WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 (UPI) — Pet snake owners say the U.S. government’s proposal to ban the importation and interstate transportation of nine species of foreign snakes goes too far.
In seeking the ban, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the animals, if freed, posed a serious risk to native ecosystems across the southern United States, The New York Times reported Monday.
When the government moved to ban trade in the snakes, including boas, anacondas and pythons, it argued they met the legal criteria for being both injurious and invasive.
But it is the first time the government has tried to list animals so widely held as pets by an estimated 1 million Americans.
Trade in these species is big business, bringing in more than $100 million annually, and specimens with rare or unusual colors can fetch as much as $75,000.
“It is a joke,” Jeremy Stone of Linton, Utah, said of the science behind the government’s decision.
Stone, who makes his living breeding snakes with genetic mutations such as albinism that make them attractive to buyers, says his snakes, raised in captivity, pose no threat.
The government regulations, which do not prevent breeding and owning but would prevent transportation across state lines, would ruin his business and thousands like it, he said.
“The reptile industry would suffer a crushing blow, over something that does not make sense,” he said.
Thomas Strickland, assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, said the government would push for approval of the regulations by next summer.
Like other invasive species, snakes are a real and growing problem, he said.
“You are not dealing with hamsters here,” he said. “I was down in the Everglades, and it took four people to hold a 19-foot Burmese python. These things wreak havoc.”