From Tarantulas to Aquariums: Ethics and Sustainability

[BlueLineAquaticsSC]

On 2/18/2022 at 9:36 PM, Anon said:

Woah! I had no idea! Thank you for your insight. The book sounds awesome; I'll check it out tonight. 

I listened to the audio version myself, the narration for this book was also very good. Plus the author travels with Heiko Bleher several times in the book which is awesome.

[OnlyGenusCaps]

There are a many very well stated thoughts here already.  I won't try to rehash them.  As always, I love how this forum has managed to stay civil when discussing a potentially charged topic (under the watchful eye of Zenzo, like a benevolent eye of Sauron 🤪).

First off, as I think has been well pointed out to our original inquisitor, @Anon, there are fish that run the gambit: from those that can't be bred in captivity and so are exclusively taken from the wild, to those that are fully self-sustained via captive breeding, and even species which have legitimately been saved from extinction by hobbyist keepers.  I think tarantulas are challenging because of their life history, with the males not persisting as long as the females.  In concept, it should be possible to breed tarantulas in captivity, though running a few numbers for fun, it looks like you'd have to have a decent number on hand, and fairly high production.  This also likely makes them a bit more vulnerable in the wild to low population numbers - something called the allee effect in population biology, if anyone cares.

Few fish have such extreme life histories, and most of the barriers to captive breeding are learning what induces breeding, or simple the size of the enclosures required.  For the latter group, it may never be economically viable to breed in captivity on a commercial scale (unless the demand is high enough to make it economically worthwhile - but that could take a lot).  For the former, getting fish in the hands of curious and experienced breeders is what unlocks the means to sustainability in captive breeding.  Additionally, most fish species also have high potential rates of reproduction, meaning they can tolerate fairly high rates of loss by predators, or collection.  Of course this is not invariably true.  When numbers are low, and demand is high the results can be tragic. 

I suppose this brings us to poaching and legislation.  I have a few responses to, well, really just one section from @BlueLineAquaticsSC.  Please note, I am responding to a single place where we might slightly disagree, or not actually, I don't know.  However, the vast majority of what BLASC said, I completely and fully agree with.  It just doesn't seem worth going through point-by-point with all of the places where we agree.  That would take some time for such an thorough and insightful reply as they provided.

On 2/18/2022 at 7:31 PM, BlueLineAquaticsSC said:

First off you mentioned poaching and I completely agree that poaching isn’t something to take lightly and can have negative impacts. Poaching is specifically the illegal killing, collecting, or transporting of animals, plants, etc. Collecting wild caught fish is often done by businesses and hobbiest alike and can be done legally, and the important part of that where ethics is concerned means it is regulated. Animal laws actually have some of the strictest legislation. I’m a law enforcement officer and know more  about the law than the average joe without a law degree, and I have never come across a law as fascinating as the Lacey Act, which basically states of it was done illegally anywhere, it’s illegal here.

Here I just want to point out that this is technically true, but there is a bit of supposition that illegal is equivalent to immoral.  I would suggest that though this is often true, in the case of unjust or overly burdensome laws this ceases to be the case.  Now, I'm not trying to get into a discussion about where people want to draw the line on that.  But, I do want to point to a few cases (I know, I know, many cases could be posited to provide evidence to an opposing view, but here we go anyhow) where species of have literally been saved by hobbyists while the native populations have gone extinct.  In some cases reintroduction has even happened.  I know these are rare and this is the worst possible case for those that do conservation.  But my point is that in several of these cases the populations in captivity were "illegal" entirely because the founding stock was "poached" according to the country of origin.  Had the US or EU decided to enforce, several of these species would no longer be with us. 

This then also proposed changes to the Lacey Act.  These changes are going to make not just import, but interstate transport of most rare species in the hobby illegal.  This means you wouldn't be able to move states with nearly any uncommon species, ever.  These changes are going to unintentionally make criminals of potentially millions of Americans.  People whose morality has not changed.  Indeed, bichirs are very unlikely to be immediately whitelisted because not enough are imported (which means morally responsible practices that minimize impact on wild populations will be punished).  And again, BLASC may or may not agree with me.  I don't know.  But, I wanted to respectfully share these thoughts as Anon had requested various thoughts on the topic. 

I have been surprised, and a little disappointed TBH, that more people with large platforms have not spread the word about these potential up coming changes, given the massive impact they will have on this hobby.  Perhaps they feel it is political to do so, but this is not advocacy for a party or politician.  Indeed it is apolitical enough to advocate for your own hobby that even 501(c)(3) nonprofits which are banned from political endorsements can do so.  I guess I just don't understand the hesitancy. 

If this law passes, the entire conversation we are all having here will also fundamentally change, as nearly all of the most active members on this forum will at least be flirting with violating federal law that will come with steep punishments.  But will it become immoral to trade fish with a friend in another state simply because the FWS has not gotten around to evaluating the species because there is so little demand? 

I'll end by saying that this legislation is an amendment on a bill that looks to pass unless it is specifically removed.  If hobbyists do nothing, we will only have ourselves to blame for the outcome.  I for one would like to keep our laws as inline with our morals as possible.  If anyone is curious please feel free to DM me. 

[Anon]

On 2/19/2022 at 6:33 AM, OnlyGenusCaps said:

If this law passes, the entire conversation we are all having here will also fundamentally change, as nearly all of the most active members on this forum will at least be flirting with violating federal law that will come with steep punishments. 

You know, the tarantula hobby has some similarities here, too. A few years ago it became illegal to import or cross state lines with certain species of the genus Poecilotheria, particularly those found in Sri Lanka. Big online retailers won't ship them, but they're still very easy to obtain. And as mentioned before, another species was openly poached and introduced to the hobby with seemingly no consequence. There was a post on the forum Arachnoboards with some semi-official confirmation that these laws weren't made for hobbyists; I'm having trouble finding it, but I'll post it here when I do. 

 

I highly suspect the Lacey Act will be similar in that way. We likely won't see hobbyists being prosecuted for what they already own. If state-to-state transportation is truly restricted, the hobby will have to adapt. I don't know enough about this hobby to tell you what that might look like.

 

The posts here are making me wonder how many wild fish are actually imported. Everybody here is saying they don't keep wild fish, but I know at least one of the local stores here is almost exclusively stocked with wild-caught fish (The Wet Spot in Portland). Some of these readily breedable fish are still massively being imported. Regulation seems inevitable from my point of view.

[OnlyGenusCaps]

On 2/19/2022 at 9:58 AM, Anon said:

You know, the tarantula hobby has some similarities here, too. A few years ago it became illegal to import or cross state lines with certain species of the genus Poecilotheria, particularly those found in Sri Lanka.

In 2016 there were amendments made to the Lacey Act that essentially banned salamanders and newts as pets.  It banned 201 species.  It ended that as a hobby.  You may notice that aquarium shops still don't have them, and they were at one time highly available.  Here however, there was a clear danger.  Bd (the chrytrid fungus) that infects and kills frogs is in the US already, but Bsal, which is carried by and kills salamanders and newts, is not.  The US is the global center of diversity of salamanders.  That trade, and that hobby had to end to save the vast majority of our native species.  As much as that change impacted me personally, when there is a direct and clear threat, there really is no discussion in my mind.  I said goodbye and moved on.

On 2/19/2022 at 9:58 AM, Anon said:

There was a post on the forum Arachnoboards with some semi-official confirmation that these laws weren't made for hobbyists; I'm having trouble finding it, but I'll post it here when I do. 

 

I highly suspect the Lacey Act will be similar in that way. We likely won't see hobbyists being prosecuted for what they already own.

So, I do not wish to ruffle feathers around here.  I have too much respect for this community and the ethic of civility it espouses.  Therefore, I will simply say this: After speaking with a lawyer friend who councils nonprofits on the impacts of legislative actions (though a somewhat different arena), and to a friend who is well established at US Fish and Wildlife, I do not share your optimism about this current amendment.  Nor do I share your willingness to passively accept the outcome.  However, if it does pass, I 100% hope that you are correct, and that all of my concerns prove to be unfounded.  I'll leave it at that and say no more on this topic out of respect for the guidelines here, which I value. 

[BlueLineAquaticsSC]

On 2/19/2022 at 9:33 AM, OnlyGenusCaps said:

There are a many very well stated thoughts here already.  I won't try to rehash them.  As always, I love how this forum has managed to stay civil when discussing a potentially charged topic (under the watchful eye of Zenzo, like a benevolent eye of Sauron 🤪).

 

I suppose this brings us to poaching and legislation.  I have a few responses to, well, really just one section from @BlueLineAquaticsSC.  Please note, I am responding to a single place where we might slightly disagree, or not actually, I don't know.  However, the vast majority of what BLASC said, I completely and fully agree with.  It just doesn't seem worth going through point-by-point with all of the places where we agree.  That would take some time for such an thorough and insightful reply as they provided.

Here I just want to point out that this is technically true, but there is a bit of supposition that illegal is equivalent to immoral.  I would suggest that though this is often true, in the case of unjust or overly burdensome laws this ceases to be the case.  

I would agree with you here, I don't believe legislation and morality are equivalents. In my line of work I run across situations all the time where people break the law but have not done anything, in my opinion, ethically wrong, and likewise where people have done things I find to be immoral and yet were well within the confines of the law. Laws can be blankets that cover large and our actions within them are often more specific. As @Torrey mentioned there are many people across the world who live lives completely foreign to us and the laws we make can be nonsensical and even detrimental to them. 

I may have painted too broad of a stroke with my original comment about poaching and really was only trying to point out that wild caught and poaching are not equivalent. Laws do need to change as culture, technology, the environment, and many over factors change. Also I have found that not every law needs to be upheld every time, in my state it is even written into the legislation that an officer can use there own discretion as to whether or not they will charge someone when they commit a crime (this may be the case in every state but Im not very familiar with state law outside of SC, but this is certainly practiced by LEO's everywhere). I recently was combing through my state laws and found a law still in effect written in the 1770's that states if anyone, finds a dead animal anywhere, they must immediately bury or burn it, the fine to not do so was a whopping $5 (which is of course from the time that an acre of land was around $1).

[Torrey]

I am going to use a very real example to demonstrate why I am not seeing the Lacey Act as doing as much potential damage as I have heard our LFS [and many others] have understandably voiced. I may be wrong, I don't feel in my gut that I am, and the reality is there is no way to truly know in advance. 

Where I live there are a lot of laws on the books, including one that required "every individual, upon fulfilling their sentence, is to be provided with a horse and a hunting rifle when released from the jail"

There is no money available, nor are there any hunting rifles or horses kept near the jail to distribute to prisoners upon their release. 

When the Army Corps of Engineers designed the sand dune "dikes" to protect highway 12 from erosion on Ocracoke Island on the outer banks of NC, the stipulation was included that the federal government would oversee maintaining the dikes, as "the island has few methods to generate income and the islanders would be hard pressed to raise the funds to cover the maintenance". Last time I visited, the state of NC and the county of Hyde were maintaining "highway 12".

There are several political reasons [that I am not going to touch] for the ammendment to be tacked on to the legislation. 

 

And.

Our country has a fairly extensive history of passing laws for political reasons, and then not agreeing on how to fund the enforcement of the laws.

I simply can't see the passing of the law amendment, as currently written, getting the funding necessary to implement the law. 

Also, when it comes to law, whichever law gives the citizen the greatest protection has jurisdiction. If lfs and pet shop owners talk to state representatives about the problem and the number of employees who will be laid off, states will write laws to protect the businesses, owners, and employees.

It might get messy for a bit, I tend to agree with Cory that elected representatives need to hear solutions and not just complaints about what is wrong with the current language. So we will see protections put in place at the federal level if people contact elected reps and propose alternative language, or we will see laws passed at local levels to protect businesses. 

Regardless, I don't see how the funding for enforcement will come about.