David Blatchford

I have been involved with reptiles for over thirty years.

I began keeping lizards seriously when we lived in East Anglia and progressed through various genera to Green Iguanas. At that time information was scant and I had little idea how difficult it is to keep these large tropical lizards. Coincidentally,  neither did the Iguanas, which positively thrived.

They were housed in a  converted aviary and during the long Cambridgeshire summer took full advantage of the sunshine. The cost of keeping them proved a considerable drain on what for convenience only we called a salary and I was compelled to seriously re-appraise the situation.

Fortuitously I attended a weekend symposium at Theobald's Park Enfield in the early 70's hosted by Vic Taylor and featuring luminaries like John Cooper (one of the World's leading reptile vets a thoroughly pleasant person and yet still, inexplicably, without his own television series)

There I met Jon Coote from Nottingham who introduced me to two novelties, the International Herpetological Society (I.H.S) and snakes.

Since then, I have barely looked up.

We moved from Cambridge to the West of Scotland in 1979 with a collection of 7 snakes and slowly built a substantial collection. During the intervening years I have fulfilled the roles of; I.H.S. Journal editor, the Scotland representative on BHS Council and in the latter role organised two symposia (at the Kelvingrove Museum and subsequently at the Burrell Collection) which attracted speakers from as far afield as Jersey Wildlife Trust and Holland.

I have written a number of articles and book reviews for the I.H.S., British Herpetological Society and American Journals. In collaboration with a few other tortured souls we tried to arrange and sustain a branch of the I.H.S. in Glasgow for a frightening number of years, but eventually saw sense.

Over the years, I have been associated and bitten by reptiles there have been a number of fashions and buzzwords. "Breeding  projects" captured the imagination for a while as did comprehensive collections of single genera or colour abnormalities. More recently the proliferation of  reptile fundamentalists is a more worrying manifestation, hopefully subject to the same transience.

I have slimmed down the collection to a more manageable size and with the emphasis on Chondropythons. However, to maintain some level of sanity I have a few other species including Carpet Pythons and a few Milk Snakes.

David