Asian carp discovery prompts renewed calls for ecological separation

The discovery this week of a sexually mature Asian carp in a lake connected to Lake Michigan has prompted renewed calls for emergency containment actions and for the ecological separation of the Mississippi River basin and the Great Lakes.

Asian carp, voracious feeders that can grow up to 100 pounds and eat 40 percent of their body weight each day, are plentiful in the rivers downstream from Chicago and experts have warned that if they become established in the Great Lakes they could decimate the region’s seven billion dollar a year fishing industry.

On Wednesday a 20 lb. Bighead carp, thought to be around three years old, was caught by a commercial fisher in Lake Calumet, a heavily industrialized lake along the northern Indiana coast which lies about six miles from Lake Michigan.

The fish is the first specimen to be captured beyond the T.J. O’Brien Lock and Dam and beyond an Army Corps of Engineers electric barrier that is intended to block migration of the invasive fish.

Since late last year DNA testing in Chicago area waterways has indicated that Asian carp are present beyond the electric barrier and in Lake Michigan, but this is the first time that an actual fish has been captured.

“This week’s find confirms what we have suspected the DNA means all long,” said David Lodge who directed the Asian carp e-DNA surveillance program at the University of Notre Dame. “We now have a body to go with the DNA.”

“We need some action very quick,“ said Nick Schroeck, executive director of Wayne State University’s Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, including “possibly shutting down the locks, more electro-fishing, netting , and perhaps even some targeted poisoning.”

“The larger point,” he said, “is that we really need to get beyond these interim measures and separate the Great Lakes from the Mississippi.”

Schroeck said that this week’s carp discovery could bolster political and legislative efforts to contain the fish.

Last month, Michigan Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin joined eleven other Great Lakes senators in asking the Committee on Environment and Public Works Committee to change the Water Resources Development Act to allow the Army Corps to begin work on permanent hydrological separation of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds.

Yesterday Stabenow responded to the latest carp news by urging the Army Crops to close the locks that connect the Chicago area waterways to Lake Michigan. She also called for poisoning of the area around where the carp was found.

But so far no lock closure or poisoning has been announced by the agencies that make up the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Council.

In a statement the Illinois Dept. of Natural Resources said only that electro-fishing and sampling efforts in Lake Calumet and the Calumet River will continue and the department will test the fish to determine its origins.

Environmental groups expressed dismay over the response by the Army Crops of Engineers, which has been tasked by the federal government with studying whether it is feasible to separate the Mississippi River basin from the Great Lakes.

“I don’t know which is worse: the discovery of a live Asian carp beyond the electric fence that is supposed to stop them, or the dismissive and obstructionist reaction to that discovery from the Army Corps of Engineers,” blogged Andy Buchsbaum of the National Wildlife Federation.

Buchsbaum wrote that on a conference call about the carp discovery this week “the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the US EPA, the Illinois DNR … they all announced new measures to combat the carp, and each of them pledged to ramp up their efforts. But not the Corps.”

Buchsbaum said that the Corps would not even commit to continuing DNA sampling for Asian carp.

The Corps was not immediately available for response.

The National Wildlife Federation and other regional environmental groups are calling for swift passage of legislation directing the Army Corps to begin work on ecological separation.

“Asian carp are like cockroaches, when you see one, you know its accompanied by many more you don’t see,” Henry Henderson, Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Midwest Program said in a statement. “We just cannot wait five to seven years for the Army Corps of Engineers to complete its own studies before deciding to solve this problem.”

“Studies upon studies have shown the need to deter the carp and that the Mississippi and Great Lakes should be separated to do this,” said Lisa Wozniak, executive director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. “It’s a super highway for invasives. But the desire for more and more studies has eaten up time and it’s caught up to us now.”