Re: [Paddlewise] Re: Aquatic invasive species

From: Craig Jungers <crjungers_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 18:52:15 -0700
On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 7:59 AM, Moses Fridlich <mofrid_at_optonline.net>wrote:

> As a point of interest regarding milfoil invasion....
>

Thanks for posting this. One of my clients as a network engineer is the
local governmental agency that is in charge of the local lake waters and I'm
going to pass this information along to them. It's nice to hear that there
is one success story.

As long as the fish are sterilized there should be little problem. A few
years back they state brought in some sterilized tiger pike to control some
other invasive species in some lakes just west of us. These were smaller
lakes popular with local fishermen (and fishermen from the Seattle area, as
well) and apparentlly they've done whatever it was they wanted them to do.
The fish were nasty looking little critters with mouths full of teeth but
after the second year they were being caught by the fishermen along with the
local bass and crappie and as far as I've heard they're all gone now.

We do have a problem with purple loosestryfe which is a beautiful flower and
was brought in by the professors at Washington State University to reduce
the erosion problems in the irrigation canals. Well, they certainly did
that!!! They then brought something else in to crowd out the purple
loosestyfe and now *that* is also a problem.

The milfoil, according to a local theory, is the result of people emptying
out their home aquariums into the local lakes. Millfoil is apparently a
popular aquarium plant.

California has had people selling piranhas (the S. American carnivorous
fish) on the Internet!

Florida is overrun with pythons that were apparently released from a
facility that was doing experiements on them near Homestead, FL before a
hurricane came through and all the snakes were released into the wild.
Augmented by, apparently, people who seem enamored enough of these snakes to
have kept them as pets but then released them.

Now everyone is scared that cobras, which are also highly sought-after by
certain individuals, may get loose and create an even more serious problem.

It just gets better and better......

Craig Jungers
Moses Lake, WA
www.nwkayaking.net and www.bigboxbikes.com
***************************************************************************
PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed
here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire
responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author.
Submissions:     PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net
Subscriptions:   PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net
Website:         http://www.paddlewise.net/
***************************************************************************
Received on Tue Jul 19 2011 - 18:52:35 PDT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:31:45 PDT