Of Carp and Kingfishers: Chicago and Guam are not so far apart
Posted February 5, 2010 in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
In my previous job, I would often encounter 1/3 of the world's Micronesian kingfishers; curiously colorful little birds from Guam with black bands on their eyes that make them look a bit like a cartoon burglar.
No, not on an island in the Pacific. You can't really find them there anymore...
I would see them in Chicago's Western suburbs.
For the last couple decades, Brookfield Zoo has been home to a big chunk of all that is left of the world's entire population of this bird. They've been extinct from their home range on the island of Guam since the 1980s, wiped out quite by accident.
During World War II the island was a bomber refueling base and it turned out that one of those flying fortresses was carrying more than the normal ordinance. Stowaway brown tree snakes found their way from the planes onto the island where they quickly made short work of the native bird species that had not evolved to deal with similar predators. The problem wasn't immediately evident. Once folks realized why the island's birds were disappearing, all that was left to do was grab up the few that were left and try to breed them elsewhere.
Some new critters in Chicago have had me thinking of the kingfishers a lot lately.
Asian carp are the new brown tree snakes. As these new invasive species are quickly spreading out in Chicago’s waterways the invasive fish threaten to do incredible damage to the Great Lakes ecosystem. I know I am comparing apples and oranges here, as the carp are not predators that will eat local fish---instead, they simply outcompete the locals. They won't send all the other species into extinction, but they could decimate the fishery and make fundamental changes to the ecosystem.
So, with the experience of the kingfishers and multitudes of other invasive species stories, you would think that officials would be scrambling to close the door on any entrypoint that the carp might have in order to protect the ecosystem that represents 1/5 of the world’s fresh water.
You'd think wrong. This quote from the Washington Post over the weekend sums it up nicely:
"It seems to me we are in denial," said Lindsay Chadderton, aquatic invasive species director for the Nature Conservancy's Great Lakes Project and one of the researchers who found the Asian carp's genetic fingerprint in Lake Michigan. "By the time we understand the severity of the problem, it's too late. Prevention is the only cost-effective way of dealing with this."
Chadderton's point on cost-effectiveness is especially worth noting.
Before I left the zoo, one of the birds born there was shipped back to a breeding facility on the island of Guam where a native bird reintroduction program is being planned. The snakes are still present, so there have been discussions of how to protect the birds and reduce the snake numbers. I have heard discussions that the program involve a small army of observers who literally cage the base of trees to ensure that snakes cannot move up the trunks to get at the birds. Sounds involved and expensive, eh?
Yet, I heard something similar in an Illinois Senate hearing on the carp problem last month. Since there is hesitation to address the waterways here in Chicago, the feds have already scoped out the waterways that the carp would likely use to spawn in the Great Lakes and are looking into what it would take to create barriers to exclude the invasive fish from entering them.
There are 22 such waterways...
While I applaud the proactive nature of that research, it strikes me as expensive and inefficient, not unlike fencing an island full of trees, eh?
We have a couple unusual opportunities with the carp that do not come up in most other invasive species narratives. An obvious single point of introduction that can be addressed, as well as the attention of regulators and the public. It took a few decades to ascertain the impact that the snakes were having on Guam. Here, Fish and Wildlife Service officials stated that test results showing carp DNA in Lake Michigan's Calumet Harbor isn't yet a big problem. They would not be worried until they could observe 200 or so in the harbor. We seem to have missed the lessons left by the multitudes of casualties from these invasions: once you observe alien species in large numbers, you've pretty much already lost the battle. And it's an expensive fight to get back into from both a financial and ecological perspective---just go to the zoo and ask the Micronesian kingfishers.
