Detroit Metro Times: Did government agencies help create the Asian carp crisis?

[marmar]

Fishing for truth
Did government agencies help create the Asian carp crisis?

By Sandra Svoboda


During his 30 years in the Arkansas fish industry, Mike Freeze has watched federal and state government agencies change from being cheerleaders to exterminators when it comes to Asian carp.

Freeze is a former Arkansas Game and Fish commissioner who worked for the agency in the late 1970s. He knew the fish farmers who were then importing, cultivating and researching silver and bighead carp — and who are now often blamed in media reports for allowing their release.

That's not the whole story, Freeze says. Those farmers were receiving help, guidance and funding from the federal government as well as the state because it was then thought the fish — collectively known as Asian carp along with the black and grass varieties — held promise for environmental cleanup and plant control. Silver and bighead carp are considered the problem species.

"One project was trying to see if silver and bighead carp could be used to clean up human sewage," Freeze says. Another project he remembers involved an Illinois researcher who was trying to use Asian carp to clean up hog manure. "He would go to Arkansas and get truckloads of silver and bigheads. He'd take them back and use them on their facility," Freeze says. "They don't want you to know that."

His assertions about governmental involvement are supported by documents from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Arkansas that Metro Times obtained, as well as in interviews with researchers and government officials. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.metrotimes.com/news/story.asp?id=14977

[fasttense]

1. So the government funded research projects. But did they

also fund releasing these fish into the wild? I suspect that was not part of the grant agreement the government had with the researchers. I think it was improvised by the researchers.

There are vast amounts of research grants handed out every year. Very few involve closing up shop by releasing the experimental subjects into the wild.