The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is providing a total of nearly $19 million to 18 state partners within the Mississippi River basin to support ongoing, coordinated efforts to manage invasive carp. Funding 33 projects this year, these grants to states are awarded annually over the last 10 years to support multi-agency efforts as directed by the Water Resources Reform and Development Act.
States receiving grants this year include Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Our agency is also dedicating $12 million to its operations related to invasive carp management in both the Mississippi River and Great Lakes basins, supporting field operations and interagency coordination. All these investments support longstanding state-federal and bi-national partnerships that leverage resources and expertise to battle one of the most urgent, wide-ranging and complex environmental challenges.
鈥淲e鈥檙e committed to supporting interagency invasive carp management partnerships that span both the Mississippi River and Great Lakes basins 鈥� some of the largest coordinated conservation efforts in North America,鈥� said Aaron Woldt, assistant midwest regional director for the agency鈥檚 Fish and Aquatic Conservation program. 鈥淲e can only manage a challenge of this magnitude by working together. These valuable investments build our collective capacity to reduce the destructiveness of invasive carp and work to restore aquatic environments for the American people.鈥�
The 28 states and three federal agencies making up the Mississippi Interstate Cooperative Resource Association, known as MICRA, worked together to identify their highest priority needs throughout six Mississippi River sub-basins. The three main components of our collective invasive carp management are targeted mass removal, using deterrents and barriers to impede their spread and early detection and other monitoring that informs all aspects of management.
The funding allocations by sub-basin for this year鈥檚 projects are:
- The Tennessee/Cumberland Rivers sub-basin will receive nearly $5.6 million
- The Ohio River sub-basin will receive nearly $5.5 million
- The Arkansas/Red/White Rivers sub-basin and Lower Mississippi River Sub-basin together will receive nearly $3.1 million
- The Upper Mississippi River sub-basin will receive more than $2.5 million
- The Missouri River sub-basin will receive nearly $2 million
More than half the funding 鈥� just over $10 million 鈥� will go towards targeted mass removal, often involving state-led programs with commercial fishers, to reduce invasive carp population abundance and inhibit their ability to reproduce. Another $6.5 million will go towards various forms of monitoring that helps detect spread into new areas early-on so that partners can be proactive in preventing new populations from establishing. Monitoring also helps partners better target areas for removal, improve the effectiveness of removal and determine the best types and locations to employ deterrents and barriers. Deterrent projects will receive $388,000. Activities that cross over among these categories will receive more than $1.5 million.
When the Water Resources Reform and Development Act was reauthorized in 2020, the U.S. Congress greatly expanded the geographic scope of federal support for invasive carp management to include all six sub-basins of the Mississippi River. The act also charged the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with leading multi-agency invasive carp management across these sub-basins. Subsequently, Congress significantly increased the amount of funding authorized for this collaborative work.
The four kinds of invasive carp in North America 鈥� bighead carp, black carp, grass carp and silver carp 鈥� are voracious feeders that grow and multiply quickly and have no significant predators. The severity of impacts from invasive carp vary from place to place but in every location their presence threatens the vitality of our waters, opportunities to enjoy on-the-water recreation and our economic well-being.
Invasive carp abundance varies considerably by species and location. While invasive carp are widespread throughout the lower and central part of the Mississippi River basin, there are large reaches and reservoirs within the basin that do not have established invasive carp populations. Partners invest in preventing further spread because it is much more difficult and expensive to manage the distribution and abundance of established invasive carp populations.
MICRA鈥檚 invasive carp management in the Mississippi River basin complements the efforts of the 26-member Invasive Carp Regional Coordinating Committee protecting the Great Lakes. Altogether, nearly 50 partners are formally organized under these partnerships to carry out what is now more than 80 priority projects across the Mississippi River and Great Lakes basins.
