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Potential new EU legislation - thoughts?

G

gex23

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10 Jan 2011
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This is a potential new legislation that could have wide ranging effects for many hobbies, from reptile keeping, through to planted tanks. Basically the EU is wanting to impose either a 'blacklist' of restricted plant and animal species, or, a 'whitelist' of permitted plant / animal species.

The worrying thing is the potential for a pan European ban, and so what could possibly thrive in and affect another countries ecosystem could be applied to us here in the UK. Here is a link to the consultation objective : http://ec.europa.eu/environment/consultations/invasive_aliens.htm, which contains a link to a questionnaire, where you can send them your views on the subject.

What are your thoughts?

Anthony.
 
The worrying bit would be a the list of permitted species. Look at what happened in the hobby in Australia and New Zealand - a new species can't go on until it's been added and that process takes ages, if it happens at all!

A better solution would be licensing any species with wide temperature tolerance (fish and plants) or any large fish that are likely to be dumped but that would be a far from easy or ideal system either.

Luis the problem is not most plants, it might be just one that flowers or copes with the climate, or that takes hold as our climate changes as people are not careful how they dispose of it. There are a few threads on here about introduced pests and most of those people thought wouldn't survive or wouldn't pose a risk and now they do.
 
just shows again how letting another country make laws to cover us is a bad idea.
 
Another big problem with this potential legislation is that they are considering a white list approach, as Ed mentioned. This would basically mean that things left off would be banned, both plants AND none native animals (including fish). There's a very high chance that in the begining a lot of species wouldn't be on the list purely because nobody would have thought to put them on, meaning that many plants, fish etc we keep would become banned purely because they're not on the list. Ok, bread and butter tropical species like neons etc may get put on a whitelist pretty quickly, but how long do you think it will take them to add lesser known uncommon species?

Now when i filled in this consultation I ticked the box on question 1 saying NO EU ban on the trade or keeping of alien species, because I firmly believe that legislation of this nature should be left to NATIONAL governments, not the muppets in the EU. However our best hope is probably that they go with the black list option, and further hope that they allow the black lists to be drawn up on a country by country basis.

The worst thing that any of us can do though is to not fill that in. The antis most certainly will, and do you really want THEIR opinion heard without ours to counter it?

Ade
 
Ed Seeley said:
The worrying bit would be a the list of permitted species. Look at what happened in the hobby in Australia and New Zealand - a new species can't go on until it's been added and that process takes ages, if it happens at all!

A better solution would be licensing any species with wide temperature tolerance (fish and plants) or any large fish that are likely to be dumped but that would be a far from easy or ideal system either.

Luis the problem is not most plants, it might be just one that flowers or copes with the climate, or that takes hold as our climate changes as people are not careful how they dispose of it. There are a few threads on here about introduced pests and most of those people thought wouldn't survive or wouldn't pose a risk and now they do.
Click to expand...

Exactly right Ed. I lived over in NZ for years and the way that NZMAF operated the list of allowable fish was pathetic in the extreme. They basically did a troll of who had what (people were invited to state what they had but most did not reply for fear of losing what they did have, after the same happened with Reptiles previously). Thus you can buy an Altolamprologus Comprecisseps but NOT its dwarf version, Altolamprologus Calvus. Way to go ! The list like that is endless.
 
A 'whitelist' (a list of permitted species) could have a devastating effect on this, plus many other, hobbies.

I'll bump this in the hope we get more responses.

Anthony.
 
you can see the reasoning behind this eg.the signal crayfish bred for food and escaped into our waterways has almost anyhilated our own crayfish species and predates on our native fish eggs and other fauna.also there was a problem a while ago when snakeheads got put into a pond in america and devastated fish stocks as they spread out in streams and other waterways.the list is endless to the amount of plant and animal species introduced down to the humble rhodedendron.

the problem would be where would it stop?.

i think that most of us fishkeepers act resposibly and despose of plant material in the bin and not on the compost heap right!!. a small piece could be picked up by a bird for nesting dropped near a water course and bobs your auntie a new species unintentionally introdced it's really that simple is'nt it.

this is the scenario they are tring to prevent but they have to spend a little more than 12 weeks trying to push this through and start looking at what species are over here already and should look to zoo's,garden centres and hobbyist's for as much information as possible before banning species.
 
That is worrying. Have filled in the questionaire.
 
tonyg1 said:
you can see the reasoning behind this eg.the signal crayfish bred for food and escaped into our waterways has almost anyhilated our own crayfish species and predates on our native fish eggs and other fauna.also there was a problem a while ago when snakeheads got put into a pond in america and devastated fish stocks as they spread out in streams and other waterways.the list is endless to the amount of plant and animal species introduced down to the humble rhodedendron.

the problem would be where would it stop?.

i think that most of us fishkeepers act resposibly and despose of plant material in the bin and not on the compost heap right!!. a small piece could be picked up by a bird for nesting dropped near a water course and bobs your auntie a new species unintentionally introdced it's really that simple is'nt it.

this is the scenario they are tring to prevent but they have to spend a little more than 12 weeks trying to push this through and start looking at what species are over here already and should look to zoo's,garden centres and hobbyist's for as much information as possible before banning species.
Click to expand...

Completely agreed, education rather than legislation, sadly we live in a nanny state :?
 
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