#this is a very real threat and should not be taken lightly

Hello, friends! I’m returning from my hiatus to let people know about something very important. As of today, 2/4/2022, HR 4521 along with the COMPETES Act has been passed (mostly along party lines) through the House of Representatives and is making its way to the senate.

This matters to the fish, herp, bird, and invert communities for one big reason: there’s an amendment in Division H from the Committee of Natural Resources that modifies the Lacey Act. According to this amendment, all non-native species would be classified as injurious by default until later review. There would be an import ban on non-native fish, reptiles, amphibians, and the like unless they are reviewed by the Secretary of the Interior and found to not be an “imminent threat to human beings, to the interests of agriculture, horticulture, forestry, or to wildlife or the wildlife resources of the United States.” They must also be verifiably imported or transported between state lines in “more than minimal quantities” in a 1-year period before the COMPETES Act is passed. Those quantities have not been decided yet.

We’re talking a devastating blanket ban on any species that isn’t well-known and studied enough to be proven non-threatening.

Let’s take Parasphromenus, for instance! The licorice gourami. This is a genus of fish from the peat bogs of Indonesia and Malaysia. They will likely be extinct in the wild within our lifetime, because their habitats are being rapidly deforested and converted into palm oil plantations. The key to the licorice gourami’s survival is captive breeding by dedicated aquarists. (Learn more about the Parasphromenus Project here.) Because there are very few of them left in the wild, a very tiny amount of them are being imported or distributed within the US, and you might only see 1 or 2 of a given species being moved around. These would not meet minimal quantities and would be banned. Goodbye, licorice gouramis.

And here we have spiny eels, what got me into fishkeeping. These two, Charlie and Dennis Reyneelds, are my Macrognathus aral, or the striped peacock eel. There are a good 13 different eels classified as peacock eels, and they all get lumped into 4 (usually incorrect) species in the US pet trade. Even with those inflated numbers, not many are being brought into the USA. If you’re extremely lucky, you might find a couple skinny ones hiding in the gravel at Petsmart. Say goodbye to any spiny eel that isn’t the well-known fire eel. (Fire eels do terribly in captivity and need about a 1500+ gallon tank as fully grown adults, but anyways.)

This will affect many, many species that are infrequently imported. At best, they’ll just become in the USA and continuing to sustain populations in the wild. At worst, they will be driven to extinction in the wild and lose their base of conservationists within the USA. Not only is this a hideous overstep of the Lacey Act–we should not have a “whitelist” of non-native organisms that can legally exist in the USA–but it is absolutely disastrous to threatened species being held afloat by passionate individuals. Unless you want the only fish available to be what you could find in an old Walmart fish section, please reach out to your senators. This bill has already passed the House and is moving to a vote in the Senate.

Find out who your senator is (a quick google will do this), go to their Contact page, and send them an email, a message, dial their phone, send them a fax. Whatever you do, get into contact and ask them to please oppose HR 4521′s Presumptive Prohibition on Importation amendment to the Lacey Act. If you want to write a long plea on how it will affect conservation efforts, go for it! But if you aren’t sure what to write, here’s what I sent to mine:

Dear Senator _______,

In regards to the America COMPETES Act, HR 4521, Section 71102 (d): I’m a fishkeeping hobbyist dedicated to preserving species threatened by habitat loss. To do this, I rely on imported specimens of rare endangered fish to create stable populations within captivity. Because these fish have dwindling ranges in the wild, they are sparsely imported, and already near-impossible to find.

According to the amendments proposed to the Lacey Act by the Committee on Natural Resources, these species would be classified by default as injurious and illegal to import or transport across state lines. The exception would be those imported in a to-be-announced “minimum quantity” within 1-year before the passing of the bill. Covid-borne logistics slowdowns meant that importations of fish from 2020 onward have been at an all-time low, as you cannot risk livestock getting stuck in transport and dying. Especially with endangered fish, it defeats the purpose of importation with the intent of preservation.

A “whitelist” is dangerous lip service meant to soothe those worried about invasive species, at the cost of species extinction and ruined conservation efforts. One single entity should not be able to completely prohibit harmless species unless they are known to be a hazard to the US. There are thousands of fish species with no chance of survival outside of aquaria once their wild populations are wiped out by spreading agricultural and development threats. Please, for the sake of wildlife diversity and those of us who strive to preserve it, eliminate the Section 71102 (d) amendment on Presumptive Prohibition to the Lacey Act in HR 4521. The fate of thousands of threatened species depend on it.