Thanks for your thoughts Dave...although I'm not sure I totally agree with your assessment of taxing the fishing export industry. If you only take into account L46's then yes there isn't much cash to be made (from a government point of view anyway) however if they implement this with all exported fish and tax them on their potential retail value then I think there will be a lkot of money to be made. The shame is like anything else, any hike in the overall cost will no doubt be passed onto the consumer.
Anyway, I responded to Shane post. The thread is below but I've quoted my question to him and his reponse is below the thread link:
http://www.plecofanatics.com/forum/show ... hp?t=17505
From me:
Hi Shane,
I'm the first to agree that there is a lot of misinformation out there regarding Hyp. Zebra, and for us who aren't on the front line it's nigh on impossible to tell what's true and what's not.
Of all the information I've heard, the Brazilian government wanting to tax the fish export industry is not one I've heard before. I could understand that if they intend to tax each fish based on it's potential value, which I imagine is practically impossible to implement especially when some exporters have been known to lie on their export documents.
However what I don't understand is, if the reason is that simple..'the government simply wanting their share' then why does everyone else seem to think it's based on some other reason?
I quote from an article which appeared in Datz:
On 28th May 2004 the MMA published a list of Brazilian invertebrates and fishes threatened by extinction. This list consists of 156 fish species that are forbidden from being caught, traded or even bred in captivity (the only exception is for scientific studies) from the 1st July 2004. Since the 1st December 2004 these fishes are explicitly excluded from the trade, even though mentioned on the IBAMA positive list. Amongst many others the best known is Hypancistrus zebra, the zebra pleco. But also other, mainly endemic loricariids, Scleromystax (Corydoras) macropterus and the well-known Mimagoniates spp. as well as some other characids are listed. Marine aquarists can also forget about Gramma brasiliensis and Elacatinus figaro, two very well known species. All those fishes are forbidden for export from Brazil and they will not appear again unless removed from this list
(The whole article is here)
The previously mentioned banned list is linked below (I think it's the right one).
http://www.mma.gov.br/port/sbf/fauna/lista.html
You state in your post that they do not appear on any list as threatened...yet although I don't speak the langauge I 'm pretty sure the last word in the title is 'extinction'. Is this document out of date possibly or just not worth the paper it's written on?
Here's also another link to a thread showing an email conversation on PC, although I have quoted it below too:
http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9351
The reponse is from:
Prof. Ning Labbish Chao, PhD
Departamento de Ciências Pesqueiras
Universidade do Amazonas - Projeto Piaba
and he says:
Zebra is temporarily prohibited for trading, pending a study and evaluation. Brazilian ichthyologists are currently revising a new list of permitted species with IBAMA. The new list probably will include 600-700 freshwater fishes that can be exported. It is an impossible task to inspect fishes.
Is perhaps all of this information true...and it's a case of there being too many cooks in the kitchen? ie. Too may government departments and committees all trying to resolve the same issue at the same time and not knowing what the other is doing?
Any help you can provide to clear all this up would be most appreciated.
Dukerider.
Shanes response:
Dukerider,
A lot of good questions and I will try to answer them as best as I can. I'll be the first to admit that I do not have all the facts I would like to with regards to this issue.
Quote:
I could understand that if they intend to tax each fish based on it's potential value, which I imagine is practically impossible to implement especially when some exporters have been known to lie on their export documents.
You hit the nail on the head with regards to why they want to identify the different fishes. An exporter can label a bag "Otocinclus" and ship out H. zebra and 99.9% percent of customs officials around the world would be none the wiser. Look at all the fish currently making it into Australia as "Peckoltia pulcher."
Brasil never did any studies of population densities, reproductive data, numbers exported, etc, (heck, only one of several known Hypancistrus spp in the Xingu is even described) so it is impossible to say if there was or was not overfishing for the aquarium trade. Given that the Xingu basin has the same landmass as the country of France, and H. zebra can only be collected by a few specialist collectors with dive gear, I find it hard to believe that commercial collection was having much of an impact.
I do, however, agree that it can not be a bad thing to give the little guys some time off.
Quote:
However what I don't understand is, if the reason is that simple..'the government simply wanting their share' then why does everyone else seem to think it's based on some other reason?
Because the Brasilian government stopped the exportation of these fish under an edict or "ban" from IBAMA (the Brasilian Institute of the Environment and Natural Resources). This ban was never based on any scientific studies. The Brasilian tax authority has no legal power to ban tropical fish exports. Many people made the assumption that, since the ban came from IBAMA, it must be based on well-founded environmental concerns. It was not.
The full official reason given, according to Dr. Chao at the University of the Amazon in Manaus, was that the Brasilian government wanted to update its list of spp. permitted for export and put things on hold until the list was complete. Hence his statement, in your post above, "It is an impossible task to inspect fishes."
Please do not take it that I am faulting the Brasilian government for trying to get a hold over their natural resources and make sure the Brasilian people receive fair reimbursement for the export of their resources. But just because they used an environmental government agency to stop the exports, do not assume that H. zebra must therefore be endangered. The link you posted above was to the Brasilian Ministry of Environment, the parent Ministry of IBAMA. H. zebra's "endangered" status is not accepted by any US, European, or UN group because there is no scientific data to back up the claim.
-Shane
Makes interseting reading I think...of course the next question is how long do you think it's going to take to resolve this problem?...If I had to guess, just by the fact that government agencies are involved will probably mean they're years away from being exported again.
regards
Plastic Mac