Quote Originally Posted by sharptail View Post
Policies within NAFA are what has caused past members to break away and form a new club. Just a couple of the issues are: NAFA's current policy that Falconer's birds are somehow, owned by the governments, a complete myth, exposed by the AFC and NAFA asserting along with USFWS that hybrid raptors are native, naturally occuring in N. America, and therefore under the MBTA, just because the FWS says it is so, in contradiction to court cases to the contrary. With issues like these, the question beggs, is NAFA sided with the Falconers or those groups that are anti-falconry?
Quote Originally Posted by Saluqi View Post
AFC wants to eliminate all forms of regulation so that the system in the US is exactly like that of the UK. With no regulation on who can own a raptor, the take of wild raptors will be lost. This is not a surprising mentality for the AFC given the past and present leadership of the AFC, i.e., they make their livings off of breeding raptors. Same issue with hybrids, remove restrictions on hybrids that contain a fraction of native raptor, and suddenly the market for who can buy such hybrids increases beyond licensed falconers. I find the AFC's stance on these issues ironic given that they used to call themselves the WRTC, or Wild Raptor Take Conservancy.

I would like to apologize to the members of NAFEX for stooping to the level of vindictive, there really is no place for that tone. My post was me lashing out at Jeff Odell's post, quoted above, Jeff and I have a long history of verbal sparing here on NAFEX, and over recent years I have all but stopped posting anything even mildly acerbic. However, after reading Jeff's post I was fed up and I let my emotions get the better of me and let loose with a perception of the AFC that is not unique to me alone. Truth or not, it's irrelevant, once something is posted to the internet and people read it, then it can become a reality in which they believe. Just as my assertions of the AFC may be misguided, so are Jeff's assertions of NAFA. There is no truth in what Jeff says, but as I already pointed out that fact is irrelevant, because there is a certain fraction of people who read his post who take it at face value, as fact. If you have questions regarding either NAFA or the AFC and their policies and philosophies I suggest that you do your research and not believe what people say on the internet.