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Bill would close Chicago waterways to halt Asian carp |
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 GREAT LAKES:
On 1/21, Rep. Dave Camp
(R-Mich.) introduced a bill that would close some Chicago-area waterways in an
effort to halt the advance of invasive Asian carp to the Great Lakes.On 1/19, the Supreme Court
denied Michigan's request for a preliminary injunction to close the waterways,
which provide the fish a link from the Mississippi River to Lake Michigan.
Left: Heidi Keuler from the La Crosse Fish and Wildlife Conservation office on the Illinois River
Experts fear that the invasive
carp, which have been traveling up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers for
decades, will devastate the $7 billion Great Lakes fisheries. The 100-pound
fish have voracious appetites and rapid reproduction rates that could ravage
native lake species.
"It is clear Asian Carp
pose an immediate threat to the Great Lakes, its ecosystem and the 800,000 jobs
it supports," Camp said in a statement. "The failure of the Supreme
Court to act yesterday jeopardizes the future of the Lakes, and it is clear we
must take additional steps now."
Researchers this week said they
have for the first time found the carp's DNA in Lake Michigan, a signal the
fish already may have reached the Great Lakes.
H.R. 4472 would direct the Army
Corps of Engineers to immediately close the O'Brien Lock and Dam and the
Chicago Controlling Works until a controlled lock operations strategy is in
place. It also would instruct the Army Corps to build barriers in several
locations to keep the fish at bay. The bill directs the corps to conduct two
studies: one to curb the effects of the bill on shipping commerce and another
to abate the effects on Chicago flood control. The Army Corps also would
receive new authority to use fish poison, netting and other means to kill or
slow the carp.
The bill already is facing
criticism from the shipping industry.
"The regional economy
would be devastated if the Chicago-area locks were closed," said a news
release yesterday from the American Waterways Operators, the trade association
for the tugboat, towboat and barge industry. "Millions of tons of critical
commodities, such as coal for utilities, petroleum for heating homes and
fueling vehicles and airplanes, currently move through the Chicago-area locks,
and thousands of American jobs depend on regional waterborne commerce."
The group urged Congress to allow
the Obama administration to work with states and other stakeholders to develop
a strategy to fight the carp.
The White House this week said it will meet with governors
from Great Lakes states to devise such a plan. White House Council on Environmental
Quality Chairwoman Nancy Sutley suggested an early February meeting "to
discuss strategy to combat the spread of Asian carp and ensure coordination and
the most effective response across all levels of government."
In addition
to the House bill, companion legislation was introduced in the Senate on 1/22
by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich). |
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Record Funding Puts Refuges Back on Track |
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In a powerful demonstration of support for conserving America’s wildlife heritage, President Obama in October signed into law record Refuge System funding for FY10. The Fiscal Year 2010 Interior & Environment Appropriations Bill, approved by Congress and delivered to the President, brings the operations and maintenance budget of the NWRS to $503 million annually, surpassing the previous record set during the Refuge System’s 2003 centennial year.
This year’s expansion of the Refuge System budget by $40 million over FY09 builds on continued support from Congress over the past few years, resulting in an improvement of $105 million in three years. The $503 million mark was also a major victory for Chairman Norm Dicks (D-WA) and members of the House Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies, as the House number prevailed over the smaller budget recommended by Senate colleagues.
The increases come at a critical time for the Refuge System. Chronic budget shortfalls in the years following the Refuge Centennial in 2003 had forced the Refuge System to reduce staff by 20%, resulting in closed refuges, lack of recreational opportunities for the public and most importantly, diminished resources for protecting wildlife.
Thanks to the support of refuge Friends groups and volunteers around the country, refuges are now on track to be able to achieve their mission of protecting our native wildlife for present and future generations. NWRA and the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement, a diverse coalition of 22 national conservation and recreation organizations, have recommended an annual budget of at least $808 million and are calling upon the Obama administration and Congress to reach this goal by FY2013.
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Re Kind Continues Efforts to Protect Mississippi
Upper Mississippi River Basin Protection Act to Reduce Sedimentation, Improve Water Quality
Washington, DC –U.S. Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) today reintroduced his Upper Mississippi River Basin Protection Act, legislation calling for the development of a coordinated, public-private approach to studying and reducing nutrient and sediment runoff in the Upper Mississippi River Basin. The bill also establishes a water-quality monitoring system and a computer modeling program to analyze data.
“The river plays a vital role in our economy and our quality of life in western Wisconsin,” said Rep. Kind, founder and Co-chair of the Upper Mississippi River Basin Congressional Task Force. “Increased sediment and nutrient flow into the upper basin poses a very serious threat to the long-term health of the entire Mississippi River system. This bill will lay the scientific foundation necessary to ensure the future quality and beauty of the Mississippi for generations to come.”
The accumulation of excess sediment from increased soil erosion and nutrients, such as fertilizers and animal waste, in the Upper Mississippi River Basin degrades aquatic and wetland habitat and imperils a wide variety of fish and waterfowl. The increased soil erosion causes applied fertilizer from area farms to wash into the river, resulting not only in dangerously high nitrogen and phosphorous levels, but also a reduction in the long-term sustainability and income of family farms, and the plaguing of farmers annually with $300 million in unnecessary costs. In addition, sediment accumulation fills the main shipping channel of the river and valuable wetlands throughout the basin, reducing the value to wildlife and their capacity as nutrient filters and costing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers more than $100 million annually in dredging costs.
The Upper Mississippi River Basin Protection Act aims to produce the data needed to better understand sediment and nutrient flow from its source in the landscape to its destination in rivers and lakes and drive the innovation needed to solve the excess sediment and nutrient problem in the Mississippi River System. The legislation establishes a sedimentation and nutrient reduction monitoring network and an integrated computer modeling program that, when combined, will provide the baseline data needed to make scientifically sound and cost-effective decisions to improve the Upper Mississippi River's ecosystem.
“While there is no easy solution to stopping the runoff of sediment and nutrients into the Upper Mississippi River Basin, this legislation will make significant strides toward reducing this flow of harmful pollutants into the river. I have worked closely with farmers, industry, sporting groups, conservation organizations, and government agencies to develop this effective, basin-wide, and non-regulatory approach, and am confident it will find support in both the House and the Senate.”
The reintroduction of the Upper Mississippi River Basin Protection Act is particularly timely considering the Mississippi River Basin Initiative introduced by Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack late last week. The USDA initiative aims to improve the overall health of the entire Mississippi River, as opposed to the current regional approaches, and provides $320 million for improvement projects in states bordering the river. Together, the two efforts will take important steps to maintain and improve the overall health of one of America’s most central water resources.
The Upper Mississippi River system, with tributaries and a basin encompassing much of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri, is widely recognized as one of our nation’s great multi-use natural resources. The Mississippi River and its tributaries provide drinking water to approximately 22 million Americans and the system’s 1,300 navigable miles transport millions of tons of commercial cargo via barges. In addition, 40 percent of North America’s waterfowl use the wetlands and backwaters of the main stem as a migratory flyway, illustrating the environmental significance of the system as well as recreation capabilities.
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COOPERATIVE ALLIANCE FOR REFUGE ENHANCEMENT
America’s National Wildlife Refuge System, comprising 150 million acres, requires a minimum of $808 million annually to operate adequately. However, the System is currently receiving $462.8 million per year – an average of just $3.08 per acre. The report finds that:
- One in three refuges are operating without a single staff member
- The System has already cut 300 staff positions; without adequate funding increases, plans for a 20 percent staff reduction will resume
- The system needs 845 full-time law enforcement officers, but currently has just 205 – one officer for every 731,000 acres – CARE conservatively recommends immediately adding 241 positions to retain visitor and officer safety
- Mission Critical, non law enforcement positions need to increase by 74 percent, an additional 2740 positions
- The System is able to invest just 0.67 percent of its value in annual maintenance – CARE recommends investing $380 million annually or 1.6 percent, still woefully short the industry standard of investing 2-6 percent
- More than two million acres have already been lost to invasive species, placing threatened and endangered species at even greater risk
The Refuge System is the only federal network of lands dedicated to the conservation of America's wildlife. It currently consists of 548 units, representing every state and most U.S. territories. In fact, there is a wildlife refuge within a one-hour drive of every major citiy, serving as destinations for more than 40 million visitors annually. (By 2009, public use is expected to increase to over 60 million visitors a year.) At refuges across the country, visitors enjoy opportunities to observe and photograph wildlife, experience pristine sunrises during hunting or fishing trips, or simply learn about the outdoors through quality environmental education and interpretation programs. The Refuge System is also a source of pride for local communities (e.g, over 200 Friends Groups, non-profit organizations dedicated to supporting individual refuges, provide millions of volunteer hours, completing critical conservation projects and welcoming visitors.)
Refuges provide a substantial economic return, creating nearly 27,000 jobs and over $1.7 billion in economic activity, a figure more than three times greater than the operations and maintenance funding the Refuge System receives. Between 2004 and 2009, visitor generated sales to regional economies is expected to increase from an estimated $862 million per year to over $1.2 billion per year.
Unfortunately, 35% of refuges are currently unstaffed, and every refuge has unmet operations and maintenance needs. The unmet operations and maintenance needs of the Refuge System is $3.5 billion. This backlog is a serious threat to the overall health of wildlife conservation in the United States and the safety and satisfaction of refuge visitors.
In order to unite the varied groups around CARE and to focus its collective efforts, the core of CARE's concern was, and still remains, correcting the inadequate funding for the operations and maintenance of National Wildlife Refuges. To guide the alliance's deliberations and maintain its focus, CARE has drafted the following core principles:
Principles
National Wildlife Refuges must be staffed and funded adequately to (1) conserve and manage habitats and wildlife in order to fulfill their overall mission, and (2) provide opportunities for the added mission of compatible fish-and-wildlife dependent education and recreation.
At current funding and staffing levels, many critically important biological and management actions are not possible on refuges. Ways must be systematically explored to recover costs (user fees), manage more efficiently, attract cost-sharing, find new funding and, overall, improve the management capability of refuges.
An Obligation to Wildlife in a Changing Climate
After years of inaction on the issue, decision-makers in Washington have begun the process of approving legislation designed to curb green house gas emissions – those responsible for causing climate change. With nearly universal consensus among scientists, and shifting public sentiment on the issue, the debate is no longer whether climate change is happening, but rather how swiftly and severely it will occur, and what we can do to mitigate and prepare for the effects.
Recent studies from the United States Geological Survey suggest that many of the predicted changes- such as increased temperatures and rising sea levels- are not only already occurring now, but are occurring at a more rapid pace than first anticipated. Facing this increasingly unpredictable future, preparing for the impacts of global climate change poses the most fundamental management challenge in the Refuge System’s century-long history.
The consequences of increased heat-trapping gasses such as methane and carbon dioxide in our atmosphere will have far-reaching and potentially devastating effects on our wildlife and the refuges that protect them. According to Juliet Eilperin, environment writer for the Washington Post, “as climate change begins to transform the environment in the United States… the old paradigm of setting aside tracts of land or sea to preserve species that might disappear is no longer sufficient.”
Indeed, new and more detailed scientific modeling shows that coastal and estuarine refuges, such as Blackwater NWR in Maryland, may be increasingly underwater in the not-too-distant-future, altering habitat for migrating shorebirds and nesting waterfowl. Regions that rely on melting snowpack could be devastatingly dry, threatening endangered fish species, and higher annual summer temperatures on refuges such as Agassiz NWR in Minnesota have already decreased numbers of once-abundant moose. And perhaps nowhere are these changes more evident than the refuges in Alaska, which encompass more than half of all lands and waters in the NWRS.
These issues create a particularly difficult challenge for the Refuge System, which more than other federal land agencies is often comprised of small and more fragmented parcels. Refuges frequently protect localized habitats deemed critical for wildlife, such as a particular wetland, or along a specific flyway. As these habitats are put under stress, wildlife will likely shift ranges with little regard to adhering to refuge boundaries. For this reason, we must use new strategies to protect critical wildlife habitat and create additional linkages between existing habitats to help species adapt to a changing landscape.
The cornerstone of any major climate change policy, such as the Waxman-Markey energy bill currently under debate in the House of Representatives, led by Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA), will be reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, which is urgently needed to reduce the risks of potentially catastrophic global climatic changes. Yet it is also critically important, for the sake of preserving our treasured wildlife heritage for future generations, to anticipate and address climate change adaptation needs on our wildlife refuges. A first step in achieving this will be to dedicate a percentage of revenue from any upcoming “cap and trade” climate legislation for the purpose of wildlife conservation and climate adaptation.
The Obama administration’s proposal to tighten federal fuel efficiency standards in automobiles earlier this week – the first nationwide regulation of a greenhouse gas – was an important step in beginning to address climate change, as is the current energy and climate legislation being debated in House. These developments provide hope that Congress will act soon to enact a more comprehensive plan to limit sources of carbon dioxide and mitigate its damaging effects to both people and wildlife. |
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Independent Analysis Finds Refuge System Struggles to Meet Goals |
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An independent evaluation has found that the Refuge System experienced an 11 percent decline in real purchasing power between FY 2003 and the FY 2008 requested budget. As a result, the Refuge System has been unable to maintain its level of operational activity, according to the report from Management Systems International (MSI), which conducted the evaluation between October 2006 and September 2007.
The report, titled, “An Independent Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Wildlife Refuge System,” rated the Refuge System as “ineffective” in meeting two strategic goals:
· Protect resources and visitors through law enforcement.
· Strategically grow the System.
On a positive note, MSI rated the Refuge System as “highly effective” in one strategic goal: facilitating partnerships and cooperative projects. The consultant specifically pointed to the Refuge System’s work with volunteer and Friends organizations as well as state fish and wildlife agencies. MSI calculated that in 2005 alone, partnerships contributed more than $50 million to the Refuge System – with more than $30 million in direct cash contributions.
Among its 11 principle recommendations, MSI advises increasing the number of full-time Refuge System law enforcement officers from the current 200 to 400. While MSI noted that law enforcement training is “sound and improving,” the firm also noted a “critical lack of law enforcement coverage” at most field stations. More than 70 percent of refuge managers indicated they feel law enforcement coverage is “insufficient” at the refuge they manage.
MSI also noted that the rate at which land has been added to the Refuge System had declined “significantly” over the past five years.
For a summary of the 221-page report, go to: http://www.fws.gov/refuges/policyMakers/pdfs/MSI/NWRS_EvaluationSummaryFINAL_7-15-08_508v.pdf |
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Ducks Respond to Changes in Upper Miss Refuge’s Closed Area System |
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Migrating ducks, geese and swans were provided more resting and feeding areas, combined with less human disturbance, during their stop-over on the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge during the fall of 2007.
The birds responded to new management actions that modified the current system of areas closed to waterfowl hunting along the 261-mile refuge.
“The closed areas are like stepping stones for the birds as they make their way south,”
said Eric Nelson, refuge biologist.
Nelson explained that, “the new system takes into account decades of survey work that has shown an unequal distribution of the birds, food and hunting opportunity in Pools 4-14 of theMississippi River. Having all the ducks in a few pools is not ideal for the birds, nor ideal for waterfowl hunters.”
Birds concentrated in a few areas are susceptible to disease outbreaks, sudden habitat loss, and human disturbance. This concentration also means that the birds are not equally available for hunting or wildlife observation through the length of the Refuge.
The 2007 changes are part of the Refuge’s new 15-year Comprehensive Conservation Plan, approved in 2006. More high-energy food resources found in refuge backwaters were secured for the birds by adding new closed areas and modifying the boundaries of others.
To reduce disturbance, new management provisions do not allow the use of motors in closed areas less than 1000 acres in size and also ask people to voluntarily avoid entering all closed areas from October 15 to the end of the duck hunting season. Seven of 24 closed areas are less than 1000 acres.
Duck hunting success continued to be good even as new areas were closed to hunting.
Birds Response Was Good in Most Places
One area with increased duck use was at the new Spring Lake closed area near Buffalo CityWis. in Pool 5. Canvasback and mallard use doubled over the 2006 counts when the area was open to hunting. Counts were made by airplane and ground crews.
Bird use also increased at the existing Goose Island no hunting zone which was expanded by 108 acres in 2007. Tundra swans, gadwalls, canvasbacks and redheads were more numerous than previous years.
At the new Wisconsin River Delta special hunt area near Prairie du Chien, Wis. in Pool 10, duck hunting was closed early, November 1, nearly a month after the season opener.
Bird numbers went from 460 birds (mostly coots) in October, to 2,652 (mostly mallards) by mid-November and reached a peak of 3,275 waterfowl in late November. In recent years, before the November 1 hunting closure was in effect, counts totaled only a few hundred birds.
Change in duck use was not as dramatic at the new Kehough Slough closed area in Pool 12, north of Bellevue Iowa and the new Beaver Island closed area in Pool 14, near Clinton,Iowa. These areas had a lack of food resources caused by late-summer flooding that killed aquatic plants and more high water in October that forced birds to move on.
At the existing Elk River closed area (Pool 13, near Sabula, Iowa), effects of new voluntary avoidance provisions on bird use were inconclusive. While aerial surveys showed 40% more puddle duck use in 2007 than in 2006, use by Canada geese, tundra swans and diving ducks was lower in 2007.
Public Compliance Was High
Waterfowl disturbance studies were made at eight closed areas. Observers, often perched on bluff tops over-looking the closed areas, noted boating activity and how waterfowl reacted to disturbance caused by boater intrusions.
Observer time was allocated to various mornings, evenings, weekends, weekdays, and holidays, October to December.
Nelson noted that, “Public compliance to voluntary avoidance and no motor provisions was quite good.” Observers reported no disturbance of the birds in some closed areas, includingSpring Lake in Pool 5 and Kehough Slough in Pool 12.
Disturbance did occur at the Wisconsin River Delta Special Hunt Area, as noted in 56 hours of observation. In this case, 15 of 17 boating intrusions into the area caused minor bird disturbance. These boats were destined for a fishing hot-spot at the edge of the closed area.
A detailed study at the Wisconsin Islands closed area, in Pool 8 near Brownsville, Minn.indicated that boating disturbance levels were tolerable. In 267 hours of observations, researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey in La Crosse Wisc. documented 33 boating intrusions into the area. These intrusions caused an average of one major disturbance once every third day, less than the critical average of one every day, which would call for tighter restrictions in the future.
Observers were also stationed on bluffs above the Elk River closed area in Pool 13. Only three minor disturbance events were recorded in 51 hours of observation conducted during 11 days between October 6 and November 27, 2007.
Results of disturbance studies will be used to enhance public education about the needs of migrating waterfowl on the Refuge.
More details of bird use and disturbance studies are posted on the Refuge web site:
http://www.fws.gov/midwest/UpperMississippiRiver/
New updates will be posted as other reports become available.
The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working with others to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. We are both a leader and trusted partner in fish and wildlife conservation, known for our scientific excellence, stewardship of lands and natural resources, dedicated professionals and commitment to public service. For more information on our work and the people who make it happen, visit http://www.fws.gov
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