WHITELISTS AND POSITIVE LISTS | How government will ban reptile keeping

WHITELISTS AND POSITIVE LISTS DON'T WORK.

Governments around the world are considering BANNING reptile keeping through the use of a positive list.

A positive list is a list of animals the government allows us to keep. Any animal not on the list is banned and these lists are usually very short.

Our video explains why positive lists are unnecessary, unenforceable, bad for science and cause poor welfare.

POSITIVE LISTS DON'T WORK.

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Script:

Do you know what a positive list is?

It sounds like a good thing, right? A positive list.

Well, trust me when I tell you it's not.

A positive list is a list of animals the government permits you to keep. Any species not on the positive list is banned.

Positive lists are also sometimes known as white lists, and they've become the Holy Grail for animal rights campaigners who want to stop people keeping reptiles in captivity.

They say a positive list will prevent poor welfare because if people can't keep reptiles, then they can't be kept badly.

At the moment the focus is on reptiles, but the ultimate aim of many animal rights groups is a positive list which bans all types of pet animals.

At first glance a positive list might sound sensible, and it is easy to see why governments sometimes think they're an easy way to address poor welfare.

But in reality, positive lists simply don't work.

We know this because they have been made law in several countries already and there's plenty of evidence to prove that positive lists are a bad idea.

Let's look at some facts.

Fact number one – positive lists are unnecessary.

Positive lists are supposed to address poor welfare, but is there really a reptile welfare crisis to solve?

Sadly there isn't any objective data to help us accurately measure the welfare of any kind of pet animal, but according to a 2021 survey, an estimated 8.8 million reptiles are kept in the UK.

Meanwhile, the National Centre for Reptile Welfare, the world's largest rehoming facility for reptiles, rehomed just over 1,500 animals in 2022.

That's less than 0.02 percent.
That doesn't look like a reptile welfare crisis to me.

Let's compare those figures with the number of dogs and cats that need rehoming each year.

Again, statistics are hard to come by, but reports published by six major pet charities between 2018 and 2020 showed that on average 19,049 dogs and 61,928 cats were rehomed each year.

Compare those to the 627 reptiles rehomed each year by the same six charities during that period and we can see reptiles are a long way down the list.

So as far as we can tell, the reptile welfare problem is tiny when compared with other types of animals, and nobody has yet been able to show us any objective data to prove otherwise.

Every report that claims there is a reptile welfare problem is just based on someone's opinion.

And if we start banning stuff simply because someone thinks it's bad, there'd soon be nothing left.

Fact number two – positive lists are unenforceable.

Norway imposed an outright ban on reptile keeping between 1977 and 2017, during which time a survey conducted by the Norwegian Government, estimated the illegal reptile population of the country was around 110,000 animals.

There was even a thriving business sector supplying reptile food and equipment to Norwegian reptile keepers.

The Dutch Government has tried to introduce a mammal-positive list twice, but on both occasions, the legislation was thrown out by the Dutch High Court, when it was found to have serious flaws.

A UK Government report said that compliance with its Dangerous Wild Animals licensing law was thought to be just 10 percent.

And other countries such as Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Croatia, Malta, Lithuania and Norway have positive lists in place and they seem to be equally unenforceable.

Jim Collins is the coordinator for the Sustainable Users Network and he said, 'Every positive list that's ever been made law hasn't worked. People simply ignore them.'

Fact number three – positive lists are bad for welfare.

Far from fixing an imaginary welfare problem that doesn't exist, positive lists are known to actually cause welfare issues for reptiles.

We already know that many people will ignore an unenforceable positive list and continue to keep reptiles anyway.

But those keepers who own illegal reptiles won't be able to seek specialist advice, and they won't be able to take their animal to see a vet.

So how can that be good for reptile welfare?

Fact number four – positive lists stop us learning about reptiles.

Private keepers have been leading the way in reptile care and husbandry for decades.

In fact, private keepers have learned how to breed more species of reptiles for the first time than all the zoos in the world put together.

Thanks to these passionate pioneers, today we're able to keep and breed many reptile species that would have been impossible to keep alive ten or twenty years ago.

Take chameleons for example.

Thanks to the ever-improving range of equipment, technologies and husbandry techniques developed by private keepers, many chameleons are now considered easy to maintain and breed in captivity, often vastly exceeding their natural lifespan in the wild.

Any positive list that bans private ownership of reptiles would put an end to these rich veins of herpetological advancement science and learning.

So why are animal rights campaigners so determined to implement positive lists and reptile bans, when they're unenforceable, harm science and are bad for welfare?

Well, only they can answer that question, but it seems their obsession with positive lists is disingenuous.

Their real goal is to reduce the number of reptiles kept by private keepers, and ultimately, to make reptiles extinct in captivity.

It's as if a tiny, but very vocal minority of extremists want to impose their views and opinions on everyone else, whether they are justified or not.

Does that sound fair to you?

No, it doesn't sound fair to us either.