Has any one else had a Koi ban in their area? We can no longer buy Koi in our area of B.C. and I heard it is a Province wide ban?? I heard it was due to Koi getting into the waterways and spreading disease to the salmon. This is very disheartening to me as I am more into Koi than goldfish these days. On an upper note, my Mom was able to score me 3 little Koi guys in her town, now i just have to wait until they make the 14 hour journey to their new home :-) I will winter them over indoors this winter to get them a good start for the spring. Anyone else hear of a ban in their area?? :(

As far as I know, there haven't yet been bans of koi in the US. Koi can escape or be released into the wild but that goes for all fish and animals. It's the responsibility of the caretaker to prevent that but there are many people who severly lack that. They had that big news story a few years ago about snakeheads (carnivorous fish from China) here in MD that people released. They bought them at Chinese food markets, kept them as pets, and released them when they got too big. So, they poisoned a bunch of ponds killing not only the snakeheads but countless innocent fish and probably frogs, turtles, plants, etc. They then banned all snakeheads even though many species cannot survive the winter here. The laws don't make much sense. For example, no regular person in MD can ever have a turtle under 4" legally but, if you're a Chinese "businessman," you can get a permit to slaughter or export (for breeding and slaughter) literally hundreds or even thousands of baby turtles. Make sense? So, if they banned koi here, I would not be surprised! Koi or more commonly the common carp (same species but no color) have already been released or escaped into many US waterways. So, it's too late for a ban to have any effect anyway. I would guess that the koi are just starting to appear in B.C. waterways so they're freaking out and created the ban which won't really do anything but perturb ponders.

Yes, it seems like someone always has to ruin a good thing, whether intentionally or not. Well I guess now I will have fun searching for Koi and maybe I will get some babies next year and hopefully not 3,000 more goldfish babies (even though I love them too of course) :blink: