Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act
H.R. 669
Right now, the United States does not require that living organisms being proposed for import:
• be checked for any harm they already cause in other countries;
• be screened for potential invasiveness in the United States; or
• be evaluated for the human and wildlife diseases they carry.
The Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act (H.R. 669)
The Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act would provide the Department of Interior with the necessary legal tools to better prevent further introduction of potentially and already harmful non-native animals. It would fundamentally change federal policy to better protect the nation.
The bill requires that the Secretary of Interior work with scientists, experts, and the public to assess the potential risks associated with species proposed for import before they are admitted or prohibited. The bill would evaluate species' risks to humans, other animal species, and environmental health, among other factors, while protecting people's existing pets. It is the first independent and detailed bill to call for such an approach in more than 30 years and has received the support of many organizations beyond UCS, such as the Defenders of Wildlife, The Humane Society-U.S., and the National Wildlife Federation.
The text of the bill is available online here.
There are many species already in the United States that would have been prevented from entering if screening had been in place. For example, the Burmese python (Python molurus bivittatus) was legally imported into the country, and then released into Everglades National Park. In this natural setting the python has attacked native wildlife and is competing for habitat (Jenkins et al., 2007). In 2003, the Gambian rat (Cricetomys gambianus) was legally imported through the pet trade. This species carried the highly contagious monkeypox virus from Africa, which has spread to humans in the United States (Jenkins et al., 2007). If these animals had been screened prior to import, it is likely that they would have been excluded and thus would have not caused the damage they have.
Additional Information on Invasive Species Legislation
Currently the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) uses the Lacey Act to protect against the introduction and spread of invasive animal species by regulating, or "listing," individual species which are "deemed injurious or potentially injurious" to humans, forestry, wildlife, and other resources (Code of Federal Regulations, title 50, part 16), Only about 20 groups of animals (usually species or genera) are on this banned list and experts have long complained that the list is too short (OTA, 1993). Vertebrate imports are of special concern because some 50 percent of those introduced become established, of which about one-half spread (Jeschke and Strayer, 2005). Vertebrates made up more than 80 percent of the non-native species that were imported during the most recent years for which data is available, 2000-2004 (Jenkins et al., 2007).
On average, it takes more than four years to list a taxa as injurious and prohibit it from import (Fowler et al., 2007). In one case, seven years passed between the time congress petitioned the USFWS to list several species of Asian carp and the agency's 2007 decisions to list three of these (largescale silver carp [Hypophthalmichthys harmandi], silver carp [Hypophthalmichthys molitris], and black carp [Mylopharyngodon piceus]).
Too often the Lacey Act is used reactively, once a species has entered the country, done damage, and proven to be a significant problem. Thus, the Lacey Act list tends to be dominated by species in the news (Alexander, 2003), rather than those that have received scientific consideration. Preventive use has occurred for seven taxa, none of which have since established populations in the United States (Fowler et al., 2007).
For over 20 years, scientists and other experts have called for a thorough and transparent risk screening process that would allow managers, experts, and the public to determine which species are non-harmful and therefore should be permitted for import. Development and implementation of such a screening processes was included in the original National Invasive Species Management Plan (NISC, 2001) and its recent update (NISC, 2008). The Ecological Society of America recommended, in 2006, that the federal government "use new information and practices to better manage commercial and other pathways to reduce the transport and release of potentially harmful species" and that it "adopt more quantitative procedures for risk analysis and apply them to every species proposed for importation into the country" (Lodge et al., 2006).
Without such changes, industries like the pet and aquarium trades, will continue to move hundreds of millions of live organisms around the world each year, with little related regulation (Padilla and Williams 2004). Many of these organisms, especially fish, are identified neither accurately nor completely (Keller and Lodge, 2007; Smith et al., 2008). Others carry diseases about which little is known (Reed, 2005).
Sources:
Alexander. A. 2003. Legal tools and gaps relating to commerce in exotic live fish. Phase I report to the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. Chicago, IL: Environmental law and Policy Center.
Fowler, A.J., D.M. Lodge, and J.F. Hsia. 2007. Failure of the Lacey Act to protect U.S. ecosystems against animal invasions. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 5(7): 353 – 359.
Jenkins, P.T., K. Genovese, and H. Ruffler. 2007. Broken screens: The regulation of live animal imports in the United States. Washington, DC: Defenders of Wildlife.
Jeschke, J.M. and D.L. Strayer. 2005. Invasion success of vertebrates in Europe and North America. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102(20):7198-7202.
Keller, R.P. and D.M. Lodge. 2007. Species invasions from commerce in live aquatic organisms: Problems and possible solutions. BioScience 57(5):428-436.
Lodge, D.M., S. Williams, H.J. MacIsaac, K.R. Hayes, B. Leung, B., S. Reichard, R.N. Mack, P.B. Moyle, M. Smith, D.A. Andow, J.T. Carlton, and A. McMichael. 2006. Biological invasions: Recommendations for U.S. policy and management. Ecological Applications 16(6):2035–2054.
National Invasive Species Council (NISC). 2001. Meeting the invasive species challenge. Washington, DC. On the web at:
National Invasive Species Council (NICS). 2008. 2008-2012 National invasive species management plan. Washington, DC. On the web at:
Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), U.S. Congress.1993. Harmful non-indigenous species in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Padilla, D.K. and S.L. Williams. 2004. Beyond ballast water: Aquarium and ornamental trades as sources of invasive species in aquatic ecosystems. Frontiers in Ecology and Environment 2(3):131-138.
Reed, R.N. 2005. An ecological risk assessment of nonnative boas and pythons as potentially invasive species in the United States. Risk Analysis 25(3):753-766.
Smith, K.R., M.D. Behrens, L.M. Max, and P. Daszak. 2008. U.S. drowning in unidentified fishes: Scope, implications, and regulation of live fish import. Conservation Letters 1(2):103-109.
