| good question.
yes definatley concerned..and the concern is reflected in the laws.
the laws are there for good reason, somethings have gone a bit too far though..in the things and statements and policies that i hear about. but in the end its there to protect the environment and we all know our environment is a bit screwed.
i think two of our states will not allow them into the state at all.
as in fully banned. victoria and qld i believe. they have had trouble in the waterways in vic. though its not totally carp related...but most common people are led to believe that it is the carps fault alone. and carp are koi.
they (us humans) have reduced the river flows and all the other river degradation you can think of to help screw the rivers up.. taken water from upstream for agriculture so it doesnt reach downstream anymore..ri[pped out bank vegetation. wiped out normal flows of water of and out ofg the land after the rains.
but yes there are carp around down there in the wild, they catch them out for fertiliser or leave them on the bank to die.
they may well compound the problem in the rivers but the native fish have no chance anyway anymore with or without the koi. it is part and parcel of normal agriculture and removing massive quantities of water flows and damming it up. once you change the river to something that the fish havent evolved around they are going to not breed or turn into fingerlings or whatever. while others that have evolved around such new conditions can survive. koi can live in stagnant mud comapred to out native fish which have only evolved to clean waters running, cetain temps etc.
if i harvest a pond with koi and our natives side by side the natives can be all dead if things get a bit rough.
this means that if i want natives to stay alive enough to make money from them i have to harvest differently altogether.
in this respect i think that someday we will consider ourselves lucky that we have any fish, be it non indigenous or whatever in our waterways.
i relly see no great improvemnets or turnarounds in our water systems now we have come this far as humans in our ways of life..you can stock new fish in but its not gonna help if they cant establish a population in the water thats there. i think we dont understand enough of the complexities of what we have done.
in NSW where i am, there is strict fisheries policies before you can have a license to breed koi or any non indigenous fish for that matter, it makes sense to me mostly.good intentions. if you are a greeny you can be happy with the way the law is.
go check out the nsw fisheries barramundi protocol and youll see what i mean.
fully netted. 500 m from waterway. no pond discharge.big effluent settlement areas etc.
as well as that we are on a salt river and ive never seen any koi in the creek near us. if they got in there theyd die first high tide.
you cannot start a farm up in a risky area or bad land formation and things like that. im sure some people would find our rules amazingly complex compared to some areas.
the approval process goes through many government organisations.
it has been tailored with total concern to the environment among other things.
as you mention national parks and wildlife, council, nsw fisheries. land and water etc. really it is not an easy race to run to get a license.
if you fit the criteria you could have one.
but try fit the criteria and pay back the money it cost you to set up and youll know about it. most farms will fail.
These days its very hard and costs a lot to get a license. your farm must near be perfect. so we have a situation where there is a lack of aquaculture growth now adays. i imagine if you want to farm anything else it is fairly easy comparitively. so yes the greenies or whatever you call us/ or them have been told that fish farming is bad for the environment while in reality everything that man does is bad or much much worse. its like aquaculture has come at a bad time and has a lot of opposition while you can cut a forest out turn it into pasture and grow any farm animal you like and fertilise the paddocks as you like.
if you own a backyard and any aquarium fish you can breed if you like, as long as they are not for sale. that breaks the law. that means that anyoine doing breeding is under the scope..well if they sell amyways.
what we have is koi and all types of fish breeding naturally with each other probably in every town throughout the state.
i have seen koi swimmming in two other freshwater creeks.
i wanted to catch one of them cause it was very beautiful bekko.
one was next to a cemetary that had koi in a pond and the other one was near a backyard koi operation. it happens, they know it happens and they dont like it. you can get a spill in time of rain, but im sure its not the normal.
there are goldfish also in a few creek systems up the coast but i dont see it as a huge man made disaster. they are brown of course.
take a look at the plants we have around the place, most of them in our yards and parks are not locally evolved. look at our pets, its everywhere.
in some instances it causes a problem. especially if you want to see it that way.
i think the laws to stop importation from other countries came in in around late 1970s and they were going to ban them altogether but i believe the koi assocation was formed and they lobbied to keep their fish.
i guess they argued that it was not koi keepers that was cause for the carps to be in the rivers. though i dont know my history that well casue im only young and a bit ignorant to what went down.
like what do you do? stop people owning cats dogs cows pigs and anything that doesnt originate here?
id like some KHV free stock, it shouldnt be a problem to replace some of my fish with new lines straight from japan.
if a farm could do that then the population ok koi lovers could have them also without risking the diesease evrytime. whats the difference between supplying top line fish compared to fish with lesser qualtiy in regards to environmental issues??
it wouldnt casue an environmental problem. yet im not allowed. so im stuck with what we had before the laws came in and what little improvements have been made.
i think that farms should be able to have koi lines tested for disease just as the massive import aquarium trade undergoes quarrantine before release to the markets. if we could have them approved khv free from known khv free farms then no one is going to let those broodline koi into the rivers. | 
11-24-2005
...........i wish
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