People against wild caught Garters

[bsol]

yeah no matter which way the door swings. Whether your catching a garter(or whatever) and keeping it or clearing some forest destroying its home, that animal is displaced. Its not a bad thing, its just the selective process...
Giving a garter a chance at life by releasing it in another location free of human interaction just means that a toad/frog/worm may be in danger of becoming that snakes meal.
We fall short of thinking through things when we have the best intention of 1 animal in mind. You might be doing right by that garter, but screwing the toad in the mean time! The environment you realse the garter in is now either 1 up by way of predator in the food chain, or 1 down.
It is what it is. If no animal(including us) fell victim to premature death, then imagine how life would work.
If we take, and this might be a bad example and spark a crazy debate, war for example; people obviously die during war time. Whether it be just or not. Its just natural selection. Its sad, but again it is what it is! Got to look at it as a whole!

[jamromhem]

I wouldn't mind a few radix LOL I would have to convince the wife of it though :P.. Think I might want to get through a few seasons with my checkered first to make sure I am not getting over whelmed by inexperience.

I am trying to figure out the brumation thing now to get ready for when it is time.

I have a minifridge I don't use for anything but storing her food.. Might turn it on the highest temp setting and use it making sure I open the door daily to cycle the air.. I dunno. I'll read more and try to get ideas.

[DavidD]

My current garters (easterns) are all rescues. They both hav ebaboes every year. Every year I love havign baby garters around. (I have 14 now)

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

can I ask... what are ebaboes????????

[wolfpacksved]

hav ebaboes = have babies

[jitami]

can I ask... what are ebaboes????????

LOL I think I can translate

They both hav ebaboes every year.

They both have babies every year

[jamromhem]

lol typos at it's worst :P

[snickersnake]

The reason I did it was because I had already relocated this snake twice (well, it looked and acted like the same snake). Each time we mow, I check the lawn for snakes and toads so that I can move them. We have a lot of garters in our clippings pile in the field and in our large garden.

This little garter kept going out to the middle of our patio and each time I picked her up, she was almost friendly (my vet was surprised, too). She was very little and when I caught her a 3rd time, I was really worried that she would get eaten by something, or mowed. Although I hadn't kept a garter in 10 years, I had had garters much of my life - gifts from friends and purchased from pet stores. I had most of the stuff to keep her.

I felt a little guilty - I still do - about keeping her but I was worried about her. I didn't know that there were people who were acting the way you describe. I guess I've just been lucky to have very helpful people answer my questions.

[TheSnakeGuy1]

I don't like it when people take fully grown wild animlas into captivity, when they been wild there whole life. I don't mind if they take something out of the wild if its younger than 1 month. I just caught a week old garter, 5 inches long! So im trying to get it to eat for me and if it does im going to tame her down and domesticate her.
-Alex

[Steven@HumboldtHerps]

I don't like it when people take fully grown wild animlas into captivity, when they been wild there whole life.

I agree with this statement. #1) Adults are set in their ways. For example, they may have grown up adopting a selective diet, and may be more difficult to feed. Also, the longer a snake has spent time in the wild, the more chance it has had of acquiring parasites. (Okay, those are "captive" reasons) #2) The odds of a neonate snake being eaten by a natural predator is still quite high, whereas larger adults have undergone many trials in evading predators; mature adults who have gathered experience in the evasion of predators are more likely to continue to do so, and thus be more likely to create more successive and healthier offspring; I especially do not agree with the collecting of gravid specimens.

This is one of those classic threads where some of us have to agree to disagree.

All 4 of my garters are wild-caught natives; these can not be purchased within the state of California, but there is a small bag limit with a fishing license. My native snakes collection is used in several presentations I hold each year at the HSU Natural History Museum, the College of the Redwoods, and at various other schools. I am always inspired when I can make a difference in educating the masses about these animals. I often have to play the hypocrite in my lectures about not catching these animals and keeping them in captivity, and this is the main reason why: Of the many families that visit these events, the most common reference to keeping these snakes in captivity involves ruthless, young children bringing their "garden snakes" or "striped racers" home and putting them in a cardboard box or some other inappropriate enclosure and feeding them mealworms, etc. I let the adults know that garters have special habitat and care requirements, and make their care sound more difficult than it usually is. Of course I am pretty OCD when it comes to making their enclosures look like their native habitat (I don't use plastic rocks and plants, and I use [sterilized] native substrate). Sooo.... I use my animals to educate. I mean, not many people are going to go to an educational lecture about native garters if all you have to show them are a bunch of posters and pictures in books. Only the hardcore naturalists or herpetoculturists are going to hit the PowerPoint (only) presentation. I want to hit the masses, and many of "them", "they" that rarely READ anything of value, want to see a live snake!

Aside from my endeavors with HumboldtHerps, I am also a Biology major engaged in local herp studies. In studies that cover dietary preferences, growth rates, genetics, etc. captive specimens are often a requirement. Please note, that many wildlife studies (professionally funded scientific endeavors) involve the capture, death, and dissection of numerous individuals. I read one doctorate study on Pituophis where over 200 specimens where killed just to see what the dietary trends were... To me, this is an unfortunate and excessive amount, yet this stuff happens all the time.

I really appreciate Stefan-A's continual defense of wild-caughts in this and other threads; in the big picture of things, his view is noble, responsible, and yes, there is never any guarantee that we will ever really know what effect we have on the local populations when we collect wild specimens...
We may just be another predator in the scheme of things (that's not a justification either, since humans have a mind that can choose to do otherwise). Tsk, tsk... What else to say on this most stimulating argument...

Have a great weekend! (That works)

Steven K.