My aim is to impart some of my knowledge and experience to keepers, conservation breeders, enthusiasts and even veterinarians. I have been keeping tortoises for nearly 50 years. I originally acquired my first tortoises as rescues when I was a very young lad, most are still going today. My very first tortoise was an adult Leopard rescued from a slaughter house, who kept her as a point of amusement – not for slaughter fortunately, but it was a wholly inappropriate place to keep her.
At a tender and naive age of 9 years old, one day after school, I headed off, miles by foot, with all my saved up pocket money for that year, and an old holey children’s sleeping bag. ET (Enormous Tortoise) came home with me that afternoon & lived happily with us for many years. She taught me how absolutely incredibly intelligent and gentle and engaging tortoises can be.
While I don’t want to encourage anyone who might be coming into keeping tortoises or already getting a tortoise, but if you are very dedicated, conscientious & financially able, these amazing shellkind could really do with your help.
Disclaimer: Nothing on this site is meant to be medical advice, and no responsibility will be taken for adverse outcomes, which may, or may not be due to taking advice from this website or using interventions suggested on this site. All suggestions are purely for information purposes and should be cross referenced with other sources and multiple veterinarians as part of developing a diverse and holistic knowledge base for the care of your exotic.
Preface
First off, I do not believe anyone should be keeping wild or exotic animals unless the said person or persons are active in conservation and prolongation of the species and, ideally, their surrounding natural habitat they are from. Keeping wild or exotic animals should not be something one does for fun or primarily for profit, it is a vocation and a huge responsibility, even for non-endangered species. It is a costly past time and as such, selling captive bred individuals I find acceptable, but only if the first reason and only reason is the prolongation of the species. There is however, 0 profit in it overall, so dont even start out, if profit is your goal.
Not overly pro captivity, but, I am however also being practical, a futurist, author of a future technology book, and have a degree of prescient knowledge of the macroeconomic and environmental future. Being very interested in predictive analytics and future forecasting. I have a pressing concern. My book involves technology of the future, to write this book, required that I learn a great deal about what was install for the world, economically, politically, sociopolitically, technologically and from an environmental standpoint. The forecasts I have made have not turned out looking that good.
Apart from the steady course of habitat destruction we are already on, and climate aberration, we have a societal ‘problem’ across the world that is going to make people generally poorer in the next 10 – 15 years. This wealth extraction from billions of people across the world is very much man made, and is separate from climate, or climate change, it is the real, actual threat to species in our natural environments at the present time, more than anything else. Whether it is the right thing to do, to curb global human resource consumption or not, that is not of any importance, it’s the fact that it is going to happen, and is already happening, and it is going to put enormous pressure on natural habitats.
While rewilding is a piece of the solution, most rewilding areas will come under pressure from growing human societal issues, one being war at this very moment, furthermore, these areas take decades and sometimes centuries to become fully independently functional habitats under rewilding programmes.
Starving poor & war torn peoples, or their respective leaders, cannot afford to protect the environment or have concern for it in any meaningful way really. Poaching will continue and escalate in pockets, ebbing and flowing in severity from one place to the next. War and fallout from materiel like depleted uranium shells will continue to pollute war torn areas, water, land and air. And as we know, these war torn areas are growing fast.
As such, it is paramount that some exotics be kept in captivity, with the utmost urgency being placed on diverse, responsible captivity and captive breeding, but non pressurized captive breeding, and not for profit, not that there is any profit in breeding captive exotics anyway, in the private keeper realm. It is way too expensive an undertaking to have any true profit gain.
Zoos and Governments are not going to be in a position to do all the heavy lifting for conservation, and I can assure everyone, that they won’t be able to do it on their own.
Zoos and their better cousins – Wildlife Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries are already under pressure from mounting running costs, that won’t go away. Zoos are profit driven in the first instance, and zoos are also now under attack from an ill-informed growing ilk that believe the only happy wild animals are those that are either dead, or in a faraway illusionary, often long gone, long lost ‘wild’ They have this romatic idea that there still exists this wonderful perfect place called the wild. The wild has never been wonderful or perfect, beautiful maybe but none of the previous. But particularly today, the wild is far from what it should be, or was.
So massive responsibility now falls on private keepers and enthusiasts, who are also falling fowl to the above threats zoos face, as well as sometimes ill thought out government overextension. The ‘pet trade’ is almost long gone as the major cause or even a factor at all, in wildlife decimation. Pangolins continue to be decimated, never from ‘pet trade’ Axolotls are essentially extinct in the wild, and their decimation was never from the ‘pet trade’
In fact, the Axolotls only exist now in numbers great enough to bring them back from outright extinction, because of the ‘pet trade’
The same is true of the now popular Crested Gecko, who’s continued existance is due, to, none other than the pet trade. Their greatest threat in the wild, comes from an introduced alien species of fire ant, not, the pet trade.
Though, it has to be kept in mind that, while CITES have curbed wild caught specimens for the pet trade rather successfully, the pet trade still poses a dire threat to many species around the world. So this needs to be kept in mind. But this threat now pales in comparison to the threats that will mark the end of many species in the coming decades.
These are:
Fires – Manmade & natural water droplet magnification fires
Trains, Train Tracks – blunt force hit kills and injuries
Roads – blunt force hit kills and injuries, toxic effects of tar and internal combustion engine emissions – like benzine and POP’s – Persistent Organic Pollutants – Some of which are:
aldrin ¹
chlordane ¹
dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT)¹
dieldrin¹
endrin¹
heptachlor¹
hexachlorobenzene ¹,²
mirex¹
toxaphene¹
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) ¹,²
polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins²(dioxins)
polychlorinated dibenzofurans² (furans)
1-Intentionally Produced.
2-Unintentionally Produced – Result from some industrial processes and combustion.
Electrocution from Electric Fences, poor electricity distribution lines & Railway Lines, Targeted Electrocution by Farmers and other hostile land owners
Drains & Storm Drains – once animals go down these, their death is a surety
Killing by Zoosadism or Fear of (killing animals for fun or from fear) – on the rise in many parts of the so called First World
Poisoning, by accident or deliberately, again, most often by farmers and other hostile land owners
Invasive species, often too by the irresponsible pet trade
Pollution, unintended, unacknowledged, unseen, POP’s – Persistent Organic Pollutants and, Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)
Hunting – legal and illegal hunting
Habitat destruction: road building, housing, power production & and power distribution
Dam building
Farming, land alteration, pesticides, herbicides, organophosphates and carbamates in fertilizers, hydrazine for agricultural products etc. This list is very long
Water pollution by pharmaceuticals, sewerage works / spills & industrial waste. Again POP’s – Persistent Organic Pollutants
Weather augmentation, cloud seeding, con-trailing / chemtrailing – yes this is a thing, and very much real, just like weapons testing in MOD ranges, military testing ranges & defense contractor test sites
Weapons testing areas – often done in wild areas away from human settlements
Wars, depleted uranium shell radiation and lead poisoning – plumbism and saturnism . According to the Council of Europe, more than 100 different types of Toxic chemicals are released in great number in an average war.
Habitat Augmentation – modest changing of habitat deliberately or unintentionally or indirectly – the Egyptian Tortoise is nearly extinct, largely because telephone poles were erected, quite innocently, but it allowed the perusal of birds of prey to hunt the little Egyptian Tortoise like never before. Again the Egyptian Tortoise viably survives today, only because of captivity, most viably though, and by captivity in its home / indigenous range and abroad. Resent wars all along the southern Mediterranean (Gaza had Kleinmanni too) have pretty much sealed the fate of the Egyptian Tortoise in the wild
Viruses – both natural & more virulent viruses because of environmental pressures, and now, in this new age of bio weapon & Gain of Function research – ‘non natural’ viruses!
Do you still think wild animals are better off in the ‘wild’ ?
I’m not so sure, we are making progress in some areas, but by and large, range, habitat, diversity, biomes & fully functional habitation are on a steep decline. The World Economic Forum & United Nations Environment Programme along with other large international bodies are making big plans and big changes for the coming decades. But the effects, if indeed successful, if indeed honourable, won’t come to fruition before many decades have passed. In my Prediction Analytics work, I call this period the Casper event or period. Named after Casper the Ghost, signifying, that, while Casper the ghost has all good intentions and is a friendly ghost, he is, after all, just a ghost, and… he isn’t real. Casper also means Treasure Bearer, which means, in the end, things could also turn out quite good for… for wildlife that is. A lot of meaning to unpack there, and, for another subject & website.
What happens to Wildlife in this precarious period of the few decades, when it needs or will need the most protection ever?
More than ever, exotics keepers need to be ready and mobile and empowered, and recognised for their significant contribution.
The great thing about these days is, there are so many more sophisticated products to support Herps than even 10 years ago, I will discuss most of these on the main page on my site – link below