This gives reefing a bad image

pdxmonkeyboy · Oct 2, 2017

Fishmanz said:
Well it was a vendor that owns reefers cove, Jorge Vasquez. Next trade show thank him and say hi!

it was a vendor that was busted? wow! that is ballsy and stupid.

Newb73 · Oct 2, 2017

pdxmonkeyboy said:
Your comment was "... they probably end up dead in the hands of non-reef enthusiasts"

Thus insinuating that the people seizing them have no idea what they are doing.

I never said that USFW officers were experts in wildlife care, they are not, they are law enforcement officers. There ARE however PLENTY of experts and biologists at the USFW service. I'm sorry that your "job search" didn't turn up a wealth of information concerning the education and expertise of USFW staff.

But if you want to believe that confiscated wildlife end up in the hands that people that don't know anything about them then so be it.

I however have a master's degree in wildlife science and spent the first 5 years of my career working with wildlife enforcement officials and conservation groups throughout central Asia. I can assure you that these folks take both illegal harvesting and animal welfare VERY seriously.

To suggest that they are just willy nilly with their care is simply naive.

I also didn't mean for my quip to turn into an exploration of wild life agent credentials (obvious sarcastic quip about how having a masters in "wild life science" must have been so hard that it ranks up their with physics and MD...not!!! (aside)).

So we hijacked the thread which was supposed to be about illegal smuggling. Apologies for that.

cmcoker · Oct 2, 2017

I worked at an animal ER in Florida. The local fish and wildlife guys would bring us injured animals, or ones that needed to be held until they could be transported to the appropriate facility, rehab, etc

They brought us birds of prey, injured grebes ( iirc, they would mistake pooled water in a parking lot for a pond and crash land on the pavement), one time they brought in a fawn that someone was trying to keep as a pet. We would not take rabies prone species however, not sure where they took the bats, skunks, and racoons..

Basically, they outsource the appropriate professionals to care for the animals they seize. They confiscate all types of wildlife, there is no way every field officer can be an expert on everything.

mort · Oct 2, 2017

This happened in the uk a few years ago. A guy was caught with loads of endangered corals in his warehouse but it was the tip of the iceberg really. They simply imported stuff on the bottom of boxes of soft corals or listed as something else (because when a coral is closed up and pee'd of in a bag half covered in newspaper it can be hard to tell exactly what it is, especially when they need to check dozens of corals quickly).
think they got a pitiful 6 month sentence.