Over the past couple of months, exotic animal communities have seen a looming dark cloud on the horizon: the potential amendment of the Lacey Act. Confusion and misinformation surrounding the impacts of this potential amendment have completely dominated the online narrative. As talking points from the few industry trade groups that publicly commented on the amendment were repeated and rephrased, clarity was lost and incorrect information flooded the discussion of the legislation. This unintentional disinformation campaign was compounded by the public silence of the majority of exotic animal industry trade groups. Many people have expressed interest in advocating against the amendment, but few of them could tell you what the amendment actually proposes or even what the scope of the Lacey Act is currently. Factual accuracy is crucial to successful outreach to government officials. This article provides an overview of the current scope of the Lacey Act, the actions of the proposed amendment, and an analysis of the issues that would arise from it. It has been informed by discussions with lobbyists and/or leadership from multiple exotic animal industry trade associations, and a current wildlife inspector with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned in passing that people were really worried about a proposed amendment to United States wildlife law that might impact their ability to move with or get veterinary for non-standard pet species. You might also remember that I said at the time I was pretty sure the messaging people were encountering and/or repeating was inaccurate, and needed a fact-check. The results of that fact-check is this legislative analysis. It’s worth reading the whole thing if you’re particularly interested in exotic animal/wildlife law, like zoos, or have non-standard pets.
Here’s a quick overview for everyone else:
Basically, the Lacey Act of 1900 is one of the oldest federal wildlife laws in the US, and it does a lot of things to protect both wildlife species both domestically and abroad. One of the many things it does is regulate the importation of species that are thought to be “injurious” (a word which here means: harmful, in annoyingly archaic jargon that keeps confusing everyone) to either people in the US, native wildlife, or general interests of various industries in the US. In practice this means it mostly limits species that are either super invasive (like snakehead fish, which can literally walk between bodies of water) or known for carrying pathogens or parasites (amphibians are a big one because of the need to limit the spread of chryptid fungus).
This amendment proposes to update a number of things about the Lacey Act, some of which are good, some of which are bureaucratic, and one of which is just... completely unachievable and unenforceable. It basically says hey, instead of choosing individual species to restrict based on risk, let’s just proactively go ahead and presumptively ban the importation or interstate transport of literally every non-native wildlife species. And then, y’know, we’ll just whitelist the ones that are either already commonly imported/traded in the US, or go through an entire regulatory process to determine the invasive potential of other species on an individual, case by case basis. That’s uh. Not effective. And a massive amount of paperwork and time that could be better spent elsewhere.
Their are permits available so zoos and other exotic animal businesses would still be able to move animals for conservation programs and stuff... but it might require something upwards of ten thousand permits annually to allow for the continuation of normal business function within the industry. It also means that wildlife inspectors would go from having to memorize a short list of banned species to keeping track of multiple constantly-changing lists - and they’d have to learn to visually ID thousands more species to be able to enforce it correctly. Did I mention yet that USFWS is already chronically understaffed?
A lot of people are worried this will hurt their ability to keep their pets if they move, or get them appropriate veterinary care if their vet is in the next state over. I honestly can’t tell you what will happen with that if this bill passes. My best guess is that there would be a gradient: the most common species will be whitelisted quickly, more rare ones may or may not be, and you’re sunk if you own a species that could reasonably survive overwinter anywhere in the U.S. It’s really unlikely that it would be like “whoops, sorry, your ball python and guinea pigs are stuck in your current state forever now.”
Pet concerns aside, though, this bill still has huge, huge issues that ideally need to be addressed before it moves any further. It hits all of my normal thumping talking points: written too broadly, no definitions of key terms, no understanding of how much work it will take to even implement, would unintentionally result in an undue burden on even credible businesses. Bills should do the thing they intend to do, and they need to do it well. This does not live up to either of those requirements. .
