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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dave Jay" data-source="post: 132629" data-attributes="member: 27677">I won't hijack the thread, but the import laws are not quite as simple as a blanket ban. In the late 80's many cichlids and catfish were banned and as part of the South Australian Cichlid Society, which was basically formed to fight against the proposals before they became law, I gained some insight into how it works.With the cichlids although I was a teenager at the time I was a founding member of the society and was present at meetings with government officials on both sides of the issue and that's how the laws were explained by them. It was actually the Recreational Fisheries organisation that lobbied the government to have a long list of fish species banned in South Australia or Australia wide. At the time, they themselves also had a proposal to release Nile Perch into the Murray! We stopped that but lost the fight to have a lot of cichlids and catfish (mostly) banned. Those laws have since been revoked but it hit Cichlid Keeping pretty hard for a long while, particularly keeping American Cichlids, the African Rift Lake Cichlids didn't come into it, all Talapia species were banned Australia wide though.  We do have a Federal Government list of illegal imports, species that have been proven to form feral populations in similar climates (being that Australia is big enough that there are will always be somewhere that matches a particular climate this is fairly easy to prove). Then there is also a Federal Government list of species allowed to be imported. In order for a species to be added to the list of Allowed Imports a government study must be done to show that either there is no risk of the species forming feral populations or that the species is economically important enough to the pet industry (mostly, other industries may also be involved) that it would damage the economy if banned from import - this is why goldfish were never in question but fish like the convict cichlid were banned. Anything not on the Allowed Import list is illegal to import regardless of whether it is on the list of Illegal Imports or not.Once a species becomes allowed to be imported into Australia it then has to make it through the State and Territory Governments laws, the same type of lists are also found at State/Territory levels so just because it is allowed to be imported into Australia doesn't mean the species is legal to import or own in a given state or territory, it has to make it onto the Allowed List of the state or territory involved. This means another Government Study must be done.There used to be an Exotic Species Permit that you could apply for to keep Exotic Animals which did give "specialists" some hope of keeping species not available to the general public but that was scrapped in the late 90's. Generally this was a good thing, they decided on a list of exotic species that could be kept without permits and combined with a list of native species that became exempt from the Native Animal Permit system around the same time greatly expanded the amount of species that could be kept and sold by the general public. I opened my pet shop at that time and sold animals previously only found in specialist outlets to take advantage of the new laws.  If the Pet Industry (or it could be another industry involving animals) wants a species to be on the Allowed Import List it needs to convince firstly the Federal Government to fund a Government Study into the species (sometimes genus) and present it's findings. If that is successful the State/Territory Governments need to be convinced to fund another Government Study to have it allowed to be imported and kept in that State/Territory, you can see how often this would be likely to happen. So theoretically an organisation or industry could petition the government to fund a study into Exotic Tarantula species (for instance) to make them an allowed import, but they would have to prove "A" there's no chance of them forming a feral population and "B" that they would be an important boost to our economy. I'm sure there'd be many hoops to jump through and many administration fees to be paid before the possibility of Government Study was even contemplated, I don't think it would be feasible in most cases.I know it is possible to get permits to export Australian Native Animals, Steve Nunn did eventually gain permission to export native Tarantulas eventually but according to him it was a long, tedious and expensive process and he lost a lot of money doing it so he won't be applying for permits to export more. I think his experience actually dissuaded others from trying to export native animals rather than encouraging the practice.I think our government needs to rethink some policies, instead of culling cockatoos (you can shoot some species legally but you can't catch one and keep it as a pet!) for instance they could be exported, lowering the price overseas thereby making smuggling not profitable enough to be worth the risks involved. They could do this with many native animals and greatly reduce wildlife smuggling in my opinion. Rather than spending money culling native species and combating animal smuggling they could be making money by flooding the overseas markets with legally exported animals, killing three birds with one stone so to speak. I've probably simplified the processes if anything, and some of my information might be out of date but I wanted to point out that it is not a simple "Blanket Ban" as most people overseas and in Australia seem to think. And now back to Toms' Tarantula Fetish!!!</blockquote>

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