Petition Seeks Emergency Moratorium on Imports of Salamanders (Caudata) for Pet Trade

A new proposal from Save the Frogs to stop all importation into the United States of the entire genius of Caudata, targeted at the pet trade.

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2015/salamanders-05-14-2015.html

The petition:
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org...Petition_for_Salamander_Import_Moratorium.pdf

This was from 2015 and I didn't see it listed here. For reference, this eventually became the new Lacey Act Amendments.

They could just ban all the wild caught animals from the pet trade instead of just flat out banning a species.

That's what they did. Species are not banned from possession, they're banned from import. Not all species are affected equally, so the ban affects species believed to be affected, and not those which are not, nor their eggs. The USFWS argument includes the belief that neither testing nor treatment are currently sufficient to allow import of healthy animals [evidence says otherwise].

There's a strong argument that there is no LEGAL barrier to interstate movement either (USFWS in fact told Congress in 1974 that the regulation in no way prevented interstate movements, and only barred import into or movement between isolated land masses [such as the continental United STATES, versus Hawai'i [not continental], DC [not a state], Puerto Rico [not a state or continental], USVI [not a state or continental], Guam [not a state or continental]. They currently argue the reverse to be true, but they set the bar when they told Congress differently 40 years ago.