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Serving the Dart Frog Community Since 2004...

Ethics in the Dart Frog Hobby - start thread
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Ethics in the Dart Frog Hobby - start thread
#81
Philsuma Wrote:The big thing, is....caution everyone against impulse buys online or at Reptile Shows.

Take time to read forums and since most new people are shy....PM the old-heads and the people with hundreds and thousands of posts. You will then get the straight scoop on stuff, if you are still confused or unsure of who is good, or what constitutes a bad frog.

I was proud to allow over 40 different froggers into my residence and personal frog room. I told them all where each and every frog came from without hesitation, if they asked....sometimes when they DIDN'T ask (you all know me by now).

Never be ashamed or have to lie about who / where you got your frogs. That's one of the quick litmus tests for Ethics. Do your due diligence. I can't imagine a viv in my house / care where that I would hide from people. One of the great joys in this hobby is the interaction both in person and on the forums. Take that away and what....you have a bunch of illegal frogs that you and your 'gangsta' friends enjoy. Not me.
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#82
Ethics.
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#83
(02-25-2011, 06:44 PM)Philsuma Wrote: But first, let's get this out of the way....and you may as well chisel it in stone:

We are ALL Hypocrites

We keep frogs in glass boxes.

We perpetuate the importation of wildlife thru our hobby practices.

Now that we got that out of the way. You cannot claim the higher moral road unless you do not keep a single frog in captivity.

But

I know what you are thinking. If that's the case...we are all "bad" and if so, everything doesn't really matter, and , and , and....

Not so fast. although there is technically one true "black and white" - legal or illegal as defined in a federal statue, there are still shades of gray. Our human social life contains all manner of shades of grey and any hobbyist pursuit does so as well. For your perusal....


The hobby ethics tree:

i. Any frog, from anywhere. No questions asked. Ever

ii. A species is in the country now, so it is absolutely fair game to acquire WC or EU imports.

iii. I realize it may have come here illegally, so I will only acquire CB offspring of that species

iv. I will acquire Legal WC frogs, but only from permitted businesses with tax ID numbers ect.

v. I will acquire only CB frogs from legally acquired species

vi. I will acquire only site / locale specific frogs from hobbyists that can back them up.

vii. I will not keep any frogs whatsoever for a variety of personal and moral reasons.

There's a lot of ethics talk, but the point we miss (but looking at join dates, most probably haven't been around long enough to see the pattern) is our hobby is just that, a hobby. We don't preserve anything, we don't appreciate what we have, and we invest next to nothing into curating the locales in the hobby already. Even if you pick VI, the ethics question goes way beyond just the legality of a locale and encompasses how we manage the frogs we have. Pick your favorite frog in that legacy frog thread, and you'll see a history of frogging travesties where the hobby has simply abandoned older locales to move on to the next one - always the latest and greatest. Breed for a few years, move on to the next locale. Rinse, repeat. Then when we look back in 10 years all those locales are gone, and if any remain, the stock is so limited there is really no hope for long term preservation in the hobby. I've seen seasoned hobbyists make horrific choices on relabeling animals without locale data simply by phenotype in the True Sip fiasco, completely mismanaging these imports, then moving on to large obligates as the next shiny object. 

We have a proven history of poor locale management choices that litter our hobby over the past 30 years, and until we fix that behavior, we really aren't deserving of ANY new locale, even the legal ones.
Jim from Austin | https://www.oneillscrossing.com/dart-frogs/
fantastica nominant | summersi | reticulata | A barbotini
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#84
Here's the ONLY thing we can do now -to move forward can claim any sort of progress:

..." there is technically one true "black and white" - legal or illegal as defined in a federal statue"

In my @ 14 years of keeping Dart Frogs, I have yet to read or even hear about a comprehensive guide to what is legal or illegal. I even went to Georgetown law conference in the spring of 2014 and listen to USFW and lawyers and others opine and yet NOTHING even close to something useful was offered!

All the BS armchair lawyering on DB is silly too. Nobody knows what's going on.
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