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Monday, February 08, 2010

Environment - Asian carp talks today at White House "may miss bigger lake challenge"

Dan Egan of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel had this long and thorough story Sunday that began:

The focus of Monday's White House Asian carp summit is to stop the giant, ecosystem-ravaging fish from slipping in the Great Lakes' back door - the Chicago canal system that links the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico.

But the governors who called for the summit don't just want to talk about carp; they want the Obama administration to tackle the larger issue of invasive species in the Great Lakes, which have become an ecological stew teeming with at least 185 foreign organisms.

And if that discussion is going to occur, it will be impossible for regional and national leaders to ignore what's going on at the lakes' front door - the St. Lawrence Seaway, a manmade navigation corridor between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean.

That's the invasive species pathway biologists say poses the most trouble for the Great Lakes, even if Chicago canals and Asian carp are grabbing all the attention at the moment.

Oceangoing ships dumping contaminated ballast water are blamed for 57 species invasions since Seaway builders blasted their way into the lakes 51 years ago.

Those species include the quagga mussel that now carpets the bottom of Lake Michigan and has literally turned life in the lake into a shell of what it once was - the population of prey fish, which sustain big fish like salmon, has dropped to less than 10% of what it was before invasive mussels arrived two decades ago.

And despite Obama's 2008 campaign pledge of a "zero tolerance" policy for new Great Lakes invasions and the billions of dollars he plans to spend on the lakes' restoration, the Seaway door to future invasions remains open. The federal government released a report last year that spotlighted 30 species that have yet to colonize the lakes but are medium- to high-risk candidates to do so.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 8, 2010 07:58 AM
Posted to Environment