I understand that wanting to keep Channa species is important to many monster fish keepers on here and that the ban on them has upset you. However, USFWS and state wildlife and fisheries agencies are not the ones to blame for this. They are the enforcing agencies, but they didn't release them into the wild. While agencies have stocked and propogated non-native species (which many of you have pointed out), none of you have pointed to the good things these agencies have done. I'm from Maryland, so the examples I have are local, but I know that Maryland isn't the only place where these agencies have done successful things.
In the 80's, a moratorium was placed on the Striped Bass. OF course everyone was upset about this and threw a fit, but the bottom line was that the populations were at an all time low and declining. After several years of moratorium and strictly enforced limits, the Striped Bass have just had one of their best spawning years in history and a new world record fish was caught in 2011. This fish was aged and determined to be a fish that was likely saved by that moratorium from the 80's.
The Blue Crab has seen strict regulation changes in the past 5 years which has already resulted in record numbers of crabs being back in the Bay. A population turn around in less than 5 years for a crustacean is unheard of, but still happened due to smart management and regulations.
The River Herring has recently been put under moratorium, but seeing the success of other moratoriums, I feel it is a positive step that will benefit the ecosystem in the long run.
A non aquatic example is the Canada Goose. They were also put under a hunting moratorium, and their populations are healthy again and hunters are able to take them, while still maintaining a healthy population.
These are just 4 short examples of good things that these agencies have done for the East Coast. The ban on Channa really boils down to a lack of enforcement. If there were as many USFWS and state agency wildlife enforcement officials as there are regular police force, it might be more feasible to only ban certain species of Channa. However, adding the task of knowing who owns Channa, what species they are and monitoring them, to the already long list of responsibilities that these agencies have, is unreasonable. They're already critically understaffed as it is. Who knows, in 10 years snakeheads may be seen as a viable gamefish in the US that is monitored by these agencies to maintain their populations so that people don't over fish them.
People are greedy. People are responsible for the decline of many native species and without USFWS and state agencies, the 4 species I listed above would probably all be extinct or going that way today. The vast majority of people do not care about the overall health of fish, ecosystems or anything else natural, they only care about themselves. People released snakeheads into local waters and earned all of us a ban on Channa. We have no one to blame but ourselves and our greed.
