On the FWC form, select Agenda Item: Proposed Rules – Nonnative Fish and Wildlife

Your comments should include details on how these policies would impact your business and/or the pet sector. Additional suggested statements you could include are:

·  As a member of the responsible pet care community, I care deeply about protecting our environment from the impacts of invasive species and know that more must be done to protect Florida’s delicate ecosystem. But rushing through this process while ignoring the input from experts who have been gathered to help address this issue is not the way to do it.  

·  Please do not shut down the entire responsible pet industry in Florida by moving forward with these proposed rules for Nonnative Fish and Wildlife. This whitelist approach is not just bad policy, we are also concerned that it would bring our entire industry to a screeching halt in Florida. These proposed rules would especially harm small businesses, by creating a lengthy, complicated, and expensive species review process that could take years to complete. 

·  These hastily written proposed rules ignore decades of expertise from the pet care and exhibitor community and will not solve the invasive species problem in Florida. There are many flaws with these proposed rules, but they are both sure to be business-killers; driving businesses and tax revenue out of our state while doing nothing to solve our invasive species issue.