By Doug Draper
If you or I were to take a couple of oranges across the Peace Bridge – even oranges that were grown in Florida or California – and customs officers on either side of the border caught us trying to “import” them without reporting them, they have the authority to pull us over and turn our vehicle inside out looking for any other “exotic” item we might have in our possession.
Schools of Asian Carp splash their way to the Great Lakes in the waters of Illinois. If they make it, ecologists predict a potential disaster for our lakes. Photo courtesy of Great Lakes Fisheries Commission
But if a big ship from half away around the world happens to dump its ballast water in the Great Lakes, releasing an exotic species like zebra mussels or round gobbies that can wreak havoc for native species in the lakes, hardly any effective action has been taken by the Canadian and U.S. governments over the past few decades to regulate and police that kind or importation.
Now the Great Lakes face the invasion of a non-native species the likes of which could make the impact zebra mussels have had on the food chain of the waters look like a Sunday school picnic. That species – known generically as the Asian carp – could virtually trigger an ecological catastrophe for communities in the Great Lakes region and destroy a recreational and commercial fishery for Canadians and Americans worth billions of dollars a year. Continue reading
