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