#brynna

"The King in White"

EDIT: You can now find all assets related to this AU here in this drive that weren’t originally available in this post as per a request

This is a great question. The answer is mixed: the vast majority of people who say they are breeding endangered populations as assurance against loss in the wild are full of shit. Most do not track bloodlines, many inbreed considerably, and most do not have the connections to have any hope for using their bred individuals as part of a reintroduction. That being said, even these populations are not without conservation benefits; the more available things are from captive breeding, the less strain needs to be placed on wild populations. This is of course assuming that collection and export puts a strain on populations; in many cases this is probably not true, and collection and export can be done sustainably, and in a way that puts value into the forest. As an aside, I should mention the fact that some forests are protected by the people who harvest animals from them, and when you take this income source away, the forest comes down to its lowest common value, which is as fire wood, and it disappears. I know at least one fully concrete example of this happening in Madagascar. So all told, conservation benefits of someone breeding a species without the right connections and without doing everything with excruciating care is roughly "meh".On the other hand, a few people out there do in fact have a big role to play in conservation assurance populations in captivity. But these people know who they are, because they are invariably working as part of a large network of individuals who share husbandry information and exchange “breeders” to keep blood-lines diverse. For tortoises I know this is well established, and for a few other herps as well (and birds and mammals and whatnot). What I really enjoy is seeing people trying to set things up like this from their own initiative. I know for example that there is an effort to coordinate breeding of some chameleons in the US because people struggle to get them to breed properly and they are worried about the lines getting too inbred. These are great initiatives, and when they get established they can really be of use. But at least for now, these are really rare, and I would say I don’t know of any way that a single person can have any conservation value without being part of a network of breeders.

Beatrix belongs to @the-oc-nebula

Tonight is PPG Screenshot Recreation with OCs night. Second OC is Beatrix who belongs to @the-oc-nebula