Capture rules for freshwater fish are, rod and line, Nothing else is legal. IE: no practical method of capture is legal. (traps illegal, hand nets illegal, anything that ain't a rod and line, is illegal)
Oh, I've been using landing nets all this time.
it's not illegal to posses these fish in your own premises, assuming it can't be proved you removed them in the wild since they where added to the do not take list.
Like you said, unlikely.
But really, regardless of all that.. Salamanders don't make a good aquarium fish unless you have many many many years experience keeping very difficult to keep fish, every other native we have in south west WA is crazily easy to keep comparitively.
All of our native fish I would rate maximum 2/10 difficulty to keep, Salamanders are 11/10.
I'd imagine that our native lampreys wouldn't be easy either.
Put simply, salamanders don't travel well, they are hard to get to eat, they don't tolerate trace amounts of ammonia found in above neutral water, they jump out of the tank and die if you try to do a water change or alter the water conditions even slightly, they spook easily and hit the walls, lids. they escape from tanks even with airtight lids and die, they won't eat dead foods without many many months of training.
if you get it right it is a really special thing, but chances of success for most standard aquarium keepers... 01%.
its one thing bringing fish home from vebas or aquotix and they last a week and die, it's another thing taking a near threatend highly specialized fish species from the wild and killing them in less than a week..
It does sound difficult, but just thinking from the top of my head, the ammonia could be tackled with zeolite, the water changes can be in a slow drip fashion, water parameter fluctuations can be lessened with a larger tank, their temperament can be addressed with more hiding places and the tank being in a dark room, the possibility of them jumping can be dealt with a strong lid, with the underside being covered in some soft material to cushion escape attempts (I know you said they can even escape airtight lids, but there's gotta be a limit, they're not exactly James Bonds).
But seriously, what would happen if someone unknowingly caught a protected species, transported it beyond its natural range and discovered it back at home, somehow still alive? Would they be required to contact Fisheries to come and collect it?
Edited by pseudechisbutleri, 10 January 2017 - 08:24 PM.