Columbus
Dispatch...
Stop
the invaders
More states should heed Ohio’s call to
thwart spread of Asian carp
Ohio
Attorney General Mike DeWine and
his counterparts in five other states are right that the possibility of
invasive species arriving via the Great Lakes is a threat to waterways
across
the United States. So it was smart to ask for the backing of other
attorneys
general in a plea to the federal government to speed up efforts to
block
progress of Asian carp toward the Great Lakes.
A recent letter from the six states, signed by
DeWine, asks 27 other
states to help lobby for a move to permanently sever the connection
between
Great Lakes basin and the Mississippi River. If leaders of those states
consider the damage already done by the carp and other invasive
species,
they’ll join the effort.
The giant carp, which escaped from farms in
the south during the
Mississippi floods of 1993, have made their way northward, breeding
rapidly and
consuming up to 20 percent of their body weight per day in plankton and
other
fish. In many areas, they’ve displaced most other fish species. They’re
perilously close to entering Lake Michigan; if they become established
there, a
great ecosystem will suffer irreversible damage, including the
destruction of
the region’s $7 billion sport-fishing industry.
More evidence of the danger posed by invasives
lies further north along
the Lake Michigan shore, where a recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
article told
of the death of commercial fishing out of Milwaukee. A fishery that
once
produced 14 million pounds per day of trout, perch, sturgeon, lake
herring,
whitefish and
chubs, now is virtually
barren, and scientists believe the cause is the quagga mussel, an
invasive
species that arrived in the ballast water of trans-Atlantic freighters.
They carpet the entire lake bed and eat all
the plankton on which other
fish formerly survived.
Stopping the spread of invasives is difficult;
any arborist from Ontario
to southern Ohio who has witnessed the unstoppable march of the emerald
ash-borer can attest to that.
But permanently separating the lakes from the
river, perhaps with a
permanent barrier in the Calumet River or by closing shipping locks, is
the
best opportunity. Unfortunately, such moves have been blocked by
Illinois
officials who don’t want to see the disruption of Chicago-area
shipping, which
uses the system of canals and tributaries between the lakes and the
Mississippi.
But a recent Army Corps of Engineers study
said the Chicago Area
Waterway System is the nation’s major pathway for the spread of
invasive
species. Thirty aquatic species are considered at high risk to migrate
into the
Mississippi River watershed. That could affect a huge area, and the
prospect
should be a wake-up call to states and officials far removed from the
Asian
carp threat.
The government needs to move faster. In
particular, the Corps should
speed up a timetable under which it has promised to study the flow of
waters in
and out of the Great Lakes, but doesn’t expect to produce a report
until 2015.
At least one carp already has been spotted
beyond an electrical barrier
put in the Calumet as a temporary fix. The health of the Great Lakes
might not
survive another four years of inaction.
Read
it at the Columbus Dispatch
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