Congress would restrict import of invasive tropical species

[pscot]

Petco, Petsmart, pet owners and the proprietor of The Gourmet Rodent don't much like the idea. There's a video link at the bottom.


MIAMI -- Water managers dispatched two experts to Washington, D.C., recently to back a controversial congressional bill targeting an Everglades problem that seems to get bigger every year.
The latest, largest evidence emerged last week: A Burmese python stretching 161/2 feet, the longest yet of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the exotic constrictors the South Florida Water Management District has pulled off its lands and levees in the past few years.More sobering: The female, found on the L-67 levee south of Tamiami Trail, was pregnant, carrying a clutch of 59 eggs - more proof the giant snakes are breeding in the wild.(snip)

The surge of invasive serpents is the prime reason the district, which oversees 2.2 million acres of state-owned marshlands, has thrown its support behind a House bill that could end the import and breeding not just of pythons, but a whole host of tropical invaders that have settled in South Florida.
But at its first hearing in April, the bill ran into what a co-sponsor quipped was a "hornet's nest of opposition" from pet owners, breeders, hobbyists and pet stores. They expressed outrage to lawmakers in telephone calls, e-mails and YouTube videos - including one titled "Pets in Peril, Politicians Gone Wild" - arguing that the legislation would bar the ownership of anything more exotic than a Doberman or a Siamese cat.
"One-third of our nation has non-native species as pets, and apart from dogs, cats and goldfish, which are exempt (in the bill), virtually every species in those homes falls under" the legislation, said Marshall Meyers, chief executive officer of the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council. The board of directors of the trade group - which comprises pet retailers, wholesalers and hobbyists - spans the spectrum from executives with retail giants Petsmart and PETCO to the owner of the Gourmet Rodent in Jonesville, Fla.(more)

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/environment/story/1058891.html


Seeing is believing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ3IzJWyk3E

[malakai2]

1. I like the idea in principle

That of maintaining a clean list of import-eligible species, rather than our current dirty list of import-ineligible species (the Lacey Act list to which the article refers). I think that's how Australia runs things. My issue is that it focuses on tropical species that are likely to impact south Florida only, by specifically addressing the pet industry. They offer up Burmese pythons as an example of pet releases gone wrong (there are others...lionfish in the GoM and Caribbean, monk parakeets in several cities, etc.), but there is no mention of agricultural imports, food imports, shipping contamination, and whatnot.

Take the case of agricultural imports. Were it not for the lax rules on imports of fish to be farmed, the Mississippi River and several of the larger tributaries would not now be completely overrun with silver and bighead carp. Vast stretches of grassland in the midwest and intermountain west is covered in non-native, "improved" strains of grasses imported to help ranchers increase their profits and stay on their land. With food imports, we've had issues with the northern snakehead as well as the introduction of several non-native pathogens into the wild here in North America. Shipping contamination has given us such wonderful gifts as fire ants, Formosan termites, emerald ash borers, zebra mussels, purple loosestrife, cheatgrass, and plague.

Quite a lot of these worst offenders nationwide aren't the tropical niche specialists that would be truly damaging to select habitats in Florida, Texas, California, and Hawaii, but instead are subtropical or temperate generalists that cause real damage everywhere they settle. And shocker, they aren't introduced by pet enthusiasts. So yeah, if they want to limit ownership of potentially damaging species in areas where such ownership might pose problems, fine. If they want to have a real discussion on limiting environmental impacts of unintended introductions, they need to start taking a lot more shots at a much bigger target.