We’ve been putting a lot of time into trying to keep people informed about the confusing and unworkable mess the EPS has snowballed into recently. A lot of debate has gone back and forth across these forums and between various people I’ve spoken to and several topics seem to keep cropping up.

Could this mess have been avoided?
What is likely to actually happen?
What will happen to the animals that are seized under the new laws?
Can anything be done to stop it getting so far out of hand?

After much personal research, I’ve compiled some of my opinions and ideas in the hopes that others may find them useful in understanding the situation, the reality of what could happen without scare-mongering and if there is any chance of light at the end of the tunnel.

1. Could this mess have been avoided?

The law itself couldn’t have been avoided. The law was passed in the EU many years ago and as an EU member state, it was only a matter of time before Britain was brought into line with the rest of Europe.

DEFRA aren’t responsible for creating these laws but are responsible for serious mistakes in their previous interpretation and implementation.
It was these mistakes that meant the animals could still be legally owned and traded within the UK without appropriate documentation and are thus the direct cause of the impossible situation previously legal keepers have now been placed in.

It seems convenient that they have now avoided the consequences of this by passing off the responsibility of managing the new licensing laws to another regulatory body, Natural England.

2. What is likely to actually happen?

Natural England and DEFRA are primarily legislative and regulatory bodies and as such are unlikely to actively pursue the enforcement of this legislation. The complete lack of publicised information and the similar lack of any attempt to inform any relevant keepers, organisations or authorities means that the police are likely to be poorly informed about the issue and lack the knowledge to identify the animals in question. The real threat to the private keepers affected is that this piece of mishandled legislation can become a powerful weapon in the arsenal of the opposition.

Many animal rights organisations have publicly stated they want to ‘liberate’ all captive animals, destroying or releasing all pets to suffer a
slow death in the wild. The RSPCA has publicly stated it considers reptiles to be unsuitable pets (based on reports containing outright fictitious information). Because the keepers don’t know they are in violation of this unknown law, the RSPCA can perform an inspection and use it as reason to seize the animals and launch one of their beloved high profile prosecutions against the keeper. Considering the ownership of such animals can warrant a fine of £5000 and six months in prison, this is a very serious concern.

Government legislators are not the immediate problem, they are only the cause. They have simply thrown open the door for the original conservation intentions of this legislation to be twisted and corrupted into a weapon by the anti animal keeping groups that are trying to destroy the hobby.

3. What will happen to the animals that are seized under the new laws?

Either nobody knows or nobody will admit what will happen to them. There is an exception to the prohibition of transportation for purposes of
investigating if a crime has been committed in regards to the EPS. However, it is still illegal to possess these animals. Even if the ‘investigator’ could legally hold the animal for the duration of the investigation, he would not be able to hold the animal afterwards. The only people likely to have the legal power to possess the animals are DEFRA and/or Natural England.

Estimates from sources within the industry suggest that as many as five million animals could be affected by this legislation, with well over ninety percent of those lacking documentary proof of legal origin. DEFRA and Natural England lack the resources and facilities to hold these animals. Even if zoos can obtain licences, all the zoos in the country combined could only house a tiny percentage of these animals. As it is illegal for anybody else to possess these animals except for museums with blanket licences for dead specimens, the only remaining possibility is that animals seized will be killed and the majority of their remains destroyed.

A cull of this scale has never taken place within private pet keeping before now. If this information was common knowledge it would no doubt cause more than a ripple in public opinion. With this in mind, it isn’t surprising that the entire issue has been kept quiet and out of the public eye until now.

4. Can anything be done to stop it getting so far out of hand?

Well, we’re trying but it remains to be seen if our concerns will garner any response from those in a position to make a difference. If nothing is done and the implementation of this legislation is pushed forward in its current state, I see only chaos. As soon as someone is prosecuted under this legislation, a precedent will be set and then the avalanche will begin. That will raise public awareness more than we ever could and the potential backlash will reflect very badly on those who were responsible for bringing it into force. That will still pale in comparison to the effects on the keepers it will be harming.

The crux of the problem comes down to the way the licensing has been designed and implemented by DEFRA and Natural England. They have made it impossible for the average private keeper to obtain a licence for a specimen that requires one because its origin can not be proven. This means they have given no way out. The keeper can not legally possess, transport, or give away their animals. Therefore, they can not legally take it to a vet and the vet can not legally take possession of a live specimen or its remains without first acquiring a specimen specific licence. It is illegal and utterly reprehensible to even consider releasing them into the wild in the UK. Therefore, their only legal option is to kill their animal themselves because as a foreign species in a non-native habitat, they are not afforded any protection against harm. Personally, I think Natural England telling hundreds of thousands of people that they have to kill their own pets to avoid prosecution is sickening.

I’ve been over the facts and the numbers every way I can think of and I’ve not been able to come up with any way that the animals already in the country could be effectively managed under the legislative implementation as it currently stands. There are simply too many of them to police and fear will drive their keepers underground, even creating a black market for these animals within the extant population. This seems counter-productive to the aims of legislation. The aim is to stop the destruction of habitat and wild populations and the only way to do this is through tighter control of imports and trafficking.

The captive animals already within this country will have no effect on conservation efforts in the wild. As such, the only reasonable way to
avoid the complications ahead would be to licence the animals that are already in captive care within the UK prior to the date these new
changes come into full force on November 21st 2007. The vast majority of these animals were either captive bred or legally acquired imports but the lack of evidence is the complication. This situation was caused by DEFRA’s mistaken lack of regulation of these species and it is only DEFRA and Natural England who have the power to rectify the situation. A ‘Legacy Licence’ would assume animals in the UK prior to the specified date were captive bred or legally acquired, removing the unfair criminal status that is being inflicted upon their owners. The enforcement of the legislation could then be better focused on preventing illegal imports and smuggling supplying the pet trade and hence protecting the wild populations, which is what it was originally intended to do.

A ‘Legacy Licence’ would also allow captive breeders in the UK to document their existing animals without fear of reprisal so
that proof of origin documents could start to be used, detailing the parents and previous generations of the captive breeding lines so that the
documentary evidence requirements of the new laws could be fulfilled from this point onwards. It is my opinion that this is the only practical way forwards that can appease as many people as possible and not require the unwarranted destruction of potentially millions of perfectly healthy animals in captive care.

Some of us have been trying to raise awareness about this issue and how far reaching its effects could be. We have no direct influence of the policy of those with the power in this situation but by raising awareness to promote a public response we hope to make DEFRA and Natural England understand the true scale of the problem and address it in some way rather than simply ignoring it. It appears it isn’t just keepers that bury their head in the sand from time to time.

__________________
-Oni


2.4 E. macularius, 1.2 H. caudicinctus, 1.0 R. ciliatus
0.2.1 A. fragilis, 1.1 T. merianae, 1.0 V. niloticus ittibittius
3.4 P. guttattus, 1.0 P. guttatus X E. climacophora, 1.0 P. o. rossalini, 1.0 P. o. lindheimeri, 0.1 E. anomala
1.2 Lamprophis spp, 1.0 L. g. nigritus, 0.1 L. g. californiae
1.2 E. c. maurus, 1.1 E. c. loveridgei, 0.1 E. conicus
1.4 P. regius, 1.1 A. maculosa, 1.0 H. n. nasicus