Michael Eckert

Port Huron Times Herald

Don’t buy a lottery ticket. There is a better way to get rich. All you have to do is invent a solution to the Asian carp threat to the Great Lakes.

The state of Michigan has a $1 million prize purse for anyone who comes up with “new and innovative solutions to prevent invasive carp from entering the Great Lakes.” The money could be awarded to a single brilliant idea or shared among several genius innovators.

Apparently, lawmakers, the governor’s office and the Department of Natural Resources didn’t get my first two proposals.

The first remains the most obvious one — which is why I probably don’t deserve the million bucks: Close down the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, fill it with sand and permanently separate the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River basin where invasive bighead, silver and black carp are already established and already wreaking havoc on the environment.

Read more:

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The argument against that plan has been that it would add to transportation costs for some Chicago-area businesses and maybe have a negative affect on the region’s economy.

As the DNR’s Michigan Invasive Carp Challenge website points out, letting the carp through and into Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes would threaten a $7 billion fishing industry and about $38 billion in water recreation and tourism activity. Those numbers make Chicago’s resistance seem sort of petty.

Many canal critics figured patching the canal wouldn’t happen while Chicago native Barack Obama was president. Maybe Donald Trump will win the $1 million prize.

But even the Michigan DNR says, “Preventing further movement of silver and bighead carp is the best, most cost-effective way to protect the Great Lakes ecosystem and valuable recreational economies from these invasive species.” They can’t fly. Close the canal.

Actually, they can sort of fly, but not that far. Airborne 100-pound invasive pests are part of the reason we don’t want them in the Great Lakes. The real damage they do is below the surface, though, where they out-compete native species, eat everything that isn’t bolted down and destroy fishery habitats.

My second idea would probably be more expensive than the Invasive Cart Challenge’s $1 million prize, but would be cheap compared to losing those fisheries, recreation and tourism billions.

Lansing should use the revenue windfall it expects this year to put a bounty on Asian carp. It worked for wolves. Michigan had bounties on rats, English sparrows and starlings as recently as 2000.

Anglers in Illinois and Indiana have been advocating for a $10-a-head bounty on bighead, silver and black carp. Given the right incentive, American anglers can do the same thing to Asian carp that the Chinese have — wiped them out in the wild. The only bighead and silver carp in Asia are grown at fish farms.

Maybe $10 each is too low. Still, at $20 each, anglers would have to kill 350 million of them to match the $7 billion value of the Great Lakes fishery.

The precise details of the Invasive Carp Challenge are not yet final, so you still have time to come up with an idea better than mine. That shouldn’t be difficult.

To read more and to get on the Carp Challenge mailing list, go to the DNR’s website at http://bwne.ws/2iPrLbZ.

Contact Michael Eckert at meckert@gannett.com, 810-989-6264, on Facebook @michaeleckert or on Twitter @michaeleckert.