Quote:
Originally Posted by naesco
It is a mistake to say that the problems are created by the environment and to blame others.
The fish/coral industry is a problem and a serious one because they ignore the problem.
There are many examples including importing fish and coral that has no reasonable chance of success.
We should not be bringing in any wild fish or coral where aquacultured are available. The mining of live rock must also stop.
If we ignore the problem we will be left with trading brown frags amongst eachother.
If the species on the list are deemed threatened we as hobbyists should be the first to fully support the legislation!!
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The problem is that there is next to nothing actually known about the population status of most of the corals on the list. They don't actually know if they're threatened or not, they're guessing. The other problem is that they're saying they're threatened because climate change is destroying reefs. Well, everything that lives on a reef is threatened because of climate change, why are they limiting it to these 83 species? They only plan to list them as threatened, they have no plan to further study, or actively engage in their conservation in any way. A legal designation as threatened without a plan to do something about it is useless and punitive. Also, climate change has nothing to do with the aquarium hobby, whether we grow and trade maricultured specimens or not, the reefs are going to continue to bleach. There are further issues with the fact that they've listed species from all the major aquarium genuses (geni?); I'd pay you 100 bucks if you could find me a US customs agent who could (or would bother to take the time) to differentiate two different species of acropora, many of whom can only be ID'd by examining their naked skeletons under a microscope. This legislation would halt the US trade in all acropora, all montipora, and all euphyllia, to name a few.
The point of this is for the Center for Biological Diversity to make some statement about global warming. It has nothing to do with the conservation of truly threatened coral species.