U.S. Urged to Tighten Data Standards for Aquarium Fish Imports

WASHINGTON— The Heart for Organic Range urged the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service currently to demand and report species-amount info for all ornamental fish introduced into the country for the aquarium trade. As today’s letter notes, preserving and disclosing responsible species information and facts from the countrywide database would assist conservation actions for fish threatened by overexploitation.

More than 387 million decorative fish had been imported more than a current 6-yr period of time for the U.S. aquarium trade with out any disclosure of the species’ names, in accordance to a Center examination of the Law Enforcement Management Information and facts Procedure databases.

The LEMIS database presents essential wildlife import and export information and facts employed by researchers, conservationists, and the govt to preserve biodiversity, stop the distribute of pathogens and ensure animal welfare. But hundreds of thousands of LEMIS entries for decorative fish deficiency species names, and fish are occasionally identified merely as “tropical fish,” “marine” or “freshwater.”

“Some fish qualified by the aquarium trade are very imperiled, and we just cannot defend these species if we don’t even know how a lot of are coming into the region,” mentioned Dianne DuBois, a scientist at the Heart for Organic Diversity. “We want extra details so we can choose motion when we see a issue. The govt demands to need a species title for just about every particular person specimen, or traders shouldn’t be permitted to bring them in.”

About 2 billion live decorative fish are traded globally every 12 months, and the United States is the world’s major shopper of decorative fish. Some species of ornamental fish have absent extinct in sure areas or are declining in population, in aspect simply because of trade. But without correct and comprehensive data, it is impossible to identify the whole extent of the U.S. trade’s damage to a species.

Species-level identification would assist tell conservation steps for fish this sort of as wild-caught specimens of Betta cracens, a betta fish observed only in a solitary freshwater swamp forest in Sumatra, Indonesia. The species was assessed as critically endangered by the Intercontinental Union for Conservation of Character in 2019. Nevertheless Betta cracens is readily available for sale in the United States, despite the fact that it is unclear how many of these fish are remaining imported to the United States each year.

“U.S. buyers might be unwittingly contributing to the extinction crisis by snagging lovely but really imperiled fish for their tanks at residence,” reported DuBois. “Without this facts, we’re burying our heads in the sand fairly than using initiative to get rid of the United States’ position in the extinction crisis.”

Some aquarium fish species are also listed domestically beneath the Endangered Species Act and internationally below the Conference on International Trade in Endangered Species. Species names are necessary to guarantee trade is authorized less than these rules. LEMIS was designed in aspect to assistance meet the reporting and conservation prerequisites of wildlife rules, and without the need of species-specific information and facts, the United States cannot meet these goals.