Exotic Invaders

Although nobody is sure how or when, African Clawed Frogs have managed to take control of Lily Pond in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. The frogs are extremely tough and rather large. By this time they have eaten nearly every other thing that used to live in or near the pond; the menu including native fish, turtles, other frogs and even birds. Not just preying on them, the frogs have completely obliterated the other species' populations in the pond. Not to be deterred, once the clawed frogs were the only things left, they began preying on each other. So far as anyone can tell, they haven't migrated out of the pond yet. And aside from trapping and removing some of the frogs, little has been done about them. Much like an experiment in a laboratory, the pond is isolated, its environment relatively stable, and no new elements were introduced. It illustrates how a single species, once kept as a pet, can invade an environment that it is not native to and completely destroy it.

Here in Idaho, those same African Clawed Frogs can be purchased for your aquarium. There is nothing between the states that regulates the sale and trade of pets. What is illegal in one state can be purchased in a store one state away. Although it is illegal, many pets that are banned in a given location are simply purchased elsewhere and transported back. Species that have already invaded and caused irreparable harm in certain natural systems continue to be sold unrestricted and right next to other species that have not caused a problem yet, but bear equal ability to. Clearly the system is flawed and suffers from a lack of cohesion and enforcement.

It was written by a law student, Robert Brown, in 2006 that there are two potential ways to address this problem. One way involves amending the Lacy Act again to use a “clean list” approach rather than a so-called “dirty list.” What this means is; instead of what we currently have (a list of species known to be harmful) which tends to be functional after the fact, adopt a method by which importers would have to prove first that a species won't be harmful before it could be imported into and potentially harm the U.S. This would then have to be followed by the individual states adopting uniform regulations on the subject of what species are banned and how they should be handled. The other method would be to pass a single federal law that regulates pet trade and allows the system to be made uniform all at once. The latter solution Brown favored in his note, stating that it was the easiest path and could further be improved by also adopting the “clean list” approach to imports and by creating a national permit system. (Similar to Florida's system by which individual's must obtain a permit to possess one of three classes of animals.)

Three years later, we have HR669. This, the Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act, seems to be birthed right out of Brown's solution. It proposes to create a “risk assessment process” for importing wildlife. Unlike in Brown's ideal solution, it would utilize more of a dual list approach, creating both a “clean” and a “dirty” list -or in this case “approved” and “unapproved.” It takes the responsibility for deciding what species should be owned as pets from the individual state and places it in the hands of the Secretary of the Interior. He, then, would decide which species are approved, and therefore legal to import and possess, and which are unapproved. The unapproved species are, naturally, illegal to import or own and would carry heavy fines and jail time for violators of the ban.

There are two major flaws in the plan. One; the proposal is not just directed at imported animals, as it seems to imply, but rather will apply to any species not native to the United States prior to the arrival of Columbus. This means species that are not imported at all, but are bred here in the U.S. could become banned. In which case, such creatures would have to be rounded up and “destroyed” being as how there is no turning away at the customs checkpoint for them. Two; they forgot the nationwide permit system. Simply banning a species all over the States takes away the fairness. The only part of the state-level system that does make sense is that individual states' laws are customized for their environments and their residents. People living in a state where their pet cannot survive in the wild should be able to have that pet, given that they will not take it to a state where it could cause a problem. This is where a national permit and licensing system would shine. Certain permits could be denied in states where the animal in question would be problematic. This would allow us to have our freedom of choice in pets, so long as we are willing to go through the steps of obtaining a permit and licensing our pets.