Failed Great Lakes officials are the real invasive species

When it comes to preventing the spread of invasive species in the Great Lakes, the story line is 'can't do' instead of 'can do.'

* For how many years have we been reading stories like this one which simply illustrate the inaction? 

New plan would fight invasive Asian carp with air bubbles, electric shocks, noise

There's always a "New plan..." because sloth is the preferred approach as earlier plans have been blocked, downplayed and dismissed, as I have reported often on this blog as far back as December, 2009: 

Bad Boosterism: Chicago Tribune Soft-Pedals Fears About The Asian Carp 

I'd say it's a little too soon to declare victory, but let's be honest. The Trib was just speaking up on behalf of its city's sewerage and shipping canal - - an engineering feat about a century old that carries Chicago's waste away from the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi River system.

Barges and recreational boaters navigate the canal, too, using it as a direct, but artificial route to the Mississippi. 

Problem is that the carp have successfully moved up river from the Deep South, swimming against the flow: the canal could be the entry point for the carp, perhaps the ultimate invasive species, to the Great Lakes. 

* And look at this major report in Tuesday's Capital Times::

Great Lakes freighters may have to treat ballast water to curb invasives

Among the most destructive invasive are tiny mussels which cover by the multiple billions the lakes beds, clog pipes and damage the entire ecosystems. 

"May have to treat...?" 

Here's another headline, this time from a blog piece I wrote on March 23, 2009 - - basically ten and a half years ago:

Plan to combat invasive species gets a hearing in Milwaukee Monday

Monday is the day you can show your support at a hearing for a plan to prevent further damage to the Great Lakes by invasive species that are dumped into the water when ocean-going freighters flush their ballast tanks. 

* But people meet, and leaders come and go, and that merry-go-round continues, as this 2010 blog post reminds us::


* Now let's let the independent publication Science News tie together all this blasé Great Lakes inaction and special-interest obstructionism:

A mussel poop diet could fuel invasive carp’s spread across Lake Michigan

Here's the mussel crop I photographed after a Lake Michigan gale in November. That's what years of stewardship failure produced just north of Bradford Beach on the shores of the largest supply of fresh surface waters on the planet.
 

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