04/11/2023
This is wrong in so many ways..
PLEASE Copy & Share! Spread The Word & Demand Justice! 🤯
FWC Agents Slaughter Legal Animals 😭
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC)
FWC • Farris Bryant Building620 S. Meridian St. • Tallahassee, FL • (850) 488-4676
Mission Statement of FWC: Protecting Florida's natural resources and people through proactive and responsive law enforcement services.
Vision: To be recognized as the leading conservation law enforcement agency in the nation, set apart by strategic vision, clear missions, strong leadership and a professional officer corps.
We all see your vision now!
29 Retics
5 Burmese
1 pregnant Pet Boa
All 35 Legal Animals
(Retics/Burms Grandfathered Into Law)
Governor Ron DeSantis
850-717-9337
[email protected]
Contact the Governor and demand the resignation of FWC leadership and swift Justice. We must ask for an immediate end to the slaughter of innocent captive animals by FWC.
Ask for a full investigation into the killing of McAdam's Boa constrictor and Coffee’s Pythons by the officers Corteguera, Wright, Beppel, and Ryan by new FWC Inspector General (IG) Percy Griffin.
See full article here
https://usarkfl.wildapricot.org/news
See video on YouTube here:
https://youtu.be/BuimdwINSzk
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) Law Enforcement Officers showed up unannounced at a reptile facility in West Palm Beach and slaughtered 34 pythons and one pregnant boa constrictor. The pet Boa constrictor was misidentified as a python by four FWC officers. The FWC officers also killed 29 Reticulated pythons and five Burmese pythons owned by Chris Coffee. Under prior directive from FWC, Coffee was forced to maintain the snakes in captivity for over a year since an arbitrary deadline had passed to rehome the animals.
Coffee’s large collection of both Reticulated and Burmese pythons, were possessed legally with a "Conditional Species Permit," before FWC made that permit obsolete by passing "Prohibited Species" rules in 2021. Therefore, his animals should have been grandfathered in and exempt from the new regulations. Coffee chose to rehome 120 of his pythons, but he was unable to disperse all of his collection before an arbitrary FWC deadline. In an effort to remain on good terms with FWC, Coffee notified FWC in good faith about a year ago that he was having difficulties rehoming his animals in the short amount of time allowed by FWC. He asked FWC for more time, believing that he had no choice.
FWC responded by raiding Coffee's facility, arresting him, and issuing him two charges for each Reticulated and Burmese python possessed, for a total of 72 criminal charges. Coffee's life has been turned upside down and he is still on probation as a result of the charges that never should have been issued against him.
Coffee's pythons were maintained at the facility of Bill McAdam with FWC's full knowledge of their whereabouts for approximately a year, until FWC's raid and subsequent massacre on Thursday, April 6, 2023. On that date, FWC officers Lex Corteguera, Jonathon Wright, Zach Beppel, and Christopher Ryan showed up to McAdams' facility. Alleging that they had a report of an escaped Reticulated python. After Coffee allowed them into the facility, the officers began pulling snakes out of their enclosures and killing them on the floor of McAdam's facility. The FWC officers spent around four hours killing snakes, firing multiple shots to the heads of some snakes when it appeared that the first shots failed to kill them. When it was all done, they had killed 29 Reticulated pythons and five Burmese pythons, in addition to the misidentified Boa constrictor.
This is not the first instance where FWC has seized or killed animals which were legally possessed. Though FWC Commissioners promised animal owners that they would be able to keep their pets when the rules were passed, that has turned out not to be true.
USARK Florida questions how FWC officers who are not competent enough to identify animals properly are empowered by the state to kill them. We believe that in instances where euthanasia is absolutely necessary, the animals should be identified by an expert and only euthanized by a qualified veterinarian using the most humane methods possible.
USARK Florida is also calling on Governor DeSantis to hold FWC accountable by asking for the resignation of the FWC employee who gave the unjust order for these snakes to be brutally killed without cause. Further, USARK Florida respectfully requests that the Governor replace current staff leadership with new leadership, capable of focusing agency resources on Florida’s true wildlife issues such as address water and habitat quality issues caused by FWC's extensive herbicide spraying program.
Furthermore, we ask that FWC suspend its seizure and killing of animals as well as prosecution of animal owners for "Prohibited Species," until USARK Florida's lawsuit challenging the validity and constitutionality of these draconian rules is resolved.
https://youtu.be/RVxT7p1AGvA
Article IV, section 9 of the Florida Constitution grants to the Commission the “regulatory and executive powers of the state with respect to wild animal life.” Art. IV, § 9, Fla. Const. (emphasis added). It is on this basis that the Commission has promulgated the rules in question. The Florida...
