Other Turtle Discussion :: Legislation on Texas RES

[SpotsMama]

An article of interest:

Public Comment Period Concerning Collection of TX Turtles

The GCTTS has been keeping up on what's going on in Texas concerning the
commercial collection of our native turtles. Texas Parks & Wildlife is
having a public comment period before a proposal is voted on that will
stop or regulate the commercial collection of wild turtles. In 2006 over
90,000 Texas turtles were captured and shipped to China/Asia for their
food markets. There have not been any limitations on these collections.
One major turtle shipping business has several hundred employees that
collect from all over Texas and the numbers have not been limited.

The concern is it is unknown how long Texas turtle populations can
withstand unlimited collection over the years. The GCTTS is going to
submit comments in favor of stopping the commercial collection. This
should NOT affect the possession of a few turtles by the public as
"pets" which is good. We do realize that Red-eared sliders are plentiful
now and they can be looked upon as pests in some areas but I hate to see
any turtle collected from the wild and shipped off to be eaten. The way
they are treated in other countries before their slaughter is not very
humane either. Some allowance for RES collection may be made but at
least regulated. I wish the turtles wouldn't have to be shipped live to
other countries. Sometimes live turtles are hung from holes drilled in
their carapaces in the markets. I shutter to picture that in my mind.
I've also seen pictures of it.

We would love to have all GCTTS members mail a brief comment in favor of
1) stopping commercial collection or 2) making regulations on the
commercial collection of our Texas Turtles. Letters must be received by
them before May 24, 2007. This is so important and we need your help.
If there is not enough comments for this proposal, "Bayou" Bob
Popplewell may win and continue to plunder our Texas turtles by the
thousands every year.

Comments on the proposed rules may be made via the TPWD website or to
Robert Macdonald by email at robert.macdonald@tpwd.state.tx.us or by
regular mail to Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, 4200 Smith School
Road, Austin, TX 78744. (A sample letter follows that you may use if
you wish.)

To read the TP&W webpage about the proposal see this link:

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/newsmedia/r ... =20070409d

To read more media articles on this at my GCTTS blog go to this link:

http://www.gctts.org/drupal/node/57

You do not have to be a resident of Texas to comment about this
proposal!

thank you,

Anita Peddicord, GCTTS Secretary


If you wish to use the following letter, please copy it and sign your
name to it. Feel free to re-word it and make it your own:


Texas Parks and Wildlife
Department
Attn: Robert Macdonald
4200 Smith School Road
Austin, Texas 78744

I wish to comment about the proposal to ban the commercial collection of
turtles in our state. I think banning commercial collection is
something that needs to be done. My concern is it is unknown how long
Texas turtle populations can withstand unlimited collection over the
years. We should not wait until species are in trouble before something
is done. Other states have some degree of regulation on collection and
Texas should too.

Many foreign counties have already seriously reduced their own turtle
populations by over collection and now they want our turtles. We should
not plunder our turtles and subject them to inhumane shipping practices
and treatment during holding and sale in the markets just because people
want to eat them. Many of the turtles become ill after capture due to
stress, overcrowding, unclean conditions and dehydration. Live turtles
in the foreign food markets are piled on top of one another in crates.
Many of these turtles are crushed from the weigh. Sometimes holes are
drilled into their shell which is living, feeling bone. Twine is put
through the holes and the turtles are either tethered to something or
they are hung up in the air for live display. No live animal should be
subjected to this kind of treatment.

I do realize that Red-eared sliders, in particular, are plentiful now
and they can be looked upon as pests in some areas but I hate to see any
turtle or tortoise collected from the wild and shipped off to foreign
countries because of the way they are treated there before their
slaughter. I have seen the pictures of turtles and tortoises in these
situations. I shutter to picture that in my mind and I think most
Texans and U.S. citizens would too if they knew about these practices.
I could understand if some allowance for collection of the Red-ears for
markets here in the U.S. is made but it must be regulated. Because of
the inhumane treatment in other countries, not even Red-ears should be
shipped out of the U.S.

Please do not let people such as Bob Popplewell convince you that our
Texas turtles can withstand large scale collection. These people are
only interested in making money and can't possibly care that these
animals are being ill-treated in other countries.

Sincerely,

[pumpkinsherbet]

hey, if they've messed up their populations over there, why should we let them collect here? i may not like the practice of people eating turtles, but i can't stop it. i can on the other hand say my piece (and have every right to do my part in stopping) about them dipping into my pond after they've already depleted their own.

those practices are atrocious, i actually teared up reading about them drilling holes in the shell. it comes as very little surprise to me, though, as this is mostly china pulling this. i've caught that part right? it's to be expected considering they don't really have humane practices for any living creature, their own women included. it's common practice for the women to break their feet so they can re-set the bones to be even smaller, and i am not even going to get into what the common practice for little baby girls is *shudders*

so, yeah, i'll have to work on drafting a letter or comment. keep those monsters out of my state. out of my country, i hope this spreads.

[DavidY]

Umm, they don't do the breaking feet thing anymore. That stopped a few generations ago. The abandonment of baby girls is also not a "common" practice, but it does go on sometimes in the poorer, less educated villages. Conditions in these other countries are much more difficult than most of us could imagine. I don't think many of us could survive for more than a few weeks if not days in the conditions some of the poorer areas have. Even our slums and projects here are like high class resorts compared to some of their living conditions. Believe me, I visited China about 8 years ago.

The major cities like Beijing and Shanghai are just like New York city, or even some of the nicer modern cities of the US and Europe. They were gorgeous and very cosmopolitan. Huge glass buildings and skyscrapers with new ones being built every year. A few blocks away were well preserved historic sites and buildings. Just about everyone dressed in nice business suits and designer dresses. Still a lot of bicycles though (it was funny to see more than a few sharply dressed business women scooting through traffic on their bicycles! ). They are making a lot of money in the big cities. Even though they are still communist, capitolism has gained a strong foothold there.

But the outlying villages are another story. I only was able to see some of the bigger villages and we passed through a couple of the poorer ones. But even those weren't as bad as the really poor ones that were off the major travelling routes (which we were warned to stay away from because of highway bandits). Nevertheless, it was considered a luxury in the "big" villages just to have running water, and not necessarily clean water at that. Electricity was also not always available.

Most places in Asia do not have the proper environment to raise large cattle. Therefore they are forced to turn to other sources for protein. And that source is just about anything that moves. And since most of the animal life there are smaller in size with only so much meat on them, they wind up harvesting huge numbers of them in order to satisfy the nutritional requirements of such a large population of humans. When you have a culture that has viewed such animals as turtles, fish and snakes as food for so many generations, they become nothing more than that to you, just food to be eaten. Much like the way chickens are viewed and treated here (remember Kentucky Fried Chicken?).

So to generalize another culture and judge them is a difficult thing to do. There is always so much more to it that we don't get from the news media or our text books. The only way to really understand it is to get in there a live among the people, even for a short while. Especially in this country, it is almost impossible for us to conceive the conditions and hardships that others must live with every day.

Media hype plays a very big role in misconceptions and prejudice. Should other countries view Americans as violent and heartless because we regularly allow our youth to run rampant through our schools, randomly shooting their classmates? It's in the news every year. Surely all Americans are like that. Hmmm...something to think about.

(ok, bad example, the last shooter was Korean! but you know what I mean, right?)

[DavidY]

Oh, as far as the banning or restricting the collection of wild RES for overseas export, I'm all for that. If they want to eat all their turtles to extinction, they will have to live with the consequences for their actions and lack of foresight. But that's no reason to subject our wildlife to the same cruel treatment. If I had the fortitude to become a vegetarian, I would. I just don't have the willpower to resist a good steak!

[pumpkinsherbet]

a source told me the breaking of the feet was still in practice. however, said source has never been to china, so i will take your word for it.

more recently, though, is when i heard about china being under fire for what they do to baby girls. i think it was 5-6 years ago, around there, and it was much worse than just abandoning them.

sorry to digress. augh. yeah, they need to just leave ours alone.

[industrial_girl_2000]

a source told me the breaking of the feet was still in practice. however, said source has never been to china, so i will take your word for it.

more recently, though, is when i heard about china being under fire for what they do to baby girls. i think it was 5-6 years ago, around there, and it was much worse than just abandoning them.

sorry to digress. augh. yeah, they need to just leave ours alone.

The foot binding is voluntary in China now, and the numbers are dwindling. There was an interesting article on footbinding about 2 weeks ago on Yahoo news which also featured a coupla pictures.

It's a weird practice, but no longer forced onto the ladies in China according to the yahoo articles (thank goodness).

It is true that each Chinese couple is only allowed to give birth to one baby. Any additional children require special government permission ("license to have a baby"). They have done this to limit population growth.

[Hoooneylynn]

Have you guys ever seen the culture that uses those neck rings to stretch out their necks? OUCH!

And spots mama, was that your response to Anita Peddicord, GCTTS Secretary ? I think it was well said, well written!


lol, oh yeah and for some reason when I was reading it... I thought it said please dont let idiots such as bob ... lol

[SpotsMama]

What goes on here with the chickens (especially) and other food animals is every bit as bad as what happens to the turtles in other countries. It's kept very quiet. Cameras and journalists aren't allowed in the "factory" farms because they don't want to stir people up. For the most part, also, people don't want to know about it. It's hard for me to be too critical of other cultures until I know we've really cleaned up our own.

That said, I really don't think we should be sending our sliders overseas. In addition to the humanitarian issues it isn't sustainable. If the unfettered "collection" of our wild turtles isn't stopped, it will be with them like it is with the fish in the ocean. Who would ever have thought there would be extinction issues with codfish?

[DavidY]

Good point, SpotsMama. Every culture and society has their own bizarre and shameful practices. It's true though that some places are worse than others.

[grey goose]

That Bob Popplewell sounds like a real sweetheart. Here's an excerpt from a Time article:

Bob Popplewell is a personnel consultant (trained in psychometrics ) who owns a rattlesnake ranch 60 miles west of Dallas on I-20. There he sells freeze-dried serpents through the mail and, when not firing people for a living, runs eight 900-number phone lines through which he hopes to minister to American Dreams. His own dream is of becoming "a major player in the turtle trade." Not far away, as Mike Bryan tells us in Uneasy Rider: The Interstate Way of Knowledge (Knopf; 349 pages; $25), is Phil ("Shorty") Kendrick, a former egg deliverer who, having seen Jesus, is planning a 450-ft. model of Noah's ark. So far his kingdom extends mostly to a 14-year-old camel he drags around for cameos in Easter pageants.

If it wasn't so sad, this clown's antics would be funny, kind of like a bit player in a Fellini movie.
I hope Texan's can see him for what he truly is, nothing but a wildlife pimp.

[SpotsMama]

grey goose, we have our share of clowns in Texas, and then some.

And Jessica, no that letter's not mine but it is a good one. I'll probably take some of the ideas and write my own. The legislators catch on pretty quickly when people send "form" letters and don't give them as much weight. If you can make it sound original, it will get more respect.

[pumpkinsherbet]

SpotsMama, i do see your point... though (to me at least) it's really more of an issue of dipping into our resources. if they're going to destroy theirs, that's one thing, but coming over to collect and destroy ours is something entirely different.

i hope i made sense with that.

and there actually is acknowledgment to what goes on with our own animals. like you said, some people don't want to know. some people know and don't care. the biggest problem is inaction, though. many people believe there's not really anything they can do about it aside from boycott. that's why more people need to get off their arses and learn to raise awareness (the proper way, not the PETA fake cxn bones and blood shock tactic) for what goes on.

i'm not against slaughtering animals for food ~ it has to be done. some methods seem more inhumane than they are (like a cow having its throat slit - seems horrid but what would you say if i told you the first thing severed is their nerve so they don't feel the pain? unfortunately it is a necessity in its preparation). then there are other more inhumane practices, whether it goes to how the animal lives (veal=starved calf) or how they're killed (lobster=exoskeleton broken and boiled while still alive) and i've done my part to raise awareness for that. a small part, maybe, but one person can have the power to change the world. you'll recognise me by my movement's name ''prevention of cruelty to lobsters" mentioned quite often in seafood restaurants.

if we screw up and wind up depleting our cow, cxn, etc. supply i would most certainly be against going to other countries and picking them up from there, especially if said depletion is caused by blatant abuse.

err.. i really hope that post made sense. sorry, been a LONG day.

[SpotsMama]

Pumpkin, you make A LOT of sense. I am 100% in your camp.