Stick Insects in the US: Legal Questions

[Transylvania]

I worked at a zoo over the summer that had a few stick insect species (Heteropteryx, Extatosoma, etc.), and the quarantine regulations for them were very strict. No keepers could enter the room without approval, and all substrate/plant matter from the room had to be incinerated before it could be tossed. The stick insects were adorable though. I loved how they bounced around and climbed on my shirt. It's a shame that they're so potentially destructive.

And now, for our drooling pleasure:

 

[nepenthes]

Legal Shmegal! What are the chance that the authorities are gonna make a bust on some ones house with some stick insects. As for there ecological danger, i'm no scientist but how devastating to an ecosystem could they be. The natural world has its checks and balances, and even if it would shock a ecosystem at first, things would work them selves out. say there population explodes and they defoliate a forest, there populations them going to crash as they starve. They they become food for a bunch of other things. Aside from a couple poisonous species predators would find most of them very palatable (if they can find them first). It's not like they go around eating the eggs of rare birds or any thing. i couldn't even see them becoming a major agricultural pest either, except to black berry and raspberries. Call me crazy but exotic species becoming naturalized is hardly that big of a danger to the world when you consider that the number one most dangerous species (if your any thing but human) is us!(mostly because we think no species has the right to keep us in check)...........eh then again maybe i just miss they Vietnamese stick i had as a kid.

http://www.duke.edu/web/nicholas/bio217/mg53/



Its a matter of preservation.

 

[Arienette]

we work closely with wayne and last i heard, he is no longer giving penis for c morosus at all.
he said we can keep the ones we have but can't get more.

 

[nepenthes]

do you mean permits?

 

[Arienette]

i did but auto correct was so awesome there i didn't bother correcting

 

[spydrhunter1]

Legal Shmegal! What are the chance that the authorities are gonna make a bust on some ones house with some stick insects. As for there ecological danger, i'm no scientist but how devastating to an ecosystem could they be. The natural world has its checks and balances, and even if it would shock a ecosystem at first, things would work them selves out. say there population explodes and they defoliate a forest, there populations them going to crash as they starve. They they become food for a bunch of other things. Aside from a couple poisonous species predators would find most of them very palatable (if they can find them first). It's not like they go around eating the eggs of rare birds or any thing. i couldn't even see them becoming a major agricultural pest either, except to black berry and raspberries. Call me crazy but exotic species becoming naturalized is hardly that big of a danger to the world when you consider that the number one most dangerous species (if your any thing but human) is us!(mostly because we think no species has the right to keep us in check)...........eh then again maybe i just miss they Vietnamese stick i had as a kid.

gypsy moth, emerald ash borer, asian longhorned beetle, asian tiger mosquito, giant African snails....shall I go on?

 

[bizzely]

Yes i know there are destructive species out there but they have come hear in the last 2 centuries. But listen, this is a stretch but give it a couple thousand years and these species will have their own diseases and predators on this side of the pond. Dandelions may riddle your lawn but in a naturalized field they must compete! I'm not some advocate for the introduction of nonnative species or any thing, but we must realize it happens in nature with out human intervention some times. I advocate conservation and biodiversity as well, but while reading The Origin of Species i realized extinction is part of life, balanced by evolution. I dunno, my opinion aint gonna change nothin any-who.

P.s. Any government agents who are checking this very blog can go ahead an check if i have stick insects cause i don't, i'm just jealous of europeans with there fancy stick insects, wetas, giant beetles, and all that jazz!! Come on man

 

[Arienette]

Yes i know there are destructive species out there but they have come hear in the last 2 centuries. But listen, this is a stretch but give it a couple thousand years and these species will have their own diseases and predators on this side of the pond. Dandelions may riddle your lawn but in a naturalized field they must compete! I'm not some advocate for the introduction of nonnative species or any thing, but we must realize it happens in nature with out human intervention some times. I advocate conservation and biodiversity as well, but while reading The Origin of Species i realized extinction is part of life, balanced by evolution. I dunno, my opinion aint gonna change nothin any-who.

P.s. Any government agents who are checking this very blog can go ahead an check if i have stick insects cause i don't, i'm just jealous of europeans with there fancy stick insects, wetas, giant beetles, and all that jazz!! Come on man

that was pretty hard to understand. commas are your friend

its not illegal to have stick insects, just any average joe-schmoe "i lub 'murica" kid cant.
hence, permits.

 

[MrCrackerpants]

Yes i know there are destructive species out there but they have come hear in the last 2 centuries. But listen, this is a stretch but give it a couple thousand years and these species will have their own diseases and predators on this side of the pond. Dandelions may riddle your lawn but in a naturalized field they must compete! I'm not some advocate for the introduction of nonnative species or any thing, but we must realize it happens in nature with out human intervention some times. I advocate conservation and biodiversity as well, but while reading The Origin of Species i realized extinction is part of life, balanced by evolution. I dunno, my opinion aint gonna change nothin any-who.

P.s. Any government agents who are checking this very blog can go ahead an check if i have stick insects cause i don't, i'm just jealous of europeans with there fancy stick insects, wetas, giant beetles, and all that jazz!! Come on man

We are in a human-induced great mass extinction and one of the five major drivers of global biodiversity loss is invasive species via human movement.

 

[Entomancer]

Yes i know there are destructive species out there but they have come hear in the last 2 centuries. But listen, this is a stretch but give it a couple thousand years and these species will have their own diseases and predators on this side of the pond. Dandelions may riddle your lawn but in a naturalized field they must compete! I'm not some advocate for the introduction of nonnative species or any thing, but we must realize it happens in nature with out human intervention some times. I advocate conservation and biodiversity as well, but while reading The Origin of Species i realized extinction is part of life, balanced by evolution. I dunno, my opinion aint gonna change nothin any-who.

P.s. Any government agents who are checking this very blog can go ahead an check if i have stick insects cause i don't, i'm just jealous of europeans with there fancy stick insects, wetas, giant beetles, and all that jazz!! Come on man

No.

You should be absolutely ashamed of yourself; you're making all the rest of the US invert keepers look bad just because you don't know anything about ecology or conservation and are jealous of overseas keepers.

Keep your idiotic, uninformed, and oblivious opinions to yourself. We don't need some jerkoff ruining our image because he can't keep his mouth shut.

Abide by the rules or screw off.

And by the way, this is serious stuff. Invasive species can and will (and they already have) drive other species to extinction, and the authorities can and will break your proverbial door down and tear your house apart in order to make sure you don't have phasmids.

 

[bizzely]

Listen, i'm defiantly not uniformed! This idea i am toying with was not formed from thin air, but from books. You are completely taking what i'm saying out of context. i'm not recommending people should release nonnative stick insects or any other species into a new ecosystem, not at all. I'm only looking at what happens in a different way. On reading the book Broadsides From The Other Orders, the author describes in how gypsy moth populations will actually boom after insecticide spraying. What happens is they sprays weed out the weaker moths leaving the more vigorous individuals to reproduce. The thinned out "population is less likely to limit itself through starvation, but is also not numerous enough to become a rich dense mass that will attract parasites, disease, and predators which are the usual mechanism of population control." Am I crazy to think that after millennia in this country this species will be no more common or successful then native species. Over time it may ever become a different species, if not several. What im saying is if people let things be nature will mend its self, even if we mess it up. Some species get displaced or go extinct and this is sad because there is no way to get them back. But think about this, the number species that have gone extinct since life appeared on earth is far greater then the number of species that exist today. Evolution is our saving grace. Biodiversity is a beautiful thing. I love nature and thats why i am so interested in inverts. I don't see why some exotic species of inverts are allowed and others are not. Couldn't a predatory species become a environmental hazard too? I suppose the US government is more concerned with agricultural pests then low microfauna diversity. What ever. Oh and could any one tell me why all exotic hercules beetles are not legal to import, i thought that the larva only ate rotting wood, not living plant tissue. whats up with that??
And for the record i really dont think i'm out of line discussing these things. I don't see how i'm giving the invert community a bad name by using free speech.What are you some kind of bug Nazi??

 

[Arienette]

Listen, i'm defiantly not uniformed! This idea i am toying with was not formed from thin air, but from books. You are completely taking what i'm saying out of context. i'm not recommending people should release nonnative stick insects or any other species into a new ecosystem, not at all. I'm only looking at what happens in a different way. On reading the book Broadsides From The Other Orders, the author describes in how gypsy moth populations will actually boom after insecticide spraying. What happens is they sprays weed out the weaker moths leaving the more vigorous individuals to reproduce. The thinned out "population is less likely to limit itself through starvation, but is also not numerous enough to become a rich dense mass that will attract parasites, disease, and predators which are the usual mechanism of population control." Am I crazy to think that after millennia in this country this species will be no more common or successful then native species. Over time it may ever become a different species, if not several. What im saying is if people let things be nature will mend its self, even if we mess it up. Some species get displaced or go extinct and this is sad because there is no way to get them back. But think about this, the number species that have gone extinct since life appeared on earth is far greater then the number of species that exist today. Evolution is our saving grace. Biodiversity is a beautiful thing. I love nature and thats why i am so interested in inverts. I don't see why some exotic species of inverts are allowed and others are not. Couldn't a predatory species become a environmental hazard too? I suppose the US government is more concerned with agricultural pests then low microfauna diversity. What ever. Oh and could any one tell me why all exotic hercules beetles are not legal to import, i thought that the larva only ate rotting wood, not living plant tissue. whats up with that??
And for the record i really dont think i'm out of line discussing these things. I don't see how i'm giving the invert community a bad name by using free speech.What are you some kind of bug Nazi??

so what youre saying is... is that you think human introduction is the same as natural biodiversity?

take the indian stick insect... even as "pets", the adults drop 2-5 eggs per night. those eggs can hatch in as little as a month. no mating, either. indians are all female. so, lets say you had some as pets and you cleaned the tank out... lets just pretend here... you threw all the crap in the bottom of the tank away...

do you know what happens next?

 

[bizzely]

No thats not what im saying, although if i really want to play devils advocate a could say yeah, one more species would mean yes more biodiversity. But im not an idiot, in the long run invasive species can out compete other species resulting in less biodiversity.

 

[Arienette]

No thats not what im saying, although if i really want to play devils advocate a could say yeah, one more species would mean yes more biodiversity. But im not an idiot, in the long run invasive species can out compete other species resulting in less biodiversity.

you didnt answer me. and since youre the one whos "jealous" of the UK having pet stick bugs... and since i had to do all the USDA req's to have my stick bugs, this question was directed solely at you.

 

[bizzely]

Not all nonnative species are invasive though, and not all invasive species crowd out native species. Interestingly enough pathogenic species like the indian stick insect might evolutionarily be a dead ends because they only produce genetically identical clones of themselves which in the the long run might not be able to cope with a changing ecosystem. In other words they get out competed by diseases and predators.

---------- Post added 12-10-2012 at 02:42 AM ----------

yeah if you didnt kill they eggs they hatch. no mystery there.

 

[Arienette]

Not all nonnative species are invasive though, and not all invasive species crowd out native species. Interestingly enough pathogenic species like the indian stick insect might evolutionarily be a dead ends because they only produce genetically identical clones of themselves which in the the long run might not be able to cope with a changing ecosystem. In other words they get out competed by diseases and predators.

---------- Post added 12-10-2012 at 02:42 AM ----------

yeah if you didnt kill they eggs they hatch. no mystery there.

then do a little more research before you complain that you cant have any.

for example, look up what they have done in SoCal.

 

[bizzely]

Hey instead of all this nonsense arguing and trying to make me out to be an idiot, why don't you tell me how to go about with these USDA requisites?? hmm? pretty please?

 

[Arienette]

Hey instead of all this nonsense arguing and trying to make me out to be an idiot, why don't you tell me how to go about with these USDA requisites?? hmm? pretty please?

you mean so that you can have your own pet stick bugs?
for what reason do you want these stick bugs?
are you an entomologist?
are you a research facility? perhaps a university?

 

[GiantVinegaroon]

Oh and could any one tell me why all exotic hercules beetles are not legal to import, i thought that the larva only ate rotting wood, not living plant tissue. whats up with that??

Yes. The larvae generally eat rotting wood. But then they turn into adults. Read up on Oryctes rhinoceros in Guam for more information.

 

[bizzely]

so only researchers, scientists,and universities can get permits for phasmids?