What you can do

[John]

Firstly, this is not the same situation as 2016. In 2016 the USFWS tried to apply a rule that utilized the Lacey Act in an invalid way (as ruled in April 2017 by Federal Court). In that situation, people could comment on the Federal Register regarding the new rule and the USFWS had to bear these comments in mind. Also, the rule's misapplication of the Lacey Act with regard to interstate transport allowed for a winning federal court case by USARK, a lobbying group that advocates on behalf of US reptile and amphibian keepers, and businesses.

The current bill in the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works will amend the Lacey Act to allow USFWS to apply the Lacey Act to interstate transport as they attempted in 2016. This would almost certainly rule out a similar court case.

What you can do

• For the best chance of influencing this bill, we need to write physical letters to the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works and the 2 Senators representing your own state in the senate. It is up to you if you wish to write separate letters to the committee and the senators from your state, but I would advise 2 letters total (1 to the committee and 1 addressed to both of the senators from your state). If both of your senators are on the committee then you can obviously just write a single letter.
• This must be done ASAP, while the bill is still at the committee level. If we wait and the bill makes it to the Senate without our input, it will almost certainly pass with broad bipartisan support (remember, it is co-sponsored by both a Republican US Senator and a Democratic US Senator).
• While you can email senators, a physical letter carries a lot more weight and that is what I, myself, will be writing and sending.
• You can also call the individual senators by phone, but again, physical letter carry a lot more weight (no pun intended).
• We have a list of suggested talking points for your letter(s) and/or phone calls.
• If using our talking points, please try not to copy and paste them without personalizing them, or picking the ones most relevant to you - ideally we won't all send identical letters, as this might lessen their impact on the senators.
• We have a thread with information about how to write to a senator or senate committee.

What NOT to do

• Don't assume this will go away. It will almost certainly pass after it leaves the committee. All we can do is to try to influence the wording so that there will not be an outright ban on interstate transport and that there is oversight beyond USFWS of any proposed new rules under the amended Lacey Act.
• Don't go on a rant in your letter(s)/phone calls, etc. An unreasoned argument will likely be ignored and you will come off as a crank.
• Don't talk about personal freedoms or what your rights are or should be - there are valid concerns that have led to these legislative actions - all we can do is provide reasoned and reasonable opinions on how to address these concerns. For example, suggesting that if salamanders need to be regulated between states, instead of a total ban that we should require a recent Bsal-negative testing certificate with each interstate salamander shipment, and pointing out how this will save the government and tax payers money by putting the responsibility mainly on the shipper and not a government agency that needs to open every FedEx shipment to hunt for salamanders.

Talking/writing points
How to write to senators / the senate committee

 

[John]

Bump