background preloader

Protection des Reptiles / Reptiles Protection

Facebook Twitter

In Nederland

Opinion: Florida’s Great Snake Hunt Is a Cheap Stunt. Editor's note: Bryan Christy is a contributing writer for National Geographic and author of The Lizard King: The True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers.

Opinion: Florida’s Great Snake Hunt Is a Cheap Stunt

The kickoff event for Python Challenge 2013, Florida's monthlong snake-killing tournament, was catered. "We've got snakehead fish tacos," chef David Pantone tells me, pinching his fingers into the okay sign chefs use to signal perfection. "It's an amazing, smooth white fish. It's my new favorite fish in the world," Pantone says of the invasive species native to China. Pantone, who is dean of Lincoln Culinary Institute of West Palm Beach, Florida, stands behind a foldout table set up beside the Python Challenge 2013 registration desk. "We've got caiman, which is like a big alligator. It's useful to turn wildlife problems into something else, such as a meal. Rules of the Game I took the training course and finished in under two minutes. I registered as a python hunter but I did not really intend to hunt pythons.

Reptiles. Reptiles are air-breathing, cold-blooded vertebrates that have scaly bodies rather than hair or feathers; most reptile species are egg-laying, though certain “squamates” — lizards, snakes and worm-lizards — give birth to live young.

Reptiles

The earliest reptile is usually said to have been Hylonomus (a so-called "forest mouse"), which lived about 315 million years ago and resembled contemporary lizards. "Reptile" is an ambiguous category: It usually refers to lizards, snakes, turtles, alligators and crocodiles, but to be genetically consistent should also include birds, since crocodilians are more closely related to birds than to lizards, snakes or turtles. Turtles are so genetically distinct — they’re the sole surviving member of the Anapsid branch of the evolutionary tree — that many scientists recommend treating them as their own class (Chelonia) on an equal footing with birds, mammals, amphibians, fish and reptiles. Some scientists would also elevate crocodilians to the class level. Herping California's Channel Islands. California's Island Night Lizard Makes Comeback. ReptileChannel.com, February 4, 2013 California's Island Night Lizard Makes Comeback After more than 35 years, USFWS proposes removal of Xantusia riversiana from Endangered Species List.

California's Island Night Lizard Makes Comeback

The island night lizard (Xantusia riversiana), native only to the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California, has enjoyed such a recovery to its population that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to remove the reptile from the list of species protected under the Endangered Species Act. The lizard was first added to the list of endangered species in 1977, when it was listed as a threatened species due in large part to the introduction of nonnative pigs and goats that destroyed the lizard's habitat.

"The recovery of the island night lizard is yet another example of how well the Endangered Species Act works once we decide to use it," Collette Adkins Giese, a Center for Biological Diversity attorney and biologist said in a statement released by the Center. . © 2013 I-5 Publishing, LLC.