I just had a nice conversation with Bryan King of DC Department of Energy and Environment, and I will try to summarize here. His brief answer to the question about the legality of releasing Snakes was "Well... it's complicated."
The biggest point he made was that Blue Catfish should not be released when caught--based on all of the studies that have been done, Blue Catfish are having a major impact on our native fish (Perch, Alewife, Herring, Shad, etc.). He highly recommends that Blue Catfish not be released. The studies on the Snakehead have not yet shown the major impact that we've seen from Blue Catfish.
A few points he made:
- There is a law passed by DC Council that more clearly prohibits the release of Snakeheads and other invasive species--I think it's this law: http://lims.dccouncil.us/Download/34525/B21-0386-SignedAct.pdf
- This law has not been promulgated through a regulation, which requires DC Register publishing, comment periods, etc.
- Because this law is not yet a regulation, it cannot really be enforced.
Bryan suggested that if someone caught a Snakehead and did not have a knife or a way to dispatch, then he did not think they would get in trouble for releasing the fish. However, it is the District's intent to prohibit this release--and this is certainly the recommended action.
Dalton
http://www.tpfr.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tidal-potomac-fly-rodders+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to tidal-potomac-fly-rodders@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tidal-potomac-fly-rodders/9dfdba4a-9521-4f2b-808a-f6fccf6269dd%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
No comments:
Post a Comment