For one I dont believe any introduced fish from the hobby has caused damage to the extent we need to ban the importation or sell of most of these fish and herps on a federal level, this is a state issue. The human race does more damage on a regular basis with sewage spills, chemical runoff, etc. than with an invasive species. As was mentioned many of the invasive species that are causing problems in the great lakes are believed to have come from ships ballasts correct? So how is banning the sell of an pleco or oscar or pacu going to stop that in that area?
I'm a newbie here so don't want to step on too many toes, but I felt the need to comment on this issue. This is a difficult issue, and I think this legislation has nearly zero chance of passing, at least without much stronger support in Senate, which I don't believe even has a companion bill at this time. Some of the arguments put forward by the pet industry are astute - notably the fact that this would be very difficult to implement and would either require a lot of funding to move forward or else would pull USFWS off of other other important efforts to address this problem. However, I do support something like this bill. I've had a lot of experience with the Lacey act and what it takes to list an undesireable organism. Because of this, there are only a handful of taxa on taxon-non-grata list - about half a dozen, including silver carp, black carp, snakeheads.
There are a lot of other legislations in the work regarding ballast water issues. There are a lot of other people working on that problem. To argue that we should not address the intentionally imported invasive species issue because there also exists an unintentionally imported invasive species issue is a bit like saying that we should not address car thieves because people are also robbing banks.
I've seen what armored catfishes can do to a place - some rivers in Mexico and Japan are now nearly monocultures (fishwise) of the darned things. They also severely damage levees and dikes, by digging tunnels. Arkansas just poisoned the entire Big Piney drainage (right under the area where the ivory billed woodpecker was supposedly spotted) at a cost of $750,000 with the intent to kill out the introduced northern snakehead (introduced before it was banned on the Lacey Act) before it can spread further. Most people don't seem to think they will be successful in that effort. It is not limited to aquatics - think Monk Parrots all over, which cause many ag and industrial problems. Also monkeys, iguanas, monitor lizards, pythons in Florida (something like 4% of the known population of one endangered rodent has been found in the stomachs of pythons - and that is just the pythons they've caught and opened up). There were human fatalities in N. Central USA associated with a plague organism imported with naked mole rats. [Do people REALLY NEED a naked mole rat? For chrissakes, get a cat. You can even get a hairless cat if you are allergic.] Lionfish in the Atlantic could change things dramatically in the future. Fishing in Florida is like fishing in a darn tropical aquarium. I added 4 new (non-native) species to my life list in two hours fishing in the Miami canals. Most of the fish I caught were not native. [I note that some people think is this is not necessarily a bad thing - hey, it is increased diversity! - but I would personally rather catch Florida fish in Florida, not South American and African fish.]
Anyway, I have to say that I have long supported the idea of a "clean list" rather than a "dirty list" for importation of exotic species. It does make sense that, once screened at original importation for pathogens, obligate tropical species would make the clean list in temperate areas. The legislation perhaps needs some tweaking in this regard. Species that have been around a long time with no substantial damage (guinea pigs, siamese fighting fish, neon tetras, angelfish....) should make the clean list easily, if sufficient resources are invested in constructing the clean list, and the requirements for making the clean list are not onerous. I think that those in the FWS who would be developing the list would be smart enough to include these species on the clean list rapidly with little investment of effort. But there will be judgement calls, and there will be people on both sides that will be P.O.d because their particular species of interest was not placed on the list they liked. In those cases, it should be the responsibility of the interested party to present their case.
I spent three years in Central America (raising non-native aquatic species, so perhaps I am part of the problem). During that time I met several individuals from North America (including a Canadian who was editor of a cichlid fanciers magazine) and one from Japan who were in the country (acting independently from one another) looking for new species to export for use in the aquarium trade. There are few controls on what you can bring into the USA if you don't release it into the wild. But once those animals leave the store, there is a substantial chance that the animal will end up in the wild - certainly if enough are sold, some will make it into the wild. I don't think I should have to pay (through environmental damage or health risks) for someone else's right to have a naked mole rat.
Autrailia, New Zealand, Britain, most western European countries already have similar legislation. They have learned this through terrible experience with establishment of undesirable exotic species. It is time that we (USA) learn from our experiences, too.