Gov. Pritzker signs federal and state agreement to protect Lake Michigan from invasive carp

“Today’s agreement will help us get shovels in the ground as soon as possible on the critical Brandon Road project,” said Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday. “The Great Lakes are the beating heart of Michigan’s economy, and Brandon Road will help us protect local communities and key industries, including fishing and boating, that support tens of thousands of good-paying jobs.”

In a news release Monday, the Alliance for the Great Lakes praised what they called a milestone agreement.

“The signing of the Brandon Road Project Agreement is historic and will help protect our fishery, our economy and quality of life,” said Marc Smith, policy director with the National Wildlife Federation. “Keeping invasive carp out of the Great Lakes is a national priority.”

For the last several decades since invasive carp were introduced to the country in 1963 and escaped into the Mississippi River Basin during flooding events in the 1980s and 1990s, dozens of other states have dealt with the havoc they wreak on aquatic ecosystems. Silver and bighead carp don’t have natural predators in American waterways and likely never will, which means their populations can grow unchecked.

In recent years, as the fish have continued spreading in the state’s waterways, Illinoisans frustrated with the pace of state and federal deterrent plans have taken matters into their own hands.

Some efforts focus on overfishing: The village of Bath’s Original Redneck Fishing Tournament pits amateurs and longtime anglers against each other in a yearly competition; commercial fishermen or “carp cowboys” round up fish elsewhere on the Illinois River; and state biologists have led large-scale removal efforts of hundreds of thousands of pounds of carp in a given day.

Other creative endeavors include using unmanned kayaks to gather information on large carp populations, and attempts to create a market for the fish as a food source, rebranding it as “copi” and cooking it in tacos, nuggets, empanadas and sliders.

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