GLIN==> One troubling case where DNA can't get a conviction

One troubling case where DNA can't get a conviction

July 24, 2011
The Advertiser-Tribune, Tiffin, OH


The Ohio Outdoors Network
DNA. It's that seemingly invisible sliver of evidence that closes the book on so many complex court cases. DNA is the eraser that wipes out the shadow of a doubt. DNA is akin to a criminal signing his work with a huge John Hancock.
DNA is so powerful a tool that it has also saved the lives of wrongfully convicted individuals through the work of efforts like the Innocence Project. DNA allows us to go back in time, years and even decades, and right a flawed decision. DNA is also what we have to help us solve the especially tricky cases, now that we don't have Columbo. DNA is often what puts the punch in Horatio Caine's exaggerated sunglasses move on CSI Miami.
Now DNA is once again playing a huge evidentiary role in the Asian carp crisis that is threatening the Great Lakes. Numerous samples taken well beyond the electrical barrier that is supposed to keep the invasive and destructive species out of Lake Michigan indicate the presence of carp DNA. If this was a crime scene, the carp would already be headed to jail.
Fisheries biologists have detected Asian carp DNA before, on the lake side of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, that man-made link that connects Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River system. The alarm has been sounded numerous times.
But since this issue is being addressed inside a tangled bramble bush of bureaucratic posturing, little has been done. Our modern-day Neros have indeed been fiddling while smoke billows from the outskirts of Rome. They chatter and postulate and spew talking points, and meanwhile the relentless carp push onward.
The threat is big, ugly, smelly and real. These carp, which can grow to more than 100 pounds and consume up to 20 percent of their body weight in food per day, have essentially destroyed native fish populations in many areas of the Mississippi River. Filter feeders, these exotics were imported to keep ponds in the south clear of algae, but they escaped into the river system during floods.
The fear is that if the Asian carp reach Lake Michigan, they will corrupt the Great Lakes fishery in cataclysmic fashion. They will wipe out a huge portion of the lower food chain which sustains smaller fish, which in turn are the primary food source of prized game fish such as walleye, salmon, steelhead, bass, trout and perch.
The clarion call for drastic action came not from a bunch of know-nothings, but from a consortium of environmentalists, biologists, fishermen and conservationists. In one of the strangest cases of politics making for odd political bedfellows, groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council are aligned with camo-wearing NRA members who fish the Great Lakes with regularity, unified while both are screaming for more measures to keep the carp out.
Some passionate environmentalists who normally march in lock-step while adhering to the dictums of President Obama have broken ranks over the Asian carp issue. While the coordinator of the Obama administration's Asian carp program has called the DNA evidence "unclear", the folks on the other side have repeated their demand that closing the canal is the only safe and certain solution to keeping the carp from ruining the $7 billion fishing industry on the Great Lakes.
Even Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat and ardent Obama supporter, has said the federal government's lack of significant action on the matter leaves the Great Lakes "vulnerable to irreversible disaster." That is the equivalent of fire and brimstone.
Ohio is one of five Great Lakes states that has brought a lawsuit against the feds, demanding more immediate and decisive action on the Asian carp matter. In essence, the legal move claims that the wolf has already come up the driveway, climbed the stairs and crept across the porch. He is pounding on the door, huffing and puffing.
Nothing has stopped this exotic, invasive species as it has charged hundreds of miles, claiming most of the Mississippi River system in its conquest. The alarm has been sounded by many, and they doubt that an electrical barrier in the shipping canal is a viable, long-term solution. And if it fails, the painful point of no return will quickly fade in the rearview mirror.
Matt Markey is the outdoors columnist for the Advertiser-Tribune.
Contact him at:
ohiooutdoors(at)wcnet.org


Kristy Meyer, M.S.
Director of Agricultural & Clean Water Programs
Ohio Environmental Council
1207 Grandview Ave., Ste. 201
Columbus, OH 43212
Direct Phone: (614) 487-5842
OEC Phone: (614) 487-7506
Kristy at theOEC.org
Twitter.com/AgWaterKristy<http://www.twitter.com/AgWaterKristy>

[cid:image001.gif at 01CC4C6D.725B6400]<http://www.twitter.com/OhioEnviro> [cid:image002.gif at 01CC4C6D.725B6400] <http://www.facebook.com/OhioEnvironmentalCouncil>

Don't miss your opportunity to talk about nutrients, water withdrawals, hydrofracking, and more at the Ohio Clean Water Conference<http://www.theoec.org/CWC11.htm>, August 5-6; and the Lake Erie Management Plan (LaMP) Public Forum<http://www.theoec.org/WaterLaMP.htm>, August 26-27.

Please think of the environment before you print this email.

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