ORIGINAL: robow7
Try as we may, we can't put the Genie back in the bottle. Think about it, a little over 100 years ago when the Europeans first introduced the common carp tothe Americanwaters, I'm sure they never could have imagined that over time that particular fish would come to inhabit almost all waters from farm ponds to the Great Lakes and everything in between. Only Mother Nature will eventually determine this fish's domain in 50 years. You might slow it down but you can't stop it and so is it really worth millions of taxpayer dollars in order to delay the inevitable. I'm not sure that it is.
That is certainly a valid position to take. There is some hope that we can control or possibly even eradicate these fish with new technologies that are on the horizon. If the fish get into a body of water like the Great lakes, it will be a lot tougher, though, and also a reservoir of infection back to the Mississippi River Basin. I think it is a tough call. Another way to look at is the Great Lake fishery is worth about 4 billion a year, in 1995 dollars. No way of knowing what the value will be after the carp get going well. But assume for the momentthat the carp eventually cause a 10% drop in the yearly value of that fishery. Every year that we push that back saves us 400 million 1995 dollars. The assumption is not supportable through existing data or any other way - there are no useful models to predict the cost that bighead and silver carp would generate. It might be 0% of the value, but most people don't think so. If the value of the fishery drops 1% after bighead and silver carp invade and become abundant (if they ever do) then we save 40 million 1995 dollars per year that we stave of the inevitable.