[GarterGuy]

Yeh, we just had the direrctor of the Fish and Boat commission (who regs. herps in PA) speak at my herp club last week going over the changes to the regs. that went into affect this year. A lot of it is good stuff and made to protect threatened species here, like the box turtle and timber rattlesnake. We (the herp keeping community in general and the herp club specifically) had a hand in what got done with the regs. If you love the hobby and the critters, make sure that you're heard. They said that when they were working on the regs. they had no idea the number of people there were in the herp keeping community...they actually got over 1.5K letters sent to them about the upcoming changes.
Some of the changes that really affected stuff was that you can only have 1 native herp in your possession and if you had more last year, you need to get permits to have those additional animals. They also did some clarafication on "native" animals to not affect different colour morphs and subspecies that are not from the state. Only bad thing is, if it is a colour morph of a subspecies or species from PA, it must be a captive bred animals. Example, you couldn't have an albino eastern gartersnake (T.s.sirtalis) unless you had paper work saying it came from a breeder. Also, you can't buy Fla. blue easterns either, unless they're captive bred (I actually asked him that question, since I was possibly looking to get some). Like Rhea said, it's really hard for them to regulate this stuff (they're not going house to house looking for herps), but they did say if they "hear" of someone who has a large collection of herps, they may come a knocking. Me, I'll follow the regs. and make sure I can legally keep all my critters.
Roy