Senator Maziarz urges federal action to stop Asian Carp invasion

Senator George Maziarz, New York State’s executive committee member on the interstate Great Lakes Legislative Caucus, today sent the attached letter to the United States Army Corps of Engineers urging federal action to halt the spread of Asian Carp into the Great Lakes.  The Asian Carp is an invasive species that currently poses a tremendous threat to the ecology of native species within Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, and other nearby freshwater resources.

The letter to the Corps of Engineers was sent as a public comment on its Great Lakes and Mississippi River Inter Basin Study, a study aimed at identifying options and technologies to prevent the movement of aquatic nuisance species between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basins.  For more information, visit glmris.anl.gov.

Senator Maziarz wrote, “The need for bold, decisive, preventative action to prevent the invasion of Asian Carp is compelling and demands immediate action as well as effective long term strategies… if a physical separation has the highest potential for effectively halting the spread of Asian Carp and other aquatic invasive species (and I do believe this), then the cost of this approach is worth it in comparison to the profound economic and social costs if Asian Carp establish in the Great Lakes.”

Public comment on the GLMRIS study ends on March 31, 2014.

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