A participant who identified himself as"Long Hair" nets an invasive carp on the Illinois River during the Original Redneck Fishing Tournament on Aug. 4, 2023, near the downstate village of Bath. The annual tournament to catch invasive carp was founded by Betty DeFord in 2005. DeFord’s goal was to encourage netting and removing the fish and to raise funds to help veterans.
In the wings is an innovative, multipronged plan, the result of input from countless U.S., Canadian and tribal agencies over the past couple of decades, that would install a “gantlet” system in the Des Plaines River at Brandon Road Lock and Dam near Joliet to stop silver and bighead carp from reaching the Great Lakes.
Loud motors can scare invasive silver carp into jumping up to 5 feet in the air, sometimes leaving boaters with bloody noses, black eyes and bruises. Silver carp jump when disturbed by noise because of a peculiarity in their anatomy, according to Scott Whitney, chief of project management at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Rock Island District, which oversees the Brandon Road project.
“There’s concerns about the real estate, there’s concerns about hazardous toxic waste, which is the responsibility of the nonfederal sponsor to both acquire land and make sure that land is free of any contaminants before they can transfer it to the federal government,” Whitney said, noting that those matters are being discussed between the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the Army Corps.
“We believe there’s the potential for hazardous waste, based on just the history of the parcel that we need to complete this project,” Wobig said. “So we’ve been speaking with the private property owner about that, and we are actually trying to explore alternative ways to go forward to still acquire a strip of land along that right descending bank for the project. Those are actively ongoing discussions with NRG.
Silver and bighead carp don’t have natural predators in American waterways, and likely never will. That means their populations can grow uncontrollably and damage aquatic ecosystems. Having spent decades tackling invasive species such as sea lamprey, zebra mussels and, of course, carp, Whitney said he noticed a commonality in such creatures: “Once they’re here, they’re here to stay.”An estimated 300 trillion invasive mussels blanket Lake Michigan. Eradication may be impossible, but small-scale removal efforts could be the answer.This is why he says the opportunity at Brandon Road is unique.
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