Monday, January 17, 2011

Over 70 invasive species making their way to the Great Lakes

The lessons we should learn from the Asian Carps threat is that if we want to slow the rate at which the Great Lakes are threatened by invasive species, we need to act years earlier. It's not like we didn't know for the better part of a decade that Asian carps were swimming up the Mississippi and could enter Lake Michigan from the Chicago canal. We just didn't do much about it.

It would be a mistake to believe that the Asian carps are the only new creatures out there that are making their way to the Great Lakes and it would be an even bigger mistake not to take action early.

There are over 70 species that pose a known future threat to the Great Lakes as they make their ways closer to Great Lakes waters, including the northern snakehead that has already infested rivers and streams in Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia and Maryland. That's the guy that grows up to three feet long, breathes air, and can squirm over land from one body of water to another.

Invasive species are an urgent concern...definitely something our representatives need to take more seriously.

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