Encouraging Non Invasive Pets

The Problem

The Pet trade and the Pet keeping hobby is one of the main channels through which invasive species spread into natural ecosystem. If we can encourage Pet shop keepers and Pet owners to choose Non invasive species , we could mitigate this problem.

Our Proposal

The solution to the problem is to slowly but surely replace all pet species that have proven to be invasive, especially heavily invasive ones like Feral Cats, Guppies, red eared Sliders with more benign less invasive or completely non invasive species like Guinea Pigs, Neon Tetras etc. There is no easy ready made solution for this. It has to take a multi proved approach by discussing with individual shop keepers. Giving them the necessary information on invasive species. Creating whatsapp and other social media group, perhaps city specific ones for hobbyists and businessmen to encourage keeping non invasive pets.

We Assume that...

1. People can be slowly be persuaded to change.

2. People will act when they are educated about harmful effects of species on ecosystems.

3. People are not specifically attached to a particular species as a pet and just want companion ship . This is more true in case of aquarium fish but perhaps less so in case of cats.

4. The economic benefit of selling exclusively or largely non invasive species will be as good as selling all types of species.

Constraints to Overcome

Culture could be a big constraint. Cats being pets is ingrained into human culture in many countries and this is going to be tough to break through. Similarly many invasive fish species are like Mollies, Plecostomus catfish, Goldfish, Guppies are very popular pets and there are a lot of economic stake holders.

Current Work

Have not yet built a team so would love to get more people who are passionate about this topic. Then we can plan on the tasks and activities. Some of the tasks and activities would be to make a map of pet shops all over the world and certify them as ethical pet shops that do not deal with invasive species. While that will be the overview, I will have to start with visiting various pet and aquarium shops in the cities that I am familiar with ie. Chennai and Bengaluru and educate them on the impacts of invasive species. Perhaps print pamphlets and distribute it to them. Translate material on harmful impacts of Invasive species into local languages like Kannada and Tamil. I cannot do this alone and looking for collaborators in my city, country and rest of the globe.

Current Needs

We need the resources to reach out to public through media, social media. We need a good documentary or talkumentary on this issue to reach to as many pet keepers and pet dealers as possible. If someone as prominent as Gareth Morgan or Dr. David Simberloff joins this initiative , that would be a great boost.