection of reptiles in these areas. It seems only logical to me that there should be safe havens for Florida's wildlife, somewhere outside of zoos.
It took me roughly a decade in the reptile hobby to realize where I wanted to focus my interests. I've adopted the outlook that wild animals should be left wild, and my enjoyment now comes from photographing. This has been my passion for the last 2 years, and I don't miss having captive specimens at all. It makes me MORE happy to find an animal in the wild, spend a few minutes with it taking pictures, and then leave it as it was, to do what its instincts tell it to do. I only hope there will not come a time in my lifetime that it will be impossible to find snakes in the wild. But as Florida's population explodes, and fewer people care about habitat preservation, this is a sad realization that I may be forced to endure.
The above photo is a young canebrake rattlesnake that I found crossing a dirt road in Osceola National Forest this past March. The animal froze when my car rolled up, and didn't even need to be manipulated for this picture. After taking about a dozen photographs of it stretched out on the road, I nudged its tail with my foot, and it crawled off the road into the woods.
This photo is of a young eastern diamondback rattlesnake. I found this animal on a cool day last February. It was mid afternoon, and the animal was curled up atop a trash pile on an abandoned golf course. It was clearly trying to soak up every ray of sunshine it could, so I chose not to disturb it and stop it from its natural basking behavior. The animal knew I was there, but because I didn't poke and prod at it, I was able to leave it exactly as it was once I was satisfied with my photographs.
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