From the wild?

[reptigirl04]

Is it okay to take an animal out of the wild for a day or so for educational purposes, and then to let it go after you are done? Is that legal?
I ask because, as you may have known, i am doing a little 'herp education' for a bunch of 1st graders and was looking to show them some of the critters they might find around here.

[haroldo359]

checking local and state laws is your best bet. local dnr, mainly. i know here in GA you have to have a permit, unless the animal happens to be venomous

[John_White]

In Virginia it is legal to remove any non-threatened, non-endangered herp from the wild. In fact you can keep up to 5 specimens of a species. If you do remove an animal from the wild, please keep it isolated from other animals and release it ASAP, exactly where you found it.

[reptigirl04]

Thanks very much. And i will def. keep them isolated and they (assuming i can get my hands on them) will be released Exactly where i find them!! Im hoping on only having them for the day. Thanks again.

[Kent K25]

What are ya lookin to get your hands on....?

[trinitywolf]

It always concerns me to release animals back into the wild b/c it is possible that they have been exposed to a pathogen that could pose a large scale threat to wild populations. I realize this is probably the reason John said to keep it isolated. Do you guys feel this is a threat worth considering?

[toker]

Do you guys feel this is a threat worth considering

Yes, it is, however, you have just as much chance spreading something when you give your critter a little grass time don't you?

As with most things, its only as good as you are careful.

[JuliusSqueezer]

Every footstep you make, every breath you take on this planet makes an impact on some life form or another. You just have to weigh out what you can go through life worrying about. If you catch a ratsnake or something and don't put it in a tote you just had a sick boa in...or any boa or non-native animal for that matter, you aren't causing any more harm that if you sneeze outside. This is not by any stretch a sterile planet. They are far more likely to get squashed, hacked up, eaten stuck in a soda can ...etc etc etc than to get sick from being picked up by a herper and I promise you there are plenty of germs out there that they are already exposed to.

[trinitywolf]

Every footstep you make, every breath you take on this planet makes an impact on some life form or another

Yeah...you are right on...and I agree with you. I guess the real question is, at what point have you kept a speciman too long to re-release? There is no doubt this is not a sterile world, but god forbid we wipe out a species b/c we didn't think it was very likely to happen.

[toker]

at what point have you kept a speciman too long to re-release?

That is the question there. Any ideas?

There is no doubt this is not a sterile world, but god forbid we wipe out a species b/c we didn't think it was very likely to happen