New Lacey Act Amendments

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2. The Secretary of the Interior will be able to add species to the injurious species list much more easily. In fact, you won't find out a species you breed or keep is being added until it has already happened, so there will be no way to stop it. We don't know to what extent the Secretary will use this power. She could add a bunch of commonly kept species to the list on day one, or she may not add a single species for the rest of her tenure. We don't know. We do know that every species added to the list will suffer the same fate as the retics and burms.

This is incorrect. The amendment does away with the Lacey Act injurious species list and it will be replaced with a "white list" of approved animals. Anything not on the white list will be deemed injurious and thus not importable or transportable across state lines.

This bill presents a fundamental change in how our laws have historically worked. In the past anything not explicitly declared illegal is by default legal, and it's how our government operates for all policies, not just animal species. By specifying a "white list" of what is legal - meaning some unelected government employee or official has to take steps to add species to a list - anything not on the list is automatically illegal whether or not that species is invasive/injurious.


It wasn't all that long ago that the Tarahumara boa "locality" of boa imperator was actually declared its own species Boa Sigma. If this law were in place then anyone who owned a Tarahumara suddenly wouldn't be able to transport or ship them interstate until some government agency studied them and determined whether or not they should be added to the whitelist. This can happen with almost any exotic critter.


I am in the eastern panhandle of WV and this really affects me as we don't have any exotic vet specialists local. There is one in Hagerstown, MD, and others in Winchester, Berryville, and Fairfax, VA. If this law passes I'd have to drive the critter on state or county roads to Charleston, WV which would take about 8 hours each way.