Dear Ornamental Traders, Importers, Public Aquariums, Brokers et al: As you all know, US Fish and Wildlife have made changes to their appointment procedures and are enforcing a semi-new regulation that all appointments for imports must be made with a 48 hour notice. We would like to start a petition that can be presented to the department showing our concern of this regulation and hope that a more practical timeline (24 hour notice) be put into place. If you agree that the 48 hour notification regulation is impractical for our industry, then please sign your name and company name to this email. I have already spoke to one or more US officials who don\'t agree with the regulation, so there\'s a good chance that we can get support for change from within the department. It just doesn\'t seem practical that a 48 hour notification should be regulation due to many reasons: 1. Importers do not receive confirmation of flight departure within the 48 hour rule. So we can not be certain of a shipment arrival before 48 hours. 2. Shipping aquarium ornamental fish mainly are shipped within a 48 hour flight time so again, notification is typically not known unitl within a 48 hour time. 3. Documents and confirmation are not seen until a shipment has been shipped and confirmed on-board the airlines. This is mostly within the 48 hour timeline. 4. Shipment delays are very common within the Aquarium Industry. For example, a Monday arrival shipment is delayed and now will arrive on Tuesday. The importer doesn\'t realize this until Monday where notification for a Tuesday arrival would be within the 48 hour rule. 5. Most imports are from overseas, whereas the doc\'s are sent in the middle of the night, and US importers don\'t see the information until the next morning...making a 48 hour notification again nearly impossible. 6. Most exporters work off a stocklist of \"in-stock\" items. Shipments are sent on a \"first come first serve basis\". There is a sensitive timeframe when a fish is ready to ship and the 48 hour rule delays shipments that are not in the best interest of the animals health. Not long ago, US Fish and Wildlife asked importers to notify them of imports by 9am, same day as arrival. Then they asked for 24 hour notice, and now it\'s an outrageous 48 hour notice and they are now passing out fines, which have been given from shipments that arrived 4 months or more without any warning! We feel that the 48 hour rule is just not logical or practical for our industry. If you agree, please sign the petition and voice your opinion.

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