The Northeast-Midwest Institute hosted a briefing on the current efforts to prevent the spread of Asian carp into the Great Lakes. The briefing focused on release of the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee’s (ACRCC) 2018 Asian Carp Action Plan and the strategies currently being developed and deployed to prevent the introduction and establishment of Asian carp in the Great Lakes. The ACRCC is a partnership among 27 U.S. and Canadian federal, state, provincial, and local agencies and organizations focused on collaborating with one another in order to best share resources, research, and information to thwart the movement of Asian Carp towards the Great Lakes.
ACRCC Co-Chairs Bill Bolen (U.S. EPA) and Mike Weimer (U.S. FWS) provided the audience an overview of the ACRCC’s 2018 Action Plan and of Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) funding to implement the plan. Charles Wooley, Deputy Regional Director for the Midwest Region for the U.S. FWS, and Kevin Irons, Program Manager at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, gave an update on the monitoring and response plans that have been implanted in the region in response to invasive carp. Dr. Leon Carl, Regional Director for the USGS Midwest Region, gave a brief overview of some of the technologies that the USGS is currently developing to combat the spread of Asian carp. Col. Aaron Reisinger, Commander of the U.S. ACE- Chicago District, gave an update on the electric Fish Barrier in Romeoville, Illinois, and LT Commander Ben Gullo, United State Coast Guard, gave a brief update on navigational issues in the Chicago Area Waterway System.
A full audio recording of the briefing is available here.
The slides used during the briefing are available here.
For more info about the ACRCC, please visit their website here.