Hook, Line, and Sinker Invasive species are a problem not only of trade and climate change but also of language.

Guernica ^ | July 12, 2022 | Kathleen Blackburn

[tired&retired]

The publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 sent shock waves through state agencies. The following year, in 1963, the Arkansas branch of the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife (which later became the US Fish and Wildlife Service) imported grass carp as an organic treatment for catfish ponds.

Carp, with their voracious appetites for plankton, were a chemical-free filter. When the approach proved successful, additional species — black, silver, and bighead carp — were brought from Vietnam and Malaysia, and later from China and Russia as well.

Without differentiating among the species, agencies like the US Department of Agriculture and environmental organizations like Alliance for the Great Lakes began referring to them as “Asian carp.”

While farmers continued to release these carp into their catfish farms, the state began an experiment that used silver and bighead carp to filter sewers. When the FDA, citing sanitation violations, promptly shut the project down, state officials found themselves with a surplus of carp and released them into local streams, where the carp took to the wealth of plankton and thrived.

My mom’s refrain — you fix one problem and create another — resonates with what happened next.

[Flick Lives]

It works that fast? 🤭

[markman46]

i also found the article annoying, we are bad humans trop

[Mark17]

That’s fast 🤭😀

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Asian bittersweet.

Really most of the bad things in the world come from Asia.

We really should stop allowing their stuff here.