Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Great Scots!

The Scotsman is reporting that Scotland is preparing to make it illegal to release 150 different non-native plant and animal species into the wild. The government is seeking to amend the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to add these species to a short list that is already there, and would also list 21 of them as illegal to sell, own or trade. The Scottish government has produced a consultation report on the subject which is now open for comments. If you want to check out the actual lists of proposed species, you'll have to download the Word doc here. Looks like the lists were compiled by "expert opinions" - more than 400 of them - rather than any type of species risk assessment. It will be interesting to see if every single species makes it to the final version of the list.

Be sure to scroll down to the end of the Scotsman article, there is a great comment thread going on down there!

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