Since their introduction into the Mississippi River Basin by accident in the 1970s, invasive Asian carp have grown to pose one of the greatest economic and ecological challenges facing the watershed. The fish have become a real headache for policymakers due to their rapid reproduction rate and voracious diet, which enable them to outcompete the river’s native aquatic species. Over the years, goals for controlling the fish have shifted from a dream of full extermination to a more pragmatic approach that aims to keep the fish out of the Great Lakes at all costs. At the heart of that approach is a deceptively big challenge: creating a market for carp, which means convincing American consumers that carp are delicious. According to experts, a long-term solution to protect Great Lakes ecosystems from the invaders will involve states up and down the Mississippi River Basin collaborating on making commercial fishing of the carp sustainable. But for now, individual states are paving the way. Ethan Chism and Cody Jordan, two invasive carp specialists with the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission, catch a fish from their net. Credit: Lucas Dufalla, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette In 2018, Illinois implemented a grant program providing $8,000 to carp processors to expand their markets and sales. The state has also utilized increased funding to pay commercial fishers to remove carp very successfully.  The results have been impressive. In 2023, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources removed 750,000 pounds of invasive carp during a 10-day sweep through the Illinois River. The agency reports its efforts have reduced carp density in up river areas by 95 percent over the last 13 years. But Illinois is the last line of defense keeping the carp out of the Great Lakes. Carp don’t care much about state borders, and if the uncontrollable spread continues lower in the river basin, the problem will only get worse for downstream ecosystems and continue to put pressure on the Great Lakes. One state that’s faced serious issues with carp is Arkansas, which has been linked definitively to the first outbreak in the Mississippi River all the way back in the 1960s. Now, the Natural State is taking inspiration from other basin states and implementing a pilot program to create both demand for the carp and a place to process them — with the ultimate goal of taking out 1.6 million pounds of fish from the river, more than five times the number the state has been able to harvest over the last four years. The invasive carp in question are not one single species but rather a group of four species native to Asia that have all been introduced in the U.S.: the bighead carp, black carp, grass carp and silver carp (a fish now infamous to fishers and recreationists because of its affinity for leaping its 40-pound body out of the water when disturbed). In 2021, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service changed the designation from “Asian carp” to “invasive carp” in the wake of anti-Asian hate crimes. What makes these gigantic, googly-eyed fish such a problem? According to zoologist Jim Garvey at Southern Illinois State University, they have the potential to rapidly outcompete native species and destroy crucial, endangered biodiversity throughout the watershed. “There is a real concern that this valuable biodiversity we have in North America is being challenged by these species,” Garvey says. “What we’ve found over the last 20 years or so since the invasion has really taken off is that there’s a lot of evidence to suggest these carp are having impacts on certain native fish, and probably impacts on native mussels as well. They’re certainly poised to get into the Great Lakes, which has a huge economic value from a recreational and commercial fishing standpoint.” Chism holds up two species of invasive carp. The carp were introduced by accident into U.S. waterways during the 1970s. Credit: Phillip Powell, Arkansas Times Garvey says the carp are outcompeting beloved natives like bass and catfish because the carp can reproduce far faster and are intent on eating up the plankton that young bass and catfish need to survive.  Congress has taken notice and has pushed money into the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to control the species’ expansion since 2014, with $31 million appropriated to address the problem in fiscal year 2024. With the federal support, Illinois has launched a serious backstopping effort to keep the fish from entering Lake Michigan through the Des Plaines River and Chicago waterways. Congress also backstopped the invasive carp problem with an investment of nearly $226 million into the electric lock system on the Brandon Road dam, which is located 27 miles southwest of Chicago and intended to keep the fish out of the Great Lakes. The lock system includes layered technologies, such as an electric barrier that shocks approaching fish and a flushing lock that pushes fish downstream with powerful currents. All the technologies work together to prevent carp from getting in while allowing shipping commerce to continue between the river and the Great Lakes. Two groups aim to coordinate the solution to the carp problem: The decades-old Mississippi Interstate Cooperative Resource Association (MICRA) is handling the invasive carp removal projects funded by Congress, while the Invasive Carp Regional Coordinating Committee (ICRCC) is laser-focused on keeping the carp out of the Great Lakes.   Here in the U.S., the invasive carp are a big environmental problem, and even a problem for recreation in some circumstances. Easily disturbed, the silver carp can jump up to 10 feet out of the water, which poses a physical hazard for anglers and their boats. Moreover, the outdoor recreation industry is up in arms over the carp because they threaten native species that people like to fish for.  But across the world in China, people eat carp daily. So the easy solution, according to environmental economist Ben Meadows at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, would be to encourage Americans to eat the fish. But it’s not as easy as it sounds, says Meadows. “The issue with carp is they create damage but they are not yet a commercial species,” Meadows says. “So, if you think about it, they are net-negative and we just don’t have an economic model to deal with a net-negative. When we talk about pests, we can talk about minimizing their costs, and if we are talking about an economically valuable species, we have a road map to do that. But a species oscillating between the two? That’s unique.” Weighed down by negative news? Our smart, bright, weekly newsletter is the uplift you’ve been looking for. [contact-form-7] And American consumers don’t care much for the carp, says Meadows. But ironically, Americans might have to start eating carp in order to keep them from outcompeting wild fish they do want to eat, like largemouth bass. Meadows explains that there is a stigma attached to invasive carp — that they are dirty, bottom-feeding fish — which make them unpalatable to many consumers, even if their rich, white meat makes them delicious.  States have been encouraging commercial fishing operations to catch the carp for years, with very mixed results. In Arkansas, for example, the Game and Fish Commission only offers anglers $0.18 per pound of carp through their Invasive Carp Harvest Incentive Program funded by Congress. That’s not enough, according to some fishers in the Natural State. “The price is low. They’re expecting us to get the same price our grandpas got back in the ’60s,” says Dee Wisecarver, a commercial fisherman from Hamburg, Arkansas. He considers the carp a nuisance, often getting in the way of catching the fish he can sell profitably. From the beginning, some have speculated that the invasive carp outbreak originated in Arkansas, after the fish escaped from research centers and private farms in the Arkansas Delta into the Mississippi River tributary, the White River, in the 1960s. Garvey disputes that Arkansas is the source of the entire outbreak, which now affects most of the Mississippi River watershed, but Arkansas had the first documented carp escapees.  A handful of carp harvested from the Cache River sit in an AG&FC boat. The invasive carp removal team uses lightweight boats to catch and kill the fish before disposing of their bodies in the river. Credit: Lucas Dufalla, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette But regardless of where the problem began, as Garvey notes, because invasive carp don’t care about state borders, solving the problem will require a multi-state approach. Just as carp may have spread from the lower Mississippi Basin decades ago, the root of their population needs to be tackled lower in the river today. At a policy level, much will depend on whether policy makers can galvanize demand for carp and build the infrastructure needed to support the market. In the 2024 MICRA report on invasive carp removal, Arkansas reported it had removed 310,000 pounds of carp from waterbodies since the harvest program began in 2021. But the state achieved that by paying in-house fishers to periodically sweep tributaries of the Mississippi River in Arkansas, which is not a sustainable long-term solution. “While not lacking utility, current agency control efforts are limited in scope to achieve meaningful biomass removal from all major infested waters within Arkansas,” the report said.  According to Matt Horton, the aquatic nuisance species program coordinator for Arkansas Game and Fish (AG&FC), the fish are caught, euthanized and then thrown back into the main channel of the river in which they were caught. With no local demand for the fish, and no market infrastructure in place, the fish go to waste. A crew of AG&FC employees make it their job to purge as many as they can from Arkansas waterways all year round. But now, Arkansas is adopting an approach pioneered by Illinois to move from wasteful mass removal of the carp, to getting at the root cause of their out-of-control population growth. Jimmy Barnett, the invasive carp biologist for AG&FC, said on the Cache River that the program is in transition, with future funding from the federal government to be used for research, monitoring and building up commercial fishing, which he hopes will contribute more to keeping the carp out of the Great Lakes. According to Horton, Arkansas will soon be announcing its new pilot grant program — what Horton called an “opportunity” — to bring processing plants to the state. Or, at least, make accessing out-of-state processing plants easier for Arkansan fishers. “In addition to the low market value of these fish, the problem with Arkansas is we’ve got a bunch of commercial fishermen, and we’ve got interest from a large number of them to catch and remove these fish, they just don’t have markets to sell to,” says Horton. There are gaps in the supply chain, too. There are currently no commercial fish processing plants in Arkansas. The closest plant, Moon River Foods, is in Indianola, Mississippi, about an hour’s drive from the Arkansas border. According to fisherman Dee Wisecarver, that plant hasn’t been processing carp for several years. A spokesperson for Moon River could not be reached for comment. Jimmy Barnett, an invasive carp biologist with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, pilots a boat on the Cache River. Credit: Lucas Dufalla, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette “The problem is, there’s nobody buying them,” Wisecarver said. “You’ve got people that want you to ice them down, drive them for three, four hours. Nobody’s going to do that. Not for pennies.” Here’s how the program will work: Grantees, which could be processors, will get a per-pound subsidy to purchase fish from riverside pickup centers. This money is meant to offset the cost of transporting the fish to processing locations, which could help to create a market and alleviate the demand issue. “We’re just getting started. There’s a lot of learning on our part. Trying to build relationships, trust with our commercial fishers and with the industry,” Horton says. “One of the main questions [processors] have: Is there a large enough harvester base in the state to meet their market demand?” As Horton explained, carp processors aren’t interested in sending trucks to pick up a carp harvest unless they are sure that Arkansas fishers will have a decent harvest waiting for them. The pilot program will be aimed at guaranteeing the processors a certain volume of carp to get them interested in building an Arkansas market. According to Horton, around $240,000 has been approved and is set to go to two vendors (Horton wouldn’t disclose which companies were chosen). That money will help support the removal of 1.6 million pounds of carp, about five times the number AG&FC has harvested from the river since 2021.  “It can make a difference,” he says. “If we can illustrate proof-of-concept with this, then it justifies us getting more funding to implement more of this in the future.” Wait, you're not a member yet? Join the Reasons to be Cheerful community by supporting our nonprofit publication and giving what you can. Join Cancel anytime Expanded contracts with commercial fishers and grants for market infrastructure are all that’s needed to make carp removal sustainable. Meadows says marketing will be the key. In 2022, Illinois launched a marketing campaign called “Choose Copi” in an attempt to rebrand carp as “copi,” a healthy, delicious, locally caught fish. But Illinois also has dozens of markets, processors, and distributors already getting copi to the masses. Arkansas is starting nearly from scratch. With marketing, infrastructure and commercial fishing support, Meadows thinks carp fishing can become an economic win over time. But it’s going to require a sustained, coordinated effort. “They’re here to stay. You’re never going to get rid of them. Twenty years from now, people are going to be eating them all the time, because that’s just going to be the fish we got,” Wisecarver says. This story is a product of Reasons to be Cheerful and the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation. The post Why Arkansas Wants More Americans to Eat Invasive Carp appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.