Law paper arguing for legalization of Asian Aro

[Dylfin]

Hey MFK,

I am a long time lurker and first time poster here. As part of my law school's honors program, I am writing a paper arguing for a reinterpretation of the Endangered Species Act to allow captive-bred CITES approved Asian Arowana to be imported and owned in the United States. I am arguing that captive ownership would enhance the propagation and survival of the species in the wild as required to grant a permit, but also proposing a framework for the import of the fish to be taxed and have that money sent to environmental groups in regions where the fish lives to assist in conservation. I will be using the Pittman-Robertson Act as an example for where the sale of a good is taxed and then the money is put towards conservation.

I am wondering if any of you have any resources you believe would be helpful or research that I could use for my paper. Given that most of you have been involved in fishkeeping far longer than I have, I believe your knowledge would be beneficial to me finding research and constructing my paper. If you know of articles or scholarly research about the Asian Arowana and about its legal status in the United States, or even news articles about it, could you please post them in this thread? I have done a good amount of research already but I know there is a lot out there that I may be missing. My hopes are that I could get this published in a law review or other law journal and hopefully get some traction. I believe that as hobbyists, we want to be part of the solution and not the problem relating to Asian Arowana conservation and captive ownership in the United States, like it is allowed in all other CITES following countries, would enhance the survival of the species especially considering the popularity of breeding among hobbyists.

 

[Chicxulub]

We, as hobbyists, have tried many times to lobby for this change. We have not had any success in any way of getting traction. I even tried myself about 10 years ago and was summarily dismissed lol. You, as a law student, are uniquely suited to actually get this in front of someone who might listen. I hope with all my heart that you do.

 

[Hybridfish7]

Hey MFK,

I am a long time lurker and first time poster here. As part of my law school's honors program, I am writing a paper arguing for a reinterpretation of the Endangered Species Act to allow captive-bred CITES approved Asian Arowana to be imported and owned in the United States. I am arguing that captive ownership would enhance the propagation and survival of the species in the wild as required to grant a permit, but also proposing a framework for the import of the fish to be taxed and have that money sent to environmental groups in regions where the fish lives to assist in conservation. I will be using the Pittman-Robertson Act as an example for where the sale of a good is taxed and then the money is put towards conservation.

I am wondering if any of you have any resources you believe would be helpful or research that I could use for my paper. Given that most of you have been involved in fishkeeping far longer than I have, I believe your knowledge would be beneficial to me finding research and constructing my paper. If you know of articles or scholarly research about the Asian Arowana and about its legal status in the United States, or even news articles about it, could you please post them in this thread? I have done a good amount of research already but I know there is a lot out there that I may be missing. My hopes are that I could get this published in a law review or other law journal and hopefully get some traction. I believe that as hobbyists, we want to be part of the solution and not the problem relating to Asian Arowana conservation and captive ownership in the United States, like it is allowed in all other CITES following countries, would enhance the survival of the species especially considering the popularity of breeding among hobbyists.

I would look into/use the fact that exported asian aros only come from specific farms and are always microchipped for verification. The main reason for their ban is conservation, so the fact that people only want captive bred ones (that can be verified) anyway is also a decent argument. For added support you could argue for only allowing imported ones in (for now), and that (like Canada) they would likely be gatekept behind a paywall to prevent overexploitation that would require people to poach in order to meet demands. Could have people get a permit for it, cheap like a fishing license but just there for verification and record keeping. I'll dm more info when you post enough messages for dms to unlock.

 

[thiswasgone]

I believe you'll find it beyond difficult to achieve legal trade of asian arowana within the US as no sitting senator is going to risk re-election being labeled as pro-endangered animal trading without there being a strong monetary reward unfortunately. You'd honestly be better off trying to convince CITES to lower their rating IMO.

Of course to entertain the topic your best bet is to look into EU (https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/wildlife-trade_en) & UK ( The Control of Trade in Endangered Species (COTES) Regulations 2018 and the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979 (CEMA)) legislation and focus the argument around the original goal of CITES:

" CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) is an international agreement between governments. Its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten the survival of the species. "

The argument to be had here is that an additional subsection be made for permits for Scleropages formosus & Scleropages inscriptus to make their sale similar to NFA items where approval cost $200 directly to the FDS while the seller has to commit a % of the profit per sale for conservation efforts in addition to the fish having to come from a farm + microchipped.

Alternatively, IMO, the only real way to get it legal in the states is to form a new aquarium "union"/super pac membership program with enough people & purchasing power that political officials/the parties will easily bend the permit rulings of the Endangered Species Act. I would guess about 5-10 million should be enough for a 90% guarantee. At $10/membership/funding per person it would cost between 500,000 to 1,000,000 people. That's already extremely unrealistic as not even MFK let alone the largest aquarium subreddit reaches a dedicated 1M users so the realistic cost would have to be $100 meaning 50,000 to 100,000 people would have to commit. Of course the best case scenario is some rich Asian Arowana lover would fund this effort for us but I doubt that would happen.

 

[FLA]

Please write the paper but understand that logic is not winning out on this request. The fact that practically none of the Asian arowanas in the trade are wild caught will not make a difference. There is discussion about ESA listing Russian sturgeon. This will require farms to harvest all of their animals within a pretty limited window or not be able to sell what they have across state lines. A more useful paper might be arguing that ESA should only apply to native species. That is where ESA can protect habitat and actually save a species. Nonnatives should be covered by CITES. CITES has done a pretty good job balancing trade and protection and eliminating trade in those incidents when the two cannot currently coexist. ESA was written in a time before CITES and needs to be modernized.

On the biological side ESA does not protect hybrids. This is why the reptile hobby created hybrid lewisi iguanas. At this point US consumers need to work to make a hybrid of the Asian arowanas this will be a legal pathway to keeping a beautiful arowana. Perhaps a paper discussing this could be useful as well.

 

[Hybridfish7]

Please write the paper but understand that logic is not winning out on this request. The fact that practically none of the Asian arowanas in the trade are wild caught will not make a difference. There is discussion about ESA listing Russian sturgeon. This will require farms to harvest all of their animals within a pretty limited window or not be able to sell what they have across state lines. A more useful paper might be arguing that ESA should only apply to native species. That is where ESA can protect habitat and actually save a species. Nonnatives should be covered by CITES. CITES has done a pretty good job balancing trade and protection and eliminating trade in those incidents when the two cannot currently coexist. ESA was written in a time before CITES and needs to be modernized.

On the biological side ESA does not protect hybrids. This is why the reptile hobby created hybrid lewisi iguanas. At this point US consumers need to work to make a hybrid of the Asian arowanas this will be a legal pathway to keeping a beautiful arowana. Perhaps a paper discussing this could be useful as well.

I wonder if this is why the revision of the genus didn't go through. There was a paper published years ago arguing (pretty strongly imo based on molecular data) that all the Asian aros across Indonesia should be different species, describing scleropages legendrei, aureus, and macrocephalus. Most of the Asian aros in the trade would at that point be considered hybrids.

 

[thiswasgone]

I wonder if this is why the revision of the genus didn't go through. There was a paper published years ago arguing (pretty strongly imo based on molecular data) that all the Asian aros across Indonesia should be different species, describing scleropages legendrei, aureus, and macrocephalus. Most of the Asian aros in the trade would at that point be considered hybrids.

The revision of the genus didn't go through as there was not enough scientific consensus and likely due to monetary bribery or lack thereof. There is the minuscule chance of making a Australian-Indonesian hybrid as it's theorized that both Australian arowana are a branch off from the Asian line (they are the same genus) but this is likely beyond the scope of a normal hobbyist. IMO Scleropages Jardinii will likely have a better chance at hybridzing as it's the Northern species which is closer to Indonesia.

 

[Hybridfish7]

The revision of the genus didn't go through as there was not enough scientific consensus and likely due to monetary bribery or lack thereof. There is the minuscule chance of making a Australian-Indonesian hybrid as it's theorized that both Australian arowana are a branch off from the Asian line (they are the same genus) but this is likely beyond the scope of a normal hobbyist. IMO Scleropages Jardinii will likely have a better chance at hybridzing as it's the Northern species which is closer to Indonesia.

I'm not talking about aus-indo crosses, I'm talking about the fact that reds, golds, greens, and the other one would've gotten their own species, splitting them from s. formosus (sp. nov would've been s. aureus, s. legendrei, and s. macrocephalus). Seeing as people regularly breed these together in captivity, if all the wild colors were officially elevated to different species, then their crossed offspring would then be considered hybrids, and not covered under any conservation laws.

 

[Midwater]

I don't think you can mix Australian and Asian aros any more than you can mix Tasmanian and Bengal tigers.

 

[thiswasgone]

I don't think you can mix Australian and Asian aros any more than you can mix Tasmanian and Bengal tigers.

????? Australian and asian arowana are literally in the same genus which is a closer relationship compared to family in terms of taxonomy. As previously mentioned, their LUCA is assumed to be about 140MYA with fossil records showing, at least externally, there has been little evolutionary changes until now. In short, quite literally australian arowanas are direct descendants of asian arowana. It is not extremely rare for fish of the same genus to hybridize; for example tiger muskellunge being a hybrid of muskellunge (Esox masquinongy) and the northern pike (Esox lucius). There are also plenty of other freshwater examples from different regions of the world (e.g. flowerhorn, domesticated platies and swordtails, Synodontis catfish, etc). The reason this isn't a funded area is simply because there is 0 money to be made (asian arowana are already brought to the US illegally & the most money in the US is made on koi, plants, and micro tanks) and these two fish do not natrually meet in the wild.

Tasmanian and Bengal tigers are two completely different species with their LUCA diverging somewhere several hundred MYA with their closest relationship being that both animals are within the Mammalia class aka both are classified as mammals. These two cases are about as related as the example you are attempting to use.

Please do not assume and answer with ignorance when a user is sincerely answering another user's post.