Say “No!” to HR 669
└ posted on Thursday, 16 April 2009, by Novil
Rick Griffin, the creator of the webcomic Housepets!, has written an interesting article about the proposed U.S. bill HR 669 which seeks to ban all non-native species from the United States. If you live in the U.S. and think that banning hamsters might not really stimulate the economy, don’t want to have another personal right taken away by the nanny state, or oppose the conviction of a static nature whose current state has to be preserved at all costs, the website NO HR 669 offers more information how you can get active against the bill.
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I shall take a look to be sure. Over the past 8 years I’ve been more attentive to bills that could effect our country.
BTW about today’s strip: I hope the squirrel escapes, because how can anyone eat someone they know?
They want to ban non-native animals? That’s insane! If it was passed , that would mean I’d lose my rabbit and my mother would have to give up her five dogs. They’re queensland heelers, an Australian breed. That resolution would be just another nail in the economy’s coffin…
They should only ban animals that negatively effect the ecology of the US. But any animal capable of that would be extremely difficult to get rid of. Getting rid of house pets that aren’t native would be asinine and mean as there would be practically nothing to choose from as far as having a pet goes.
I’ve had a look at the full text of the bill (http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h669/text) and I agree that this bill is probably not a good idea, but not for the reasons stated in Mr. Griffin’s article. The bill specifically exempts several common pet and agriculture species from regulation and give the Secretary of the Interior the authority to decide what should be prohibited and allowed. I can see what the sponsors of the bill are going for (keep out things like emerald ash borer), but this seems like a VERY unwieldy way to go about it and probably would be nearly impossible to enforce. And, as noted above, there is no real reason for the government to be sticking its filthy paws into this issue and it is not at all clear whether a measure like this has any backing in science. The real reason to be against this bill is because its stupid, not because the government might criminalize ferret possession (which seems pretty unlikely, anyway).
Not having read the bill, it seems like an unenforceable way to legislate against a problem with better solutions(I would vote to change it to “Ban import of non-native species without a permit”). My issue, therfore, is less philosophical than it is pratical.
I’m sorry, but after your recent piece about raccoons imported into Germany, and finding out what problems that has caused there, I find this position of yours to be untenable.
Maybe you’ve never seen the destruction that is caused by imported species. In the US, we have gypsy moths, European starlings, zebra mussels, and purple loosestrife (a plant) causing huge ecological damage, to name a few. Or ask an Australian about the impact of imported rabbits there.
While the idea is good, I doubt the law would work. Still, it is worth having.
@Douglas Graebner:
That pretty much is what this bill is, except that some species will be always allowed and some species will be never allowed.
The bill already has provisions for commonly domesticated animals (ie cats, dogs, rabbits, etc.) All others are evaluated by the Fish and Wildlife Commission to determine whether or not they pose a threat to native species. Invasive imported species can cause huge amounts of damage. The Emerald Ash Borer and Gypsy months (as mentioned above) pose an existential threat to the foresests in my state and require spraying huge swaths of forests with pesticides to contain the threat. Imported amphibians (like the African clawed frog) can drive native aquatic life nearly to extinction (African clawed frogs are already banned from import to many states). To pretend that this is not a problem which needs to be addressed is naive. Another good thing about this legislation is that it can levy penalties against ships/planes which accidentally transfer non-native species. This is good because most species transplantation is done unintentionally; until now, the ships/planes that imported the animals (intentional or not) paid no penalties. Therefore there was no incentive for them to protect against introducing potentially invasive species. The gubment is not trying to take your dogs away. It is trying to preserve our already threatened wild places from another human-caused (and human solvable) problem.
In the Great Lakes there is much difficulty with non-native species like zebra mussells, gobies, Eurasian ruffies displacing native species and causing problems. Asian flying carp have made their way up the Mississippi and threaten the Great Lakes fisheries. The carp presently in our fisheries are non-native as well. Certain varieties of exotic fish, like the snakehead eel, threaten native fisheries. Pythons turned loose in the Everglades are going after aligators. Russian boars have escaped from a MI game ranch and are raising havoc in some parts of the state. Due to the rough times, some exotic pet owners simple turn their critters loose to fend for themselves. Is this acceptable? Owners of exotic pets should police themselves better.
Russian boars already run free in North Carolina – imported and released years ago for hunting.
Let’s talk about non-native species – rabbits in Australia? English Sparrows in the US? Cane toads in Australia? Africanised bees everywhere?
Zebra mussels and various other aquatic species have already been mentioned – the Amercan blue gill was imported to Japan some years ago by a Japanese prince (possibly even the current Emperor, i thnk) who was a marine biologist. They are now causing almost as much trouble for the native Japanese species as koi are for American fish.
I’m not saying this bill is a good thing – being it’s written by politicians whose constituents have given them to understand that Something Must Be Done and not by people who actually have some idea How Things Really Work, it’s almost inevitable that it would be.
But some controls on importing animals (and plants – i live in the middle of the kudzu belt and somewhat north of the water hyacinth belt) must be maintained.
For instance have you been bitten by a lady bug lately? The native orange-shelled lady bugs don’t bite. The Japanese lady bugs – with yellowish/greenish shells – *do* bite humans. It’s not dangerous, but it does hurt some. And they force out the native bugs.
“…the ideology of a static nature whose current state has to be preserved at all costs…” Are you kidding me?? This continent is already overrun with invasive exotic species, and more arrive every month. As an ecological restorationist who has worked in the field for twenty years, I’ve seen firsthand what invasive species do to natural areas, and I have to deal with the consequences every day. And globally, exotic species are the Number Two cause of extinction, second only to habitat loss. As for the exotic pet industry, it badly needs much stricter regulation. The Gambian rat is a good example — not only did it bring monkeypox into this country (and we were just lucky that disease didn’t get loose in the wild), but the rat itself has gotten loose in the wild, as was inevitable, and now poses a very serious threat to the Everglades. Is this website going to campaign in favor of unrestricted importation of exotic species and denigrate the protection of native natural areas as “static nature”?
As for Rick Griffin, his article includes at least one statement that is completely and blatantly untrue: “The fact of the matter is that all detrimentally invasive species are already illegal to own.”
Oh yeah? Tell that to the beleaguered land managers in the Everglades, who are dealing with legal snakes that are being released into the wild and are having extremely and “detrimentally” bad impacts on the ecology there. And that’s just one example.
“Is this website going to campaign in favor of unrestricted importation of exotic species and denigrate the protection of native natural areas as “static nature”?”
No. Of course there are examples of invasive species which had a very negative effect to the local ecosystem, especially to the one of islands.
Besides that it shouldn’t surprise anyone that someone who is writing a comic strip about a pet raccoon (one of the most successful invasive species of the world) doesn’t oppose the ownership of exotic pets and isn’t of the opinon that the introduction of non-native species is always bad. Prof. Josef H. Reichholf states that we would have less than half of the biodiversity in Central Europe without the introduction of new species after the last Ice Age (not always by man, but also by natural migration).
I can understand banning invasive species that would disrupt ecosystems and such, but just plain banning non-native species? Is this pet-racism?
Hmm, I think I have a good idea for a new strip about this subject…
If all exotic pets were guaranteed to remain pets and not escape or be released into the wild, there wouldn’t be such debates about the exotic pet industry. Unfortunately, exotic pets do escape and are released, and they can cause big problems when they do, per the Gambian rat, which is just getting started in its invasion of Florida. I don’t know about Central Europe, though I’d bet there are environmentalists there who take issue with Professor Reichholf. But I am familiar with what invasive exotics are doing on this continent, and the impacts and economic costs are far greater than most people realize. One place to get some idea of the scope of the problem is this: http://www.invasive.org/species.cfm
I apologize for an error in my previous comment. I meant to say that I’d bet there are environmentalists who don’t agree with Hohmann and Michler about the impact of raccoons on German biodiversity.
Meanwhile, here is the abstract of a paper by four Japanese researchers about raccoons in Japan.
“Raccoon Procyon lotor has become feral in 42/47 prefectures in Japan through irresponsible keeping and reproduction, resulting in remarkable increase especially in agricultural- and urban area rich in foods. Its action range is very wide, showing active fertility and growth. It is omnivorous to predate crops, fruits, wild plants, furthermore native species including Japan crayfish Cambaroides japonicus and Ezo-salamander Hynobius retardatus. Wide area eradication plan based on biological data is indispensable.”
I have not read the bill in question, but something does need to be done. It may be that adequate enforcement of existing statutes is enough. I have to admit ignorance on this topic. I do know that invasive foreign species are a problem worldwide. Wholesale capture of threatened species to feed the North American and European pet trades is also a very real problem. Destruction of coral reefs to provide crushed coral for the aquarium trade is getting out of hand. Don’t be so quick to condemn something you haven’t bothered to understand, because you want a pet that’s different from neighbors pets.
Something needs to be done, but to compile everything into a single law seems unwieldy and ineffective. Years of study are required before any conclusions can be made as to whether a species of plant or animal would be an ecological problem. Species that could thrive in one state and become a problem could be unable to survive in the wild at all in another.
This should not be a federal law. This should be left up to the various bureaus, state organizations, and certain federal organizations to enforce. There should be a list of species banned from entry, not a list of species allowed (yes, I know the bill will have both, but it doesn’t need one if it has the other). The end use of privately imported species should be of no consequence to the government so long as the species are not illegal to own.
Enforce existing laws better, put into place restrictions as to what cannot be imported, give state and local agencies funds to study and develop their own guide lines for what isn’t allowed. Increase number of programs to remove ecologically damaging invasive species
As a side note, and as a random opinion: We are animals. Smarter and highly sociable animals, but in the end we still are. It is noble of us to recognize this and try to rise above our base instincts. But in the end, the way we affect the planet is like any other dominant animal, only we’ve managed to be really good at impacting. We are fighting a losing battle to save some endangered species, and rightly so as we are responsible for many of them being endangered. However, extinction IS a part of nature and we are going to lose some species no matter what. We will always have an impact, and we can minimize it only to a certain point. The question is, just what are we willing to give up and expend to “restore” the world, realizing that it is constantly changing, and can NEVER go back to a pre human, or even pre industrial state.
MadlizardX — I entirely agree with you about the need for more inforcement of existing regulations. But if Ohio decides that a certain species is safe to import and Indiana decides it isn’t, is the theory that the species in question will very kindly stay out of Indiana? Won’t happen, as we’ve seen already The decision of certain southern states to allow the importation of certain exotic fish for aquatic farms ended up meaning, as was entirely predictable, that the fish got loose and are now heading up north to infest states that never agreed to the deal. The same thing has happened with plants like multiflora rose. The very point of invasive exotic species is that they spread. And with climate change underway, they are spreading better than ever before.
Just to clarify, I’m not saying and wouldn’t say that HR 669 is perfect as written. But state-level efforts to deal with invasive species would be very unlikely to succeed. For one thing, states are even more susceptible to lobbying pressure from interest groups like the nursery industry. It took forever for some states to outlaw the sale of purple loosestrife, one of the most notorious invasive plants, because of nursery industry pressure. And that pressure was understandable. The nursery people could make money by selling purple loosestrife while not paying any of the costs as it spread and infested wetlands. The taxpayers and landowners were stuck with the bills to control infestations (or try to). Nice deal for the nursery industry.
I realize that invasive species could care less about a law, and I admit that it would be a very real possibility, nay, it would happen that an invasive species would jump from one state to the next. The point I’m trying to make is that it makes no sense for a species to be band from the entire country if it can only survive in a mere handful of states. If a species is adapted to an extreme desert climate or an arctic climate, how well would it do in Ohio? If federal regulation is truly needed then the bill should include provisions for allowing states to voice their opinions as to which plants and animals it want’s in its border and which it does not. Hell, break the nation down into different management zones and decide what isn’t allowed within those zones. Add in buffer zones between the major zones to prevent highly mobile species from crossing zones.
My biggest problem with this law is that it seems like adding species to the okay list and adding to the banned list would be long and arduous processes which the average person would have a difficult time getting their say in. What’s good for a few areas isn’t good for all areas, and the idea of leaving it to big government to decide seems absurd considering some of the wildlife management snafu’s they’ve committed and long wait times it takes for them to get off their withers and actually do something.
The real underlying problem is that the major economic and ecological costs of the invasive alien species already in the U.S., costs which have been very roughly estimated at $138 billion per year, aren’t known to the general public. So our policies are weak, our enforcement is inadequate, and control programs are pathetically underfunded. It will take coordinated, determined efforts to stop the invasives already here from spreading much further. I could list a dozen bad invasives which have been spreading in my state in just the past decade. I’m battling some of them myself.
In New Zealand, which also has major existing invasive-exotic problems, the national policy toward proposed new exotic introductions has changed from “innocent until proven guilty” to “guilty until proven innocent.” Makes sense to me.
And from today’s newslist, here’s another example of a basic story that is all too familiar.
“Nile monitor lizards, which can grow up to 6 feet long, are plaguing the west coast of the Sunshine State. The non-indigenous animals, which were introduced to the area as pets, are causing potentially deadly roadblocks at an airport and threatening the survival of native species.”