Environment: Visas for Animals

The starling is not the only alien species that plagues the nation. There are European pigeons, which spread a form of meningitis and defile monuments and building ledges and the German carp, a “wonderfish” imported in the 1870s, which has displaced native game fish from lakes and rivers by eating their food and their spawn. New threats come from the exotic species that escaped from rare-animal or fish farms: the ill-tempered Asian walking catfish, the South American piranha and India’s citrus fruit-eating red-whiskered bulbul —to mention just a few. They prove over and over again that most alien species can quickly adapt to and thrive in a new habitat where there is an abundance of food and a dearth of natural enemies.

Low Risk. This week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service moved to discourage the immigration of such species. It is publishing new rules that, after a review period of 45 days, must be observed by importers of 3.3 million animals per year. In the past, almost any species was allowed easy entry to the U.S. provided that it had not been proved to pose a health, safety or ecological hazard (by the time the proof was available, the damage had often been done).

The new rules make the importer assume the burden of proof. All but a few of the world’s thousands of vertebrate species are considered to be “potentially dangerous” until the importer shows otherwise. But laboratories, zoos and the pet industry will not suffer unduly; the new rules award carte blanche visas to an elite of “low risk” animals. These include 400 kinds of fish (mostly tropical species for collectors), 60 birds (mainly game fowl), 43 mammals (lab monkeys, plus zebras, aardvarks and other common zoo animals), and two amphibians (the horned and dwarf-clawed frogs). The result will be less exotic selections in pet stores, but also fewer threats of disease and periodic invasions.