About VPI
Vida Preciosa International, Inc., better known as VPI, is owned and operated by Dave and Tracy Barker. If you're curious, vida preciosa is Spanish and translates to "precious life".
Today we work with a limited number of Ball pythons Python regius, Blood Pythons Python brongersmai, which will be featured in our next book Pythons of the World 4, and boa constrictors, which will be the topic of a follow up writing project. These species are easy to breed, easy to raise, thrive in captivity, are generally docile, and are small-to-medium sized snakes. Additionally, these species have established bloodlines with novel and beautiful morphs and appearances, making them the focus of a great deal of attention by many keepers around the world.
In their long experience with pythons, the Barkers have accomplished the first captive breedings of numerous taxa and geographic races, including: Irian Jaya carpet pythons (1995), black-headed pythons (1978), Lesser Sundas pythons (1976), Borneo short-tailed pythons (1992), Sumatran short-tailed pythons (1993), barneck scrub pythons (1993), southern scrub pythons (1996), Tanimbar pythons (1997), Wetar pythons (1996), Sawu pythons (1995) New Guinea water pythons (1995), and ringed pythons (1977).
The Barkers have attempted to document much of the information and experience that has been 
accumulated in their herpetological and herpetocultural careers. Much of the data has been generated by VPI. To that end, they have published on a wide variety of topics in professional journals, popular magazines, and on the Internet. In 1994 they published Pythons of the World, Vol. 1, Australia, the first volume of a monograph on the pythonine snakes.
The second volume in the series was released in September 2006. 
Pythons of the World, Volume IIPythons of the World, Vol. II: BALL PYTHONS: The History, Natural History, Care, and Breeding is the most comprehensive and complete book ever written on one snake species. It is a landmark text in herpetoculture, setting the standard by which all future works on pythons will be measured. More volumes in the Pythons of the World series are planned.
VPI has been an experiment, one that continues to change and evolve. It continues to pursue its original primary goal, to contribute information to the establishment of viable self-sustaining captive populations of pythons. Navigating a course through the rapidly changing environment of the past 30 years has been both rewarding and a constant challenge. In no other period of time has herpetoculture seen so many innovations in maintenance and reproductive husbandry. We consider the period from the late 1960s to the present to be the Golden Age of Herpetoculture, and we feel fortunate to have been able to participate in all of it.
During these decades there have been dramatic additions to and changes in the collective body of knowledge and published information. The degree of public participation in herpetoculture has steadily grown and today is unequaled. The relatively recent awareness that the captive-propagation of reptiles and amphibians could be a viable commercial enterprise has been the greatest single factor influencing private and professional herpetoculture today. Factors of business and of regulation, once alien to most keepers, have become primary considerations for many in herpetoculture in the 2020s.
Our most recent book Pythons of the World, Volume 3 The Pythons of Asia and the Malay Archipelago
By David G. Barker, Mark Auliya, and Tracy M. Barker (2018) covers the incredible diversity of the python species!
This volume in the Pythons of the World series includes an informative account for each of the 29 species and three subspecies of pythons found in Asia and the Malay Archipelago. The Malay Archipelago encompasses the nations and territories of the Indo-Pacific islands bounded on the north by Asia and on the south by Australia, including Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Philippines.
The future goals of VPI include the main emphasis on generating and publishing the most current and correct information on topics of herpetoculture and herpetology.
Pythons of the World, Volume III
