Defenders' Experts
U.S. Imports of Live Animals
Defenders has a strong presence in seeking policy reforms on harmful non-native species, which are major threats to native species and natural ecosystems. Our focus is on stopping the importation of potentially invasive animals. The United States has a long history of invasive animals being intentionally released or escaping into the wild and causing significant environmental, health and economic problems.
Broken Screens: The Regulation of Live Animal Imports in the United States
This report is an unprecedented examination of the low level of protection given by the lax U.S. system from the risks that non-native animal species pose to our environment and to public health.
Examples of invasive non-native animals include
- Nutria – a giant South American rodent that destroys coast salt marshes
- Starling – a bird that damages crops and displaces native songbirds from nest sites
- Indian Mongoose- a mammal driving native wildlife toward extinction in Hawaii
- Giant Burmese Python – a snake which is attacking wildlife in the Everglades National Park
Damaging pathogens and parasites have also accompanied past animal introductions. With new global threats like avian influenza and SARS, the almost purely reactive U.S. regulatory system is indefensible.
The massive worldwide traffic in non-native animals recently was identified by an expert group under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as the most glaring gap in the international legal system related to trade and invasive species. The international legal effort to address this gap will be defined by 2010.
Defenders was instrumental in convening the first-ever expert workshop on tackling the risks of this trade. The summary report is available from the workshop, held April 2008 at the University of Notre Dame. Printed by the Global Invasive Species Programme based in Nairobi, Kenya, the report is entitled Best Practices in Pre-Import Risk Screening for Species of Live Animals in International Trade. The report provides valuable information on the why and how of pre-import risk screening for invasiveness and disease, with extensive background on how it is done in some countries, the various challenges involved, and how screening can be done better and more broadly. Read the report >>
The entire proceedings of the workshop and other related resources are available on the website of the IUCN Invasive Species Specialist Group, a group to which Defenders belongs.
Defenders’ Goals
Defenders’ goals to transform the invasive animal and pest and pathogen policy framework are:
- We will build support to change current U.S. law on intentional imports of live animals to require proactive screening for potential invasiveness and other harms before they can be imported.
- We will promote development of strong international guidance and best practices on potentially invasive animals in order to fill the gap identified by the CBD, mentioned above.
- We will promote pre-import screening as a best practice.
|
|
