After a bit more rooting around, it looks like the 20 million is for the removal of fish barriers. (addition of fish ladders?)

I can't actually find the text tho'. I looked in the appropriations bill but that beast is over 700 pages long. I hurt my brain in about 3 minutes of reading. [:-]

Ah - that makes sense. I am vaguely aware of this effort, mostly the removal of dams that no one really wants anymore, and that are hindering the migration of anadromous fish like salmons, steelhead, and american and hickory shads.

Where I used to live on the Fox River, there was some movement to removal some of the low dams.
Fish movement was the main push but it seems some of that idea died out with thenorthern advanceof the bigheads and silvers. Also, boaters were against it as the natural river wouldn't support much boat traffic.

Since I've moved away, I don't know how much of a push there still is up there. It's not like there are salmon in the river.

I still think I should get 5 million for my carp removal and utilization project.

Yeah, Asian carp advancements have done a lot to cancel habitat improvements in both vertical (up and downriver) and lateral (floodplain) connectivity. We were making progress in these areas, with real measureable benefits to desireable native species, until the darn carp came along. Now we can't do anything for fear that we help out the carp more than the natives. Sucks.[]


Christine, if it was up to me, I'd give it to you. Can't be any more stupid than some other things that have a good chance of funding, and yours is bound to be more fun.

Craptracker err I mean Duane , while I have you on the phone, what do you think about low head dam removal in relation to Asian carp movements? The reason I ask is that here in my hometown, Danville, IL , we have an old low head damand because it has caused a few fatalities over the last few years and it is being looked at by the Universityof Illinois engineers for removal. Now the Asians have already made it this far north on the Wabash and upstream the Vermilion river but don't seem to have gotten above that dam just yet. A biologist from the U of I explained to me that the Asian carp would never be a problem further up stream as the water clarity is excellent and supposedly has a lower plankton filtration rate? Does this make sense? If removing that dam would enable the Asians to move further upstream and endanger my smallmouth bass fishing, well now they've crossed the line!

Are there carp just below the dam? Smallmouth stream habitat as I know it (might be different farther north) is typically relatively fast-moving water with a gravel or cobble substrate. No doubt that Asians can invade lake habitats that are frequented by smallmouth, but I don't worry much about the smallmouth streams in Missouri. Not that the odd bighead aor silver carp may not make it up there, or that juveniles won't move into the area. But I don't see them doing much in the way of habitat modification in the smallmouth streams I know. I don't think that the amount of filterable material in the water is that good of an indicator of where the fish will show up - they can eat other things if they need to, including detritus, and during periods when plankton populations are up, they will switch back to plankton. But they don't like to live in places where they can't get out of the current most of the time. Put it this way - bighead and silver carp are MOSTLY big water fish. I have seena fewsubadult bighead carp 50 km from any big water, in habitats that are more suited to smallmouth bass. I have, rarely,heard reports of large numbers offingerling carp in similar situations. Ithink, but cannot guarantee, that they are not likely to have substantial environmental impacts in that kind of environment. If your system is haslarge amounts ofdeep slowmoving water, all bets are off.

Duane, thank you for the information, I will pass it on. Yes, the rivers get much smaller as you move upstream and the bottom is more sand/rock/gravel and there are not a lot of slow deep pools. Whew, I feel much better now.

i say we need to keep shootin em and as many as possible like till our arms fall of ......