Big thumbs up! :thumbsup: Most corals listed are easily propagated, the act would put pressure on aquaculture which is only a good thing.
Once a species is listed as endangered, sanctions are levied against anyone who “takes” a specimen. “Taking” is defined as “harassing, harming, pursuing, hunting, shooting, wounding, killing, trapping, capturing, collecting, or any attempt to do these things to a member of the endangered species.” The petitioners believe that they can use the Endangered Species Act to bring legal action against entities emitting CO2 and to force the government to establish marine protected areas.
So idiots that say that they are just after the hobby it's BS.
If listed, the corals would be banned from collection in U.S. waters, banned from import into the United States; interstate shipment would become illegal. Captive propagation would require a federal permit, and corals could only be bought and sold within states. “Effectively, this would end the international trade in stony corals to the United States,” Meyers said in an exclusive interview with CORAL Magazine.
Marshall Meyers is the CEO of the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council no wonder he doesn't like it.
Per Eric Borneman –
This was not some whacko environmental group trying to shut down the trade. It is based on the previous listing of A palmata and A cerviconis in the ESA and applies to corals that may be most threatened or are already threatened by local or global stresses. Each species will be evaluated – some definitely need listing, some probably not yet. But this was a precautionary measure based on increasing mortality and susceptibility to current conditions that will increase in the future. The original petition was submitted by the Center for Biological Diversity (hardly a radical organization) in October and we discussed it here after Amie posted about it. Lots of petitions get submitted to NOAA, but only those NOAA feels have merit go forward. This is not an impending ban on all corals, and most of the species in question are already available by mariculture and aquaculture. Others were never available (Hawaiian endemics, Caribbeans), and for some – most of those common in the trade – I doubt will get listed because they are still not extremely threatened throughout their range. It also leaves about 600+ other species of stony coral available, even if all went through. Plus soft corals, zoanthids, and corallimorphs.
So, of the 82, a handful might have the potential to get ESA listing that were in trade, and of those most are not easily identifiable to species, and import of scleractinia does not require ID to species but only to genus. Sadly, if there were ESA protection for some of these, they would still be collected and sent and enforcement would probably not be able to tell or even keep up with the volume.
My feeling is this trade takes over 2500 species from coral reefs, and there is an uproar that maybe….maybe….we would lose 20 or 30 from wild collection (but totally available by mariculture/aquaculture).
Is this something the hobby should be fighting so we can keep wild collected specimens in tanks? How does that play into the mission statements of all the forums and clubs who state their dedication to the conservation of coral reefs?
