Breaking News: Invasive Species Declare Moratorium on Spreading to Allow Feds Time to Plan

Here’s some reassuring news from the federal government, which has done such a great job of protecting our ecosystems from Asian carp, quagga mussels, round gobies, and other exotic species. In case you’re still a bit groggy from all of that holiday celebrating, that previous sentence is sarcasm.

Bowing to pressure from commercial shipping interests, the exotic pet industry, and fish farmers, the federal government has done an abysmal job, and it appears that it will keep on keeping on in that vein.

As part of its Great Lakes and Mississippi River Interbasin Study, the Corps of Engineers is offering 90 proposals for keeping Asian carp and other invasives from migrating into and out of the Great Lakes. Under the present schedule, those options would be narrowed by 2015, with final recommendations made to Congress the following year.

Isn’t that great? In the meantime, carp, mussels, and dozens of other invaders will halt their spread and devastation as a gesture of good faith. That’s more sarcasm, folks.

In an editorial, the Toledo Blade recently said this:

“Government officials did little to stop the northerly migration of voracious Asian carp for decades. Evidence of their DNA turned up in 2009 beyond a series of electrical barriers near Chicago that had been set up to repel a smaller and less-threatening exotic species, round gobies. The barriers have since been modified to turn away carp as well.

“That's the plan, anyway. But if it doesn't work, the carp could devastate Lake Erie. More fish are spawned and caught in Lake Erie than in all of the other Great Lakes combined. Most of the activity is in the lake's western basin, near Toledo.

“The obvious solution, widely advocated by leading Great Lakes scientists, is a complete separation of the lakes and Mississippi River watersheds. But that course would be expensive and politically controversial, requiring one of the largest engineering feats in North American history and costing billions of dollars.

“Litigation over the future of Chicago-area shipping locks pitted Illinois against other Great Lakes states, and went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Obama Administration supported efforts to keep the locks open.

“Frustrated by the agonizingly slow movement of the anti-carp bureaucracy, U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) is sponsoring a measure that would require the Corps to pick up the pace. It deserves support.”

You can learn more about the Corps proposals and comment upon them (by Feb. 17) by going here. Probably would be best to avoid sarcasm in your comments. 

Congress Could Weaken New York's Regulation to Keep Out Exotic Spcies

Zebra mussels on Lake Erie beach.

Here’s a perfect example of why invasive species cost this nation billions of dollars annually and do irreparable harm to our fisheries and other natural resources:

Congress seems poised to pass a bill that would negate New York’s tough new regulations for ballast water in ships enroute to the Great Lakes.

Zebra mussels and dozens of other exotics have entered the Great Lakes in ballast water. Along with altering ecosystems with their filter feeding and prolific colonies that smother habitat, the mussels block water intakes, costing states, municipalities, and industries billions of dollars in maintenance and control costs.

Here is what Buffalo News says:

“The measure exempts ballast water — the water kept in the hulls of ships to keep them balanced, and the main repository for alien invaders like the zebra mussel — from the federal Clean Water Act and any tougher state regulations . . .

“If the bill becomes law, international standards that environmentalists decry as too weak would be the main barrier between invasive species and the Great Lakes . . .

“New York’s proposed ballast water standards are 100 times more stringent than pending international ballast water standards for existing ships — and 1,000 times more stringent for new ships — prompting the shipping industry to complain that the technology doesn’t exist to meet the new rules.”

Of course, the main argument against tough standards for ballast water is that it will increase the cost of doing business for the shipping industry and thus hurt economic recovery.

Perhaps those who make such arguments are unaware of the damage that zebra mussels --- brought to this country by ballast water --- have done to this country’s economy, not to mention our fisheries.

And with weak standards for regulation of ballast water, if the next exotic that could be just as damaging as the zebra mussel is not yet in the Great Lakes, it soon will be.

Politicians Favor Carp Over Welfare of Public Resources

“I’m from the government. I’m here to help.”

No doubt you’ve heard that oxymoronic one-liner before.

Aside from the military, government is more a problem causer than a problem solver.

That’s certainly the case with Asian carp and the damage that they are doing to the nation’s waterways, according to recent articles in the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper.

One of them begins this way:

Maybe a 40-pound silver carp upside the head would convince President Barack Obama of the urgent need to take decisive action against these invasive filter feeders.

And it continues:

"This is a crisis situation," Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine warned in an interview. "And yet the Obama administration seems to be oblivious to it."

If the president's got time to hand out dried fruit to trick-or-treaters, he's got time to order the Army Corps of Engineers to get off its doughnuts and complete -- in 18 months instead of five years -- its study of a permanent separation between the largest freshwater ecosystem in the world and the Mississippi River.

But he won't. Wouldn't want to upset the big-money guys in Chicago.

Instead, Obama will continue to waste taxpayer money on an apologist, I mean, carp czar, futile fish kills, superfluous studies and stonewalling of Great Lakes governors, attorneys general, scientists and environmentalists -- all of whom recognize that these gilled guerillas will lay waste to the $7 billion Great Lakes commercial fishing industry and the 800,000 jobs it supports.

Read Presidential leadership against against carp? Go fish here.

The other article says that Jerry Rasmussen, a former biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “blames the importation of the fish, as well as a political system that bends over backward to promote and protect commerce, yet fails to protect the environment.”

Rasmussen also says this:

"When the USFWS was criticized for the importation of Asian carp many years ago, it turned over the program to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"All federal and local officials wanted to do were help Southern fish farmers. They didn't care about what would happen when these fish got loose. The ponds used by fish farmers are built on river bottoms and can't be drained.

Today, Illinois officials keep dragging their feet, Rasmussen said, believing that it's more important to keep barges moving through a canal than to seal off the Chicago waterways from the Great Lakes to keep out the Asian carp.

"The [federal] Asian carp czar (John Goss) listens to the interests of commerce," Rasmussen said. "Goods being shipped down the Chicago Canal that could just as easily be moved by train and truck. Politicians don't want to do anything.”

Read ‘Wonder fish’ turns into environmental piranha: The battle against Asian carp here.

Keeping Out the Carp and Containing the Invasion

As I pointed out in my previous post, keeping Asian carp and other aquatic exotic species from spreading is about more than implementing concrete, preventative measures, such as river barriers.

It’s also about public outreach and education from both government agencies and angling organizations.

But preventative measures also are needed, and, in the case of carp, that measure should be hydrologic separation of the Mississippi River basin from the Great Lakes.

Nature did not connect them; we did. And, in so doing we established a two-way highway for exotics: Zebra and quagga mussels moved out of the lakes and into rivers across the nation, while bighead and silver carp are knocking on the door of Lake Michigan.

And that’s just four species. Nearly 200 exotic species are established in the Great Lakes and will have easy access to the rest of the nation’s fisheries until we separate the two systems.

A new, privately funded study will show three ways to build barriers to separate the Mississippi River basin from Lake Michigan, according to the Detroit Free Press. It will be released in January, in hopes of spurring the Army Corps of Engineers to work faster on its own study, which won’t be completed until at least 2015.

Free Press says: “The plan would put one, three or five new permanent barriers into rivers around Chicago to block carp and other invasive species. The project might have to be built in phases over time, but could begin with a single one-way barrier that would stop carp. Later phases would stop invasive species going the other way, from Lake Michigan into the Mississippi River.”

Invasive Species, Nutrients Combine for Assault on Great Lakes

Lake Ontario sunset. Photo by Robert Montgomery

Great Lakes fisheries are in grave peril, and it’s not just because of an imminent invasion by silver and bighead carp.

But it is largely because of other invasive species, including zebra and quagga mussels, introduced by ballast water from ocean-going ships.

And now nutrient imbalance is piling on, according to a report by the National Wildlife Federation.

In deeper, offshore waters, filter-feeding invasive mussels have collapsed the food chain by eating too much of the plankton.

NWF: “For example, in the offshore waters of Lake Huron, prey fish biomass has declined by 95 percent in less than 20 years. Scientists predict similar declines could occur in Lake Michigan.”

In warmer and shallower Lake Erie and in nearshore waters of other lakes, the problem is nutrient overload from runoff pollution.

NWF: “Excessive nutrients in nearshore waters — in particular phosphorus from both agricultural and point sources — have caused or contributed to problems such as toxic algal blooms, green algae blooms (including the nuisance alga Cladophora), avian botulism, and the Lake Erie central basin ‘dead zone.’  Indeed, the summer of 2011 witnessed one of the most extensive harmful algal blooms ever recorded for western Lake Erie, leading to numerous recreational advisories.”

Learn more here, including recommendations by NWF to help save the Great Lakes.