Mississippi
Funding for invasive carp barrier falls short
With a historic $17 billion state budget surplus this year, environmental advocates hoped Minnesota lawmakers would make a big investment to stop the advance of invasive carp up the Mississippi River.
“It was an opportune moment to do some big things this year,” said Whitney Clark, executive director of the nonprofit Friends of the Mississippi River, a member of the Stop Carp Coalition.
The coalition urged lawmakers to approve about $17 million for prevention measures, including installing a bio-acoustic fish fence at Lock and Dam 5 near Winona. The system uses bubbles, sound and light to deter invasive carp from swimming upstream. It’s currently being tested on the Cumberland River in Kentucky.
Instead, Minnesota lawmakers included a fraction of that amount, $1.72 million, in the omnibus environmental budget bill to expand the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ invasive carp prevention and management efforts. Clark said they missed a key opportunity.
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“I think people will be very, very shocked and disappointed if something that was preventable was allowed to happen because of inaction or decisiveness, at a moment when we still had an opportunity,” he said.
Advancing threat
Silver carp are one of four species collectively known as invasive carp, along with grass, black and bighead carp. They’ve been moving up the Mississippi River and other waterways since they were accidentally released into Arkansas waters in the 1970s.
Invasive carp are fast-growing and voracious eaters, outcompeting native fish for food and leading to a decline in biodiversity and water quality in rivers where they’re established.
Silver carp are known to jump out of the water, sometimes injuring boaters. That’s made for popular YouTube videos. But they also present a serious environmental challenge.
University of Minnesota Professor Peter Sorensen has been studying invasive carp for a decade, including their behavior, movements, impacts and how to stop them from moving upstream and reproducing.
“It’s not one adult silver carp that really is a big concern,” he said. “It’s when they have babies, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands of young. Then you have a really serious problem.”
Individual invasive carp have been caught as far upstream as the Twin Cities metro. In 2020, 51 carp were captured just south of La Crosse, Wis., downstream from Winona.