"In the future, it will be forbidden to keep snakes at home. The law stipulates that it is prohibited to keep wild venomous and predatory animals, primates, marine mammals, as well as animals that must be fed with live warm-blooded animals, as domestic (pet) animals."

LETA, 31 March 2010

Something had to be done: in recent summers, and not just in summer, reports of crocodiles, piranhas, pythons, and other creatures—so far unusual for our fauna and, moreover, equipped with sharp teeth—being found in the wild or semi-wild in Latvia, namely in city parks or ponds, appeared so frequently that not only the necessity to adapt national laws to European Union regulations, but also the "internal situation" required adopting such amendments to the wild animal keeping law that would make it easier to identify which irresponsible keeper owns each python, crocodile, or tortoise.

Over the last six months, several acts have made the joys of keeping snakes more stringent. Already on 6 October last year, Regulation No. 1139 was adopted – "Procedures for the storage, registration, keeping in captivity, marking, trading of individuals of wild species threatened by international trade, and the issuance of certificates." Since 1 April of this year, new Cabinet of Ministers regulations have been in force regarding the Washington Convention, or CITES, which regulates international trade in endangered animal species (all snakes are in CITES Appendix I (species threatened with extinction which are or may be affected by trade) or Appendix II (species that are not necessarily now threatened with extinction but may become so if trade is not strictly regulated)). The new regulations stipulate that all snakes must be marked.

Finally, at the end of April, amendments to the Animal Protection Law came into force – they stipulate that it is no longer permitted at all to keep snakes and animals of the order Carnivora that must be fed with live warm-blooded animals at home. The only way to do so is by registering an animal collection and marking the animal. Strictly speaking, this applies not only to snakes and crocodiles but also to cats, as they are not exactly a perennial part of our native fauna and do occasionally devour a live warm-blooded mouse or chaffinch.

Therefore, from now on, the law will pursue all illegal snake keepers even more vigorously, and there should no longer be cases like this Easter, when a dead python was found dumped at the Ādaži training area, and it was impossible to determine who it belonged to. From now on, all large snakes should have a chip inserted under their skin. This will allow for the creation of a database of chipped animals, thus gradually putting the keeping of these animals in order in Latvia, explains Gita Strode, senior expert at the Nature Conservation Agency. The chip contains a digital code from which all necessary information can be read. The chip is inserted by a veterinarian, and this procedure costs much less than the python itself.

Registering a collection is a fairly complex bureaucratic procedure. One of the rules regarding registered collections states that the collection must be exhibited for at least seven days a year. Even previously, not just anyone was allowed to keep a snake at home legally, but the marking requirement is a novelty.

Guna Bagrade, Deputy Director for Scientific Work at the Latvian Museum of Natural History, says that for quite some time now, upon receiving a person's request for permission to keep a snake or some other exotic animal at home, the Nature Conservation Agency has always invited museum experts to check, in accordance with European Council regulations, whether the intended habitat for the snake meets the animal's needs and whether the introduction of this snake could harm Latvia's fauna. For example, when a python ended up in a zoo from its previous owner, who had treated the snake poorly, and a python enthusiast wanted to obtain it from there for keeping, museum experts measured both the cage intended for it in its new home and the heat and humidity, as well as evaluated whether the python would have a good place to drink and opportunities to hide.

Experienced python keeper, Doctor of Biology Aivars Lazda, supports greater strictness in snake-keeping regulations regarding large snakes, as they can still be dangerous: "Such a snake can even strangle a child. I have been attacked a couple of times, you know, it is not so easy to get free! A snake's strength is immense." Lazda does not always claim to know the clear reason why a snake might attack its keeper or another person, but one must be especially careful during feeding times. Even if you accidentally step on a snake's tail, it can bite. The teeth of a four-metre python are like needles several centimetres long. If it latches onto a leg or arm with them, the snake cannot be removed without tools – one must take a metal spoon or a piece of wood. Aivars Lazda has only been bitten seriously by his four-metre python once – it latched onto his leg and instantly coiled around both legs. "If I hadn't moved for five minutes, she would have realised that something was wrong, but I was moving, and she constricted me even tighter," recalls Lazda, who, however, has not been deterred from keeping them by this python attack. When a python gets used to the keeper's scent and understands that it is not its food, attacks are supposedly almost inconceivable. Lazda believes that a python as small as a metre and a half can be dangerous to a child.

Currently, there are not too many snake keepers in Latvia, assesses Gita Strode: "We are counting on a couple of hundred, but it is not yet known how many of them will legally register their animals." Most snake lovers are in Riga, with some in Daugavpils and a few other large cities. If it is discovered that someone is keeping an unregistered snake at home, regulatory authorities will be sent to them, and they will not be able to avoid registration anyway, only now with a fine. Aivars Lazda, however, believes that it will be very difficult to control this in rural areas, and as for keeping native fauna snakes – it is completely impossible: "How can you forbid keeping a grass snake when it wanders around the farmhouse foundations?"
Article first published in the May 2010 issue of Rīgas Laiks magazine