Obama is Threatening the Great Lakes

There is a petition in Michigan to keep the Asian Carp out of the Great Lakes.

DNA of the Asian Carp was found in October, 2009 within 6 miles of Lake Michigan.

Attorney General Mike Cox is actively trying to force the  locks in the Chicago area closed in order to keep Asian Carp from infiltrating and devastating the Great Lakes.  He filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court back in December on behalf of the State of Michigan and was subsequently joined by the States of Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, Ohio and Canada’s Ontario against the State of Illinois.

The Obama Administration’s Solicitor General, Alana Kagan asked the Supreme Court to reject the lawsuit, prompting the Great Lakes States to conclude that the Obama Administration is providing political favor to the President’s home state.

The Asian Carp, originally were introduced in Arkansas as a natural way to control algae and generally clean fishing ponds in response to environmentalists concerns for chemical treatments in the early 1970′s.  At that time, it was considered that anything used that would naturally do what a chemical was produced to do, would be of benefit to the environment, as the ecologist Rachel Carson begged in the infamous book, “Silent Spring” in 1962.

Asian Carp, as pictured to the left, jump out of the water in response to boat motors.  Although it seems an angler’s dream for fish to jump into a boat, they often hit anglers, leaving welts and loose teeth, scars and bruises.  The fish are not delicious, like any carp, and reproduce thousands of times more efficiently than native species.  They can reach 100 pounds and have no stomachs, constantly eating 40% of their weight per day in plankton, making the basic diet of other fish obsolete, in turn, shrinking the population of sports fish.

The blame for the Asian carp coming so close to the Great Lakes can be reasonably put at the feet of environmentalists, who, in looking for an alternative to chemical treatments, and childishly assuming the carp would not be able to reproduce in the wild, were not careful as to what was happening to the silver and big head carp they imported from Malaysia to study using government tax dollars in the 70′s.

Nevertheless, the carp are now at Lake Michigan’s door, and the State of Illinois gives three thin excuses for not protecting the Great Lakes.

1. Other states don’t have the legal authority to demand the closing of canal locks within Illinois.

2. Shutting the locks could cause flooding in the Chicago area and hurt commercial shipping.

3. We should not be doing anything that is really going to compromise our efforts at putting people back to work.

The Obama Administration has a similarly weak  reason that doesn’t make it past the smell test.  (sorry)  The actual reason from the Obama Administration is that environmental DNA, or “eDNA,” testing was experimental science.  “Discovery of genetic material from carp doesn’t necessarily mean the fish were there.”

If you would like to sign the petition you can click here.

By the way, during his Presidential campaign, Obama pledged to be a stalwart against invasive species that threaten the Great Lakes.