EDITORIAL: Mr. President: Stop the invasion

On his ironically named social media platform Truth Social, President Donald J. Trump recently posted that he is “trying to save the Great Lakes from the rather violent and destructive Asian carp, which is rapidly taking over Lake Michigan and all of the beautiful surrounds.”

That isn’t quite true. There are no significant numbers of Asian carp in Lake Michigan now, but that could change if the president does not release federal funds to prevent the invasive carp from “taking over” the lake after entering it through the Illinois Waterway.

Congress approved $274 million to be spent for construction of the Brandon Road Interbasin Project near Joliet, Ill., which is designed to block migration of the carp upstream and into the lake through the waterway’s Chicago outlet. The Trump administration has refused to release the funding.

Meanwhile, the carp have been massing in the Mississippi River system that reaches the lake through the Illinois River and man-made canals. They are enormous fish that reproduce prodigiously and would wreak havoc on the Lake Michigan ecosystem if they colonized the lake.

Once in the lake, the carp would devour plankton in huge volumes, starving the small fish that feed on the tiny organisms and are a food source for larger fish. The carp invasion would take a toll on not only the already beleaguered native fish species, but also the salmon and trout varieties introduced into the lake for the sport fishing that supports a robust recreational economy.

A memo issued by the president last year began with the declaration that “my administration is committed to protecting the Great Lakes.” It went on to express support for the Brandon Road project “through deadline-oriented investments of taxpayer dollars.”

Deadlines have passed and those taxpayer dollars remain in a lockbox the administration has refused to open.

If the funds are released, construction will start on the carp barrier positioned at the Brandon Road Lock and Dam, a narrow point in the waterway. If successful, the project may be recorded as the first time an invasive species has been prevented from entering the Great Lakes, unlike efforts in the past that could only attempt to coexist with invasives that were already in the lake before being discovered.

Asian carp are threatening the lakes from inland sources. Other foreign species, the likes of zebra and quagga muscles and the round goby, arrived via the Atlantic Ocean.

Those invaders, native to the Black and Caspian Seas in Eurasia, arrived in the ballast water of ocean-going ships. They are different animals—mollusks and a fish—but they have a common trait: They reproduce in explosive numbers and thrive in fresh, cold water.

It’s a challenge to find superlatives adequate to describe the take-over of the lakes by the mussels. Scientists using remote operated submarines have captured images of thick carpets of mussels on the bottom of some of the deepest water of Lake Michigan. The creatures are so numerous that they filter every drop of Lake Michigan water every day. Their population numbers are expressed in quadrillions (a million billions).

Gobies infest coastal waters, taking over the habitat of native fish and consuming their eggs. Female gobies reproduce six times during their spawning season.

Native trout, whitefish and perch populations have been decimated by the corruption of their habitat.

Human control of the invasive species plague now in the lake is out of reach. If there is any hope of at least a moderating influence it would have to come from nature. A glimmer of optimism might be found in the discovery that gobies eat a lot of mussel eggs and in the signs that whitefish, the lake’s premier commercial species, is adapting to consume mussels.

It is hard to imagine how anything could control Asian carp, which can weigh more than 100 pounds, if they established a population in the lakes. So they have to be kept out, which will depend on the president making good on his pledge to “save the Great Lakes.”

The administration’s record does not instill confidence that will happen. Its hostility to environmental protection was demonstrated again last week when, with the approval of the president, the U.S. Senate’s Republican majority voted to overturn a ban on mining in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The Senate action was taken specifically to allow a Chilean billionaire to establish in the wilderness area a copper mine of the type that experts say cannot avoid polluting nearby water.

The invasive species about to invade the pristine Boundary Waters system of rivers and lakes about 100 miles north of Wisconsin is human in political and corporate form.