25 January 2016

Sell your Marmorkrebs, Tennesseans

A week ago, I reported stumbling upon  information indicating that Marmorkrebs had been designated “Class V Wildlife” (basically, zoos only) in Tennessee. I can now confirm that this is correct. This effectively means that keeping Marmorkrebs as pets is now illegal in Tennessee.

Trying to track this down required a little effort. As I mentioned before, my initial Google searches failed miserably. Twitter to the rescue!

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency has a Twitter account. They replied to my tweet, and gave me a phone number to try. It took several tries over multiple days to get a person instead of a voice message. When I did get through, I got another phone number to try, but luckily, got an answer to on the first call. And the person I spoke to was able to confirm that Marmorkrebs was added to Tennessee’s list of Class V wildlife last October.

People have kept Marmorkrebs in Tennessee: I found some owners discussing their pets in a previous paper (Faulkes 2013; data here). But I wonder how someone who wants to be a responsible, law-abiding pet owner is supposed to learn about this new regulation. I specifically watch for news about Marmorkrebs like a hawk, and I missed this item for three months. Then it took me almost a week of phone tag to track down someone who could confirm it. The Tennessee officials I spoke to on the phone were super helpful, but still, I put in considerable effort to learn this information. Not everyone will have my obsessive motivation.

References

Faulkes Z. 2013. How much is that crayfish in the window? Online monitoring of Marmorkrebs, Procambarus fallax f. virginalis (Hagen, 1870) in the North American pet trade. Freshwater Crayfish 19(1): 39-44. http://dx.doi.org/10.5869/fc.2013.v19.039

Supplemental info: Faulkes Z. 2013. Online monitoring of Marmorkrebs in the North American pet trade. figshare. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.645344

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Owning Marmorkrebs in Tennessee might just be illegal now

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