… And in other news this week, the Green Bay Packers were declared the winners of the 2011 Super Bowl, Japan said the recent earthquake that created a devastating tsunami was a national disaster, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that bighead carp were dangerous and added them to its list of injurious wildlife.
Okay, tell me something else I didn’t already know. Maybe it was big news in Washington, D.C. earlier this week when the Fish and Wildlife Service made a fuss about bighead carp, but they’re about 5 years behind the curve on that. If you put all the scary stuff already written about bighead carp in one document, it would make a bigger book than the Obamacare package.
Specifically, the Fish and Wildlife Service said bigheads are bad and that transporting them across state lines was a violation of the federal Lacey Act and anybody caught lugging carp from, say, Michigan to Minnesota was subject to six months’ imprisonment and up to $5,000. Really? Are carp haulers a growing problem in the midlands? Is somebody driving along the Mississippi River dumping out bigheads like Johnny Appleseed planting apple trees? Do bigheads need any help crossing state lines?
The last I heard, the horses were already out of the barn on that count. The only question was how and when Asian carp – bigheads and those jumping silver carp – would find their way into the Great Lakes and begin the process of infesting that inland sea the way they have the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Silver carp, by the way, and a couple of its cousins were declared “injurious wildlife” in 2007, so the bighead’s inclusion on the list means that it has now reached the official nuisance stage.
In the May/June 2011 issue of FLW Outdoors and Walleye magazines, fishery biologist Hal Schramm takes a look at some of the aquatic pests that are threatening our waterways and what the future is likely to hold for them. You might want to take a look at Hal’s report. It’s not a rosy picture and the prognosis isn’t good, even though somehow our fisheries have always managed to adapt and survive – if not prosper.
So bigheads are bad news, huh? Good thing the feds are on the case, and will make these foreign invaders go away like they did zebra mussels, Dutch elm disease, water hyacinth, kudzu, fire ants, snakeheads, giant salvinia, emerald ash borers …
