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Florida venomous permit holders and those who want
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by JRose1989 on September 29, 2011
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Florida venomous permit holders and those who wanting to get a permit be aware of the new FWC things that are happening. FWC is currently having some major issues (in my opinion) with in some of its venomous rules, enforcement and information sharing.
The first issue is currently FWC is requiring exact record keeping of every animal in one’s inventory. I know this sounds easy enough however there is no consistency between investigators, but we will go into that in the next issues. Currently FWC is requiring all venomous animals or all animals in the possession of class 3 license holders to have exact records. By this they mean the source of supplier, quantity, price, date and place of transfer, births and deaths of all animals held under a permit for the reporting year or 6 months for those who have class 3 permits. If the animal is sold or bought both parties must record the others information, permit numbers and contact number. This rule applies no matter where the animal is sold or bought if one part is a permit holder in Florida. However, if you look at the form that FWC mandates a permit holder fill out and retain for the officer to inspect there is no place for most of this information anywhere on it. This leaves many permit holder unaware or uninformed as to the requirement of this information. Violation of this rule or rules is a criminal notice to appear in court and in my county 60 days in jail and or $210 fine.
Then we get to the next issue and that is there is no consistency between what one FWC considers correct and another officer considers a violation. These rules in Florida now are written so confusing that many officers don’t truly know what is exactly correct and incorrect. I know it is not the officer’s fault and I am not blaming them in anyway. However it is legislation and officer training problem. In order to enforce the rules the officer needs to be better trained in it and the rules should be the exactly same state wide!
The last issue I want to harp about is now FWC has made everything about a Venomous and/or class 3 permit holder’s public record. There is now a website where anyone can do a search and find out the names, addresses and other information about anyone permitted by FWC. Honestly the system reminds me of that same software and search engine used for sex offenders. I mean I could understand having the system to look at it if a person’s permit was valid or not but his system gives much more information than that. When you add the fact that all of our cages have to be labeled, by law, (good idea I know) then them giving anyone our addresses, FWC is simply making a potential shopping list for thieves and or other illegal persons. I mean if someone wanted to steal high dollar exotic animals all they need to do is a simple search on this site and they are given names and addresses of all facilities in an area. This in my opinion is a complete violation of privacy and one that FWC never told me about before my permit.
P.S. I wrote this not to cause issues, arguments, nor to speak down on law enforcement or FWC officers. This is simply written to inform those permitted or wanting to be permitted of some of the problematic areas and to hopefully save someone from being fined. Also we need to ban together and see if we can work with FWC to get a better system that works for the both of us. If we don’t regulation and information systems will keep coming.
Sincerely,
John
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RE: Florida venomous permit holders and those who
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by CanadianSnakeMan on September 29, 2011
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While some of what you mentioned is evidently annoying and unreasonable, inconsistent, whatever... you also have to ask yourself if that's a price worth paying for being allowed the privelege of keeping venomous snakes. The other option (in the eyes of most law makers) is to just ban them outright.
I think you're lucky to have a system in place like the one you have down there. Up here they were trying to pass a bill to ban dangerous exotics. No permits, no special permissions, just a complete prohibition on private ownership of dangerous exotics of any kind. The bill failed on a technicality because Ontario has a provincial election coming up. Maybe the whole thing will be forgotten, maybe not, or maybe some other moron with a gaboon in a sweater box under his bed gets some child killed and starts the whole debate over again.
'They belong at a zoo or in the wild' they'll tell you, not realizing that all the world's zoos put together can't keep up with the pace that we're destroying habitat and displacing species... also ignorant to the fact that if these animals do remain in the wild, most humans in their habitat won't be very understanding towards their prescence.
Dealing with people's ignorance is frustrating to the point of high blood pressure at the best of times (believe me I know), but at least your hobby is protected under some kind of legal framework that allows you to do what you want to while simultaneously keeping the real morons and the completely inexperienced away from the pointy end of a venomous snake.
Up here, we have the odd incident with a caiman being found in a public park's pond, or some idiot letting his cobra escape into a boarding house. The owners of these animals obviously shouldn't have ever been allowed to keep them to begin with, but since there's no laws (and hence no enforcement), when some incident happens all exotic keepers are painted with the same brush and then some ambitious politition with AR connections cries bloody murder to ban everything.
I think you have it good. I'd much rather have your system of regulation than our system of no regulation!
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RE: Florida venomous permit holders and those who
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by Kingetula on September 30, 2011
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John, is there a link to these new rules? I looked but can't say FF&G has an easy site to navigate.
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RE: Florida venomous permit holders and those who
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by JRose1989 on September 30, 2011
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Let me look. I found out about the rules the hard way, a FWC officer was filling in for our investigator and cited me. He also cited almost all of my friends and even Mitch at Diamond Reptiles for this records thing. I do however have the link handy for one of the websites used to publish our personal in formation.
it is
http://www2.tbo.com/static/news-special-reports-data-bay/tbo-special-reports-snake-licenses/
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RE: Florida venomous permit holders and those who
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by JRose1989 on September 30, 2011
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Here are the new rules.
https://www.flrules.org/gateway/ChapterHome.asp?Chapter=68A-6
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RE: Florida venomous permit holders and those who
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by Crotalusssp on September 30, 2011
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I always stated that I would welcome a permit system instead of an outright ban, if it would protect my rights from being taken away. At least when a bonehead accident takes place, I could hopefully be a little less nervous about my rights.
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RE: Florida venomous permit holders and those who
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by Kingetula on September 30, 2011
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Thanks for the heads up John. Making changes...
I hate how they change the laws but do not send out updated information!
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