Does anyone know or have any information on what conservation or preservation efforts are being made for native reptiles throughout Australia? I am mainly interested in carpet pythons, but it’s important for all reptiles. I would go further to say that it is important for all native animals, (because it is) but I understand that there is already quite a lot of effort being put towards amphibian, birds, marine and mammal conservation, whereas I cannot find any substantial or reliable information re reptiles… I also understand that there is quite a lot of difficulty with government regulations on releasing captive bred reptiles into their known habitats, is there any work being done to remedy/change this? this is also… not to say that all subspecies of carpet pythons need a high priority of conservation. But after a few years watching how the captive breeding industry works, with their designer pythons and cross breeding. I am seeing significantly less and less pure wildtype individuals. I am worried that, should a locality specific subspecies be lost in the wild, there might be no way to bring the population back. Granted, I’d be happy to know I am wrong to believe that.
Some Australian zoos run reintroduction and breeding programs for some threatened turtle species like the Pseudemydura umbrina. Major historical milestone for Western Swamp Tortoise | Perth Zoo
As most of the Morelia group is not under threat from extinction there is minimal conservation or preservation work being done. Diamond Pythons and Murray Darlings are considered endangered or threatened in various parts of their range but as it stands currently there is minimal work being done with them. Rough-scaled Pythons are a big part of Australian Wildlife Conservancy's work in the Kimberley. I'd suggest having a look at the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, Taronga Research Institute and Zoos Vic for some of the widely known work being done with reptiles and amphibians regarding conservation and preservation. Release of captive bred herps (reptiles and amphibians) legally at the moment is largely only done by some ecology-related fields including Universities and the like as well as major Zoos such as Zoos Vic. This is not something that can easily be 'changed or remedied' unfortunately due to the immense biosecurity risk of such a program it often has to go through many streams of approval processes to get to any sort of a productive point. The private hobby is it's own kettle of fish (as someone who is involved in it as well) that has seen some progress in recent times back to the wild types and the like but the flashy colours still draw people in too. There is not much that can be done to change that I am afraid, if you are looking for a breeding project/program to do at home, I'd suggest pick a species you thoroughly enjoy keeping, acquire genetically unrelated stock and go for it. The locality specific discussion is always a hard one, I think keeping pure wildtype stock is more valuable to a private hobby collection than locality specific animals because there is already a small gene-pool with our captive stock which localities are an even smaller pool of. Personally, I keep currently (thanks to a few clutches) just shy of 20 Murray Darling Carpet Pythons from various localities and various breeders. I intend to setup a small breeding program of unrelated animals that all originate from pure stock with the end goal being genetically unrelated and genetically distinct offspring which can be spread across the private hobby, wildlife demonstration companies and other wildlife education streams.
The closest to locality-specific is some of the population specific programs such as the Guthega Skink (although last year a cross-population pairing was done), Leadbeater's Possum (Lowland pop), Stuttering Barred Frog (Southern pop) etc.
