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Originally Posted by asylumdown
The ESA is a US piece of legislation. However, I'm not sure how ESA and CITES interact with each other. If the inclusion of these species on the US ESA somehow gets them uplisted on CITES, then it would affect all countries who have signed that treaty (Canada being one).
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All these species are currently CITES listed. What the US does with respect to their own regulations would have little impact on CITES. CITES approach seems to be one that their decisions are based on data. All signatory countries to CITES would still have to follow the CITES regulations and not those of the ESA.
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In either case, it would likely put many of the coral wholesalers that Canadian retailers get their stock from out of business.
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Nope.
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Clownfish are the most popular aquarium fish globally. They're still going to be collected for every other market (and the Japanese market really can't be underestimated). It will take the pressure off wild populations, but it won't eliminate it, and since next to nothing is known about how the aquarium trade is really affecting global clownfish populations, there's no way of knowing whether or not shutting down the US clownfish market will even help. What it will do for sure though, is force all the US based commercial scale clown-breeding facilities and hobbyists - which have been world leaders on the boundaries on captive fish breeding and have zero impact on wild populations - to shut down and destroy their entire breeding stock. I can't think of a more perfect example of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
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This proposal is for A. percula only and seven species of damsels/chromis including green chromis (C. viridis). It will not affect any other clownfish species so by that, A. ocellaris will still be legal to import (for now).