Collectors, environmentalists clash over reptile sales

Ask someone at the Nevada Division of Wildlife about persistence and they'll tell you it wears an old leather hat and a flannel shirt, has a bushy white beard and can catch snakes and lizards.

Persistence goes by the name of Thomas Bentz, who has been wrangling with the Nevada Wildlife Commission for more than 15 years over the commercial collection of reptiles.

Bentz and 22 other permitted collectors snatch, snare and snag lizards and snakes in Nevada and then sell the creatures to out-of-state dealers. They heatedly defend their business as a harmless desert diversion that doesn't put a dent in the state's sizable reptile population.

But environmentalists retort that selling wildlife is reprehensible and that the reptile roundup is endangering a fragile natural balance.

According to state statistics, 22,240 reptiles were caught by collectors during the 1998 season and 169,790 reptiles have been captured since 1986.

Two weeks ago the Wildlife Commission granted a small victory to Bentz and the state's dozen or so serious commercial reptile collectors by deciding against the wildlife agency's recommendation to phase out collecting. Instead, the commission adopted a plan that calls for collectors and wildlife managers to establish just how many reptiles are in Nevada's wildlands, and then determine if collecting them is having an adverse effect.

The plan, which could receive final approval in February, was one of seven possible choices worked out by the wildlife agency in hopes of ending one of its biggest headaches.

"I hope the end is in sight in terms of this controversy," Wildlife Commissioner David Jikling said. "Between now and February the Division of Wildlife staff and the collectors will get together and come to a consensus on how this can work."

Both sides will have to put aside philosophical differences about selling wildlife.

"It's been very frustrating, and we've been here before," said Brad Hardenbrook, the agency's supervisory biologist for Nevada's Southern Region. "There is a lot of emotion involved in this issue, and I doubt if it will ever go away until the collectors and the scientific community can cooperate and work together on a nonemotional level."

Bentz and other collectors are passionate about catching the critters.

"I collected my first reptile in the 1940s, and my first in Nevada in 1954," Bentz, a 61-year-old Pahrump native, said. "As a kid I loved the outdoors and one day I caught a garter snake. I brought it home and realized I didn't know anything about it, so I went to the library and for every question I answered two more popped up.

"That's what started me, and I raised my sons doing this and now their children are doing it.

"I think for a long time the commission thought maybe they could grandfather us in like the Indians and then when we were gone that would be the end of this. But then we brought the kids to a meeting and you could see a chill run up their spines because they knew it wasn't going to die."

Which is just what retired Reno teacher Joni Test fears. She was part of a group that rounded up elementary students to help protest against reptile gathering at a recent Wildlife Commission meeting in Reno.

'Legally wrong'

"Commercial collecting of reptiles is both environmentally and legally wrong," Test said.

Her husband, attorney Louis Test, is unsure if it is even legal for reptiles to be collected at this point because a complete study has not been done examining the impact on the reptiles.

Test outlined his complaints in a recent letter to the Wildlife Commission.

"The applicants who wish to export reptiles from the state of Nevada have not submitted, to the division, an investigation to prove that the removal of said reptiles will not be detrimental to that wildlife species," he wrote.

Hardenbrook says the division is looking at the legality of the plan to bring collectors and biologists together to work on a study.

"Right now what has been proposed is outside existing law, and we're working to see if such a plan can be facilitated," Hardenbrook said. "We can't ignore the law."

James Moore, a wildlife biologist for the Nature Conservatory, has said at past commission meetings that he would like a moratorium on collecting until a complete study can be done.

"My concern is that we are allowing collectors to take species without knowing what they are doing to the eco-system," Moore said last year. "It's like we are letting a few people withdraw money that belongs to everyone from a bank, and on top of that we don't even know how much money is in the bank."

Collectors who buy a yearly $100 permit are allowed to nab 36 varieties of reptiles, including such desert dwellers as the speckled rattlesnake, and the gopher snake, and the chuckwalla, leopard, collared and horned lizards.

State law does not allow collectors to use traps, or to use a crowbar to pry rocks away from reptile lairs. Instead, hunters rely on years of experience and homemade nooses to corral the creatures.

"You can't approach a lizard from the front because it'll think your a threat and run off," Bentz said. "You have to come at it from a side angle because in the lizard's mind they don't think you see them if you're not taking a direct line to them."

Bentz and his two sons, Robert and Thomas Jr., use extendible cane fishing poles modified with small nylon nooses at the end to pluck lizards from roadside berms and rocky outcroppings.

"Every time we take someone out with us we ruin them," Thomas Bentz said. "After going out collecting with us, you'll never be able to go out into the desert without spying these creatures."

Collectors often go out for days at a time in the prime reptile collecting season in late spring and early summer, and travel across the state to different habitats.

Thomas Bentz and Steve Ferrand, a collector from Searchlight, say they aren't taking enough reptiles to do any harm.

"When you look at the biology and the mathematics of it the collectors that are here can't cover enough ground in this state to do any damage," Ferrand said. "There were about 22,000 reptiles taken last year and about 25,000 deer shot in Nevada. I don't think anyone is going to argue that there are more deer than lizards in this state."

The state has been wrestling with the reptile rules for years.

The Wildlife Commission outlawed the practice in 1983, but the Bentz family quickly started a push for collecting to be reinstated.

In 1986 the commission amended the regulation to allow collecting if permit holders reported reptile activity to wildlife officials.

In 1989 the commission again banned the practice, saying the information that the agency was getting from collectors was insufficient. The Bentz family responded by gaining an injunction against the new regulation in District Court, which was appealed to the Supreme Court by the Division of Wildlife.

"For a couple seconds there we were celebrating, until it got appealed and our lawyer told us there was a $5,000 bond we had to pay," Robert Bentz said. "We never know if we're winning or losing because we can never predict what's going to happen next. People who've signed our petitions to keep collecting legal ask us if we're winning yet and we say we don't know."

In 1990 the Supreme Court lifted the injunction, but in the interim six of seven Wildlife Commissioners were not re-elected and the temporary regulation expired.

Then in 1991 the commission decided to permit collecting again and ordered the wildlife division to work with collectors to revise the harvest reporting process.

Jickling, who was elected to the nine-member commission in 1994 to represent the state's conservation interests, said the wildlife division hasn't been doing enough with the harvest information that has been collected.

"We'd been gathering this information through the collectors for about six years, but I was told that because of not enough staff and money we hadn't really done anything with the data," Jickling said. "We got it compiled into a report last year, and there was some good information on distribution of reptiles, but we haven't got any closer to determining population."

Another perceived problem with the information is that it's coming from the collectors, Jickling said.

"You have the fox guarding the hen house mentality there and that's a concern," he said. "But the commission feels comfortable with the collectors that are at all the meetings and are giving the information. Of course just saying these are stand-up individuals doesn't fly too well with the public."

Major undertaking

Alex Heindl, curator of herpetology at UNLV, says that the type of study that the commission is asking for will be a major undertaking.

"This study is going to be looking for an average population number, and that's going to be like chasing a moving target," Heindl said. "Your talking about a huge area to extrapolate data for with a lot of variables, and that usually gives you shaky numbers.

"Add to that the fact that they can study this until hell freezes over and still not get a consensus between NDOW and the collectors and you start to see what we're dealing with."

Phil Medica, a longtime Southern Nevada herpetologist, believes the study will be very hard to pull off, and even if it works he doesn't see much of a future for commercial collecting.

"The ethic of this is not one of conservation, and I just can't see this continuing," Medica said. "There are a number of people whom this will hurt financially, but ultimately commercial collecting is on the way out."

Heindl says that while he does not like the idea of selling wildlife, he doesn't think collectors are causing any lasting problems.

"Given the small extent of the collecting in the state, I just look at it as one more predator," Heindl said. "As long as it continues to be reasonable and selective it won't hurt the populations. The reason this seems to be such a big issue is not the danger to the population, but because commercialism seems to be an anathema."

Collectors counter that there are much bigger threats to the reptile populations that are being ignored.

"No one has a problem with someone picking up a lizard and keeping it as long as they don't sell it," Thomas Bentz Jr. said. "But people don't seem to care about all the lizards and habitats that are destroyed when a new construction development goes up.

"People don't want to see it, but these reptiles are a renewable resource. We go back to the same places every year and we always find more."

But critics say they have noticed a drop in the numbers of reptiles.

"When I was a child I used to be able to go out and see a horned lizard, and now you don't see them around anymore," Test said. "I think any time you remove even one animal you have an effect on the environment."

Robert Bentz estimates that a collector can make about $12,000 in a very good year, while Ferrand says there are two or three full-time collectors in the state who make upwards of $25,000 before subtracting expenses.

"It's not a get-rich-quick thing," Robert Bentz said. "I hold down another job as an operating engineer to help pay the bills. Being out in nature and being with the animals is just something that is in our blood. It's something we love doing."

Collectors are not allowed to sell their catches in Nevada and instead sell shipments to reptile wholesalers and out-of-state pet store buyers, which is another concern for opponents of collecting.

"It's unfortunate, but the state washes its hands of the animals once they are collected," Medica said. "I've heard the stories about lizards dying on their way from here to some other part of the country. If they don't die in transport they often die on the other end because people don't know how to take care of them."

Making sure reptiles are safe when they are packaged for shipment is something collectors pay attention to, Ferrand said.

"If they die before they get to the wholesaler the collector doesn't get paid," Ferrand said. "It's just like shipping anything in a business, you make sure it is packaged so that the product is good when it gets to where it is going.

"For example, I send collared lizards in 8-ounce salad cups with a paper towel inside. Those are then stacked and boxed up."

Prices vary

Prices for the catches vary based on demand and the type of reptile.

A chuckwalla can bring anywhere from $15 to $45, Ferrand said.

"It's not that there is a $15 variety of chuckwalla and a $45 variety, but if someone wants a chuck in winter when there aren't many available it may bring $45," Ferrand said. "It fluctuates based on the demand."

After buying the animals from a collector the wholesaler then sells them to pet shops. A pet shop chuckwalla might sell for between $70 and $100, Ferrand said.

The desert collared lizard brings in about $3 to $5 each for collectors and sells for between $8 and $13.

New Mexico and Texas allow some commercial reptile collecting, but most other Western states, including Arizona, outlaw it.

"We need to try to find some kind of middle ground," Hardenbrook said. "If we have to err it'll be on the side of conservation, but we have to decide where we'll be satisfied, because this could end up applying to other nongame animals.

"What if someone wants to collect and sell kangaroo rats or jackrabbits? No one knew gerbils would get so popular, who is to say kangaroo rats won't be the next warm and fuzzy animal everyone wants for a pet."

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