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Cox to detail Asian carp lawsuit

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(MI) Detroit Free Press – Michigan’s attorney general plans to file a lawsuit to protect the Great Lakes and Michigan workers from the threat posed by the invasive Asian carp. Attorney General Mike Cox’s office said Sunday that Cox will hold a news conference at 10 a.m. today at the Cobo Center in downtown Detroit to announce details of the lawsuit. Cox, a Republican running for governor, said earlier this month that he would file a suit in federal court. More

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Wisconsin AG wants more info on Asian carp threat

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(WI) The Associated Press – Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said Wednesday he wants to know more about the threat Asian carp pose to the Great Lakes. The carp have been migrating northward in the Mississippi and Illinois rivers for decades. Scientists say if they get into the Great Lakes, they could consume plankton, interrupt the food chain and devastate the $7 billion fishery. More

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Editorial: Act now before invader hits Great Lakes

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(WI) Green Bay Press Gazette – The latest invasive species to threaten the Great Lakes is a brute called the Asian carp. The Wisconsin Legislature should take an opportunity today to act swiftly against the threat. Capable of growing to 4 feet long and 100 pounds, the Asian carp has starved out native species by scooping up plankton as it slowly migrated north up the Mississippi River since the 1970s. The fish originally was imported from Asia to cleanse fish ponds and sewage lagoons in the deep South, but they escaped into the river. More

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To guard Great Lakes, give fence a chance

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(VA) USA Today – It sounds like science fiction: an alien invasion of Lake Michigan by toddler-sized scum suckers. But around Chicago, the fear is so real that governments have already spent more than $11 million building electronic defenses to zap the invaders and trying to poison them. The alien is a fish, the Asian carp. The fear is that the voracious plant-eaters could migrate from the Mississippi River basin through a Chicago canal and into the Great Lakes, threatening the habitat of lake fish. The risk, however, is that a going-overboard solution (walling off the canal) will be adopted before the costly new defenses (electrical barriers) are given a chance to work.

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EPA to spend $13 million to help stop Asian carp

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(WI) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Less than two weeks after fishery experts spent about $3 million to poison the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in a desperate attempt to beat back an Asian carp invasion of Lake Michigan, the federal government has announced it will throw another $13 million at the problem. That money will come from the recently passed $475 million Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and much of it will go to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers so the agency can build emergency berms and plug various waterways in the Chicago area to keep the carp from riding floodwaters into the lake. More

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Great Lakes need to be protected: Close the canal

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(MI) Detroit Free Press – The Great Lakes are the absolute crown jewels of Michigan and the Midwest (“Capitol Hill joins in carp assault,” Dec. 13). Michigan has by far more Great Lakes shoreline than any other state. We must protect the Great Lakes at all costs, for the sake of our environmental and economic futures. Our relatively clean, massive freshwater supply is the envy of the country, especially our brethren in the sun-parched Southwest.

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Man bites fish

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(IL) Chicago Tribune – When we learned that wildlife officials had spent $3 million poisoning the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to kill one Asian carp (and tens of thousands of innocent by-swimmers), our first response was whew! The purpose of last weekend’s deliberate fish kill wasn’t to eradicate the carp population but to make sure none of them was close enough to make a run past an underwater electric barrier while it was shut down for maintenance. Despite the near-hysterical protests of some of our neighbors, the body count suggests the carp aren’t poised to take over Lake Michigan the day after tomorrow. Their numbers must be smaller than feared, we thought, or the barriers are working better than the doomsayers want to believe. More

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Cries to halt Chicago canal traffic because of carp are opposed

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(MI) Detroit Free Press – As Michigan’s attorney general prepares to file lawsuits this week to force Illinois and federal agencies to do more to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes, some members of Congress also are mounting an anti-carp assault.

They say the time has come to close off a system of Chicago canals that allows invasive species to move between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River basin. More

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Asian carp raises fear and loathing on Great Lakes

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(MI) The Associated Press – After nearly four decades as a fishing guide on the Great Lakes, Pat Chrysler has seen enough damage from invasive species to fear what giant, ravenous Asian carp could do to the nation’s largest bodies of freshwater. “It’s like introducing piranhas to the Great Lakes,” Chrysler said from South Bass Island in Lake Erie, which teems with walleye, perch and other fish that draw anglers from near and far. More

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Lock to lake open after carp hunt ends

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(MI) Detroit Free Press – State and federal agencies hunting for Asian carp have reopened a critical lock leading to Lake Michigan that was closed last week, after failing to find any Asian carp there. Crews dragged fishing nets through a 5 1/2 -mile stretch of the Cal-Sag channel near the O’Brien lock; it was closed to barges during the net operation Friday. The channel is an offshoot of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, and the lock is just 6 miles from Lake Michigan. More