Ret Talbot, Richard Ross, and others as well as myself have been discussing these issues for the past few days and one of the keys things that I have gleaned that was not discussed in this article is to push for a change in the way that the ESA handles endangered species. The following is more pertinent to freshwater fish at the moment but will likely soon apply to this side of aquaria as well. Many species of fish are only found in captivity now with varying organizations keeping them alive through targeted programs or because they are valuable for resale, included in this list are many Lake Victoria cichlids, red tailed sharks, and many species of killifish. Right now all it would take is for a group to submit a request with the data currently available to NFWS to list these species and they would likely be listed in short order and all economic reasons to maintain their populations would cease likely resulting in their permanent extinction rather than just extinct in the wild as many of them stand right now. Another good example of this is look at how many corals Walt Smith returns to the wild as part of his mariculture operation, stop this operation and both sides stop resulting in greater harm rather than any sort of protection.
Also the idea that just being listed as threatened and will still allow for them to be kept in captivity is flawed, PIJAC released a statement yesterday indicating that they believe and I do as well based on my studies of ESA politics that they will be banned from being kept in the near future. If this occurs likely all Acropora will be swept up in the ban because of the inherent difficulties in identification for even experts much less the problems faced by CITES inspectors.