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The Northern Snakehead and other nasties.
alledan
Member Posts: 19,541
CROFTON, Maryland (AP) -- As fish go, the northern snakehead is something to behold.
The toothy, torpedo-shaped native of the Yangtze River in China grows up to 3 feet long, and when its food sources run out, it can slither to another pond or river, surviving up to three days out of water.
When dozens of juvenile snakeheads, each the size of a finger, turned up in a pond behind an Anne Arundel County strip mall, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources snapped to alert.
The snakehead devours smaller fish and other aquatic animals. If it branches out from the original pond -- the nearest river is just 75 yards away -- it could wreak havoc on local ecosystems.
On Friday, a 12-member panel of scientists agreed that the state needs to take action against the snakehead. The group is considering poison.
"You're talking about a total rearrangement of the food chain when you introduce a top predator like this," said Walter Courtenay, an ichthyologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Florida who is considered one of the leading snakehead scholars in the United States.
There is no other known breeding population of northern snakehead in the United States, he said.
Invasive species can be as big as a wild boar or as small as the West Nile virus. The elegant mute swan is an invasive species -- as is the trash-picking Norway rat. Some come to America as stowaways in transoceanic tankers. Others are discarded pets. A few are supposed to end up on someone's plate, but end up instead in the local stream.
One study reported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates the total costs of invasive species in the United States at more than $100 billion a year.
Zebra mussels made trouble in the Great Lakes after they were transported in the 1980s from Eastern Europe in the ballast of commercial ships. The mussels form thick clusters of up to 700,000 per square meter, clogging pipes and turbines at hydroelectric plants.
But invasive species also hurt natural ecosystems in ways that can't be measured in dollars. To feed, zebra mussels filter tremendous amounts of water, robbing other species of plankton they need to exist.
Maryland has about 120 to 150 invasive plant and animal species -- not necessarily more or less than other states, said Gregory Ruiz, a senior biologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. The state has lots of shipping and fishing, giving new species two major ways to enter.
Introduced in the 1940s to bolster the fur industry, nutrias now are defoliating the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland.
Maryland officials' concerns include the Vietnamese nuclear worm, which anglers have been using as bait in the Chesapeake Bay. It's not clear how the worms got the name, but they can stretch up to 5 feet long.
Biologists fear that if the worms are dumped from bait buckets into the bay, they could attack the fragile native oyster population and may carry bacteria that could cause serious illness in humans.
The oyster population already has been devastated by MSX, a parasite believed to have found its way into the Chesapeake in the 1960s when someone introduced an Asian breed of oyster to bolster the fishery.
The oysters didn't make it, but the disease flourished. MSX has been a factor in oyster harvests in Maryland and Virginia falling to roughly 1 percent of historic levels.
David Lodge, a University of Notre Dame biologist, calls invasive species the "most irreversible form of pollution," because they can be almost impossible to eradicate.
Once species take root, biologists sometimes focus more on mitigating their impact than on wiping them out.
In Maryland, wildlife managers announced last week that they're considering killing mute swans, which were imported four decades ago from Europe. The swans are gobbling their way through acres of underwater grasses that support other species.
Capable of eating up to 10 pounds a day each, the 4,000 birds counted in 1999 in the watershed are expected to grow into a population of 38,500 in the next eight years, state officials said.
Wildlife managers have tried to shoo the birds away from the grasses, redistribute them in same-sex groups, and shake their eggs to prevent them from hatching.
The toothy, torpedo-shaped native of the Yangtze River in China grows up to 3 feet long, and when its food sources run out, it can slither to another pond or river, surviving up to three days out of water.
When dozens of juvenile snakeheads, each the size of a finger, turned up in a pond behind an Anne Arundel County strip mall, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources snapped to alert.
The snakehead devours smaller fish and other aquatic animals. If it branches out from the original pond -- the nearest river is just 75 yards away -- it could wreak havoc on local ecosystems.
On Friday, a 12-member panel of scientists agreed that the state needs to take action against the snakehead. The group is considering poison.
"You're talking about a total rearrangement of the food chain when you introduce a top predator like this," said Walter Courtenay, an ichthyologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Florida who is considered one of the leading snakehead scholars in the United States.
There is no other known breeding population of northern snakehead in the United States, he said.
Invasive species can be as big as a wild boar or as small as the West Nile virus. The elegant mute swan is an invasive species -- as is the trash-picking Norway rat. Some come to America as stowaways in transoceanic tankers. Others are discarded pets. A few are supposed to end up on someone's plate, but end up instead in the local stream.
One study reported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates the total costs of invasive species in the United States at more than $100 billion a year.
Zebra mussels made trouble in the Great Lakes after they were transported in the 1980s from Eastern Europe in the ballast of commercial ships. The mussels form thick clusters of up to 700,000 per square meter, clogging pipes and turbines at hydroelectric plants.
But invasive species also hurt natural ecosystems in ways that can't be measured in dollars. To feed, zebra mussels filter tremendous amounts of water, robbing other species of plankton they need to exist.
Maryland has about 120 to 150 invasive plant and animal species -- not necessarily more or less than other states, said Gregory Ruiz, a senior biologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. The state has lots of shipping and fishing, giving new species two major ways to enter.
Introduced in the 1940s to bolster the fur industry, nutrias now are defoliating the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland.
Maryland officials' concerns include the Vietnamese nuclear worm, which anglers have been using as bait in the Chesapeake Bay. It's not clear how the worms got the name, but they can stretch up to 5 feet long.
Biologists fear that if the worms are dumped from bait buckets into the bay, they could attack the fragile native oyster population and may carry bacteria that could cause serious illness in humans.
The oyster population already has been devastated by MSX, a parasite believed to have found its way into the Chesapeake in the 1960s when someone introduced an Asian breed of oyster to bolster the fishery.
The oysters didn't make it, but the disease flourished. MSX has been a factor in oyster harvests in Maryland and Virginia falling to roughly 1 percent of historic levels.
David Lodge, a University of Notre Dame biologist, calls invasive species the "most irreversible form of pollution," because they can be almost impossible to eradicate.
Once species take root, biologists sometimes focus more on mitigating their impact than on wiping them out.
In Maryland, wildlife managers announced last week that they're considering killing mute swans, which were imported four decades ago from Europe. The swans are gobbling their way through acres of underwater grasses that support other species.
Capable of eating up to 10 pounds a day each, the 4,000 birds counted in 1999 in the watershed are expected to grow into a population of 38,500 in the next eight years, state officials said.
Wildlife managers have tried to shoo the birds away from the grasses, redistribute them in same-sex groups, and shake their eggs to prevent them from hatching.
Comments
Yet, they are quick to jump all over the honest hard-working man that has the thoughtfulness not to do something so STUPID!