An Ounce of Prevention is Worth A Ton of Carp

The Great Lakes are in the national news this week — for the wrong reason. The discovery of one of the large, voracious nonnative fish beyond an electric barrier designed to keep them out of Lake Michigan is clanging alarm bells. Some fear that the carp will take over and crowd out desirable, valuable sport fish.

There's nothing natural about this problem. Eating up to 40% of their body weight daily, the carp were deliberately introduced to fish farms in the lower Mississippi River years ago to control aquatic weeds. Unfortunately, the fish jumped from the ponds and into rivers during floods and have been making their way north. The other unnatural feature is the canal that could give the carp access to the lake. It was dug to flush Chicago's sewage away from Lake Michigan and facilitates barge traffic.

The imminent threat of a Great Lakes carp invasion has many asking why private or government entities didn't act sooner to prevent it. They should have, but an old conservation lesson was forgotten: postponing conservation action on the grounds of short-term cost almost always ends up costing way, way more in the long run. And it's usually the public treasury that pays them.

Minnesota is also vulnerable to these carp. Individual invasive carp have been found as close to the Twin Cities as Lake Pepin. But at least we didn't make it any easier for them to get to Lake Superior by building a Duluth-St. Paul canal..

Moral of the story: don't take chances with important natural resources. In the end, if you gamble long enough, you lose.