![]() If you capture an exotic herp in the wild and want to find out what you can do with it, try contacting a local pet organization, herp society or pet rescue organization to find out if they can find someone to adopt it. If you have pictures of animals on this list that have been found in the wild that are not illustrated here, please email them to me so I can use them here. If you find a pet herp in the wild in California, l'd like to hear about it and add it to this list if it's not already here. Many of these have spread through transport, not abandonment. So far no imported pet trade snakes have been found to be breeding and forming populations in the wild in Calfornia besides the watersnakes, but there are several species of frogs and lizards that have, with an increasing number of exotic geckos becoming established, mostly in southern California. While it's interesting to keep track of them as I am doing here, it is never good for our native wildlife when non-native species take hold in their habitat and compete with them, and it is often fatal for animals abandoned in unfamiliar habitat where they struggle to survive. This could lead to more non-native herp species established in the state. The pet trade in herps is booming and unless fewer herps are purchased by more responsible pet owners there will be many more abandoned and escaped herps found in the state. Many of those shown here were reported to me by users of this web site who found an animal in their yard and asked me to identify it for them. I cannot cover every species of amphibian and reptile that is commonly kept as a pet in California, because nearly any pet herp can escape or be abandoned, but if you think I am missing an important one, let me know. So far I have only learned about the native California Kingsnake and the native Mohave Desert Tortoise occuring where they should not, but there are likely more native species of pets abandoned in the wild. Some have been found in public open space areas not near populated areas, which most likely indicates abandonment by irresponsible owners.įeral native species kept as pets have also been found released into the wild, but these are harder to discover unless they are found where they should not occur, or unless an unusual variant created in the pet trade is found in the wild. In most cases it is not possible to know if the pets were abandoned or if they escaped. Most of these feral pets have been found in well-populated residential areas where herps are commonly kept as pets. (Some are established, most are not yet established.) There are certainly many more species of which I am not aware. This is a list of common, mostly non-native, pet amphibians and reptiles which I have learned have been found in the wild in California, but which are not on my list of Established Non-Native Species of Amphibians and Reptiles in California because they are not necessarily part of an established breeding group.
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