The Obama administration has released a five-year plan to deal with threats to the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, announced in February 2009, has now progressed to the point of having an Action Plan FY2010–FY2014. If you scroll down, you can read the report in full-screen mode via Scribd.

It is a good thing to have a plan. Unfortunately, the plan does not mandate the one thing likely to prevent Asian carp from reaching the Great Lakes from the Chicago Area Waterway System: severing the links between the Great Lakes and southern waterways that have been invaded by Asian carp. That would disrupt barge traffic.

I wonder if, in the long run, the barge traffic will make up for the losses in the Great Lakes caused by Asian carp.

I’ve done a few weed pulls along the Front Range of Colorado. The state of Colorado has 3 lists of invasive species: those it thinks it can eradicate if it acts now, those whose spread it thinks it can stop, and those that are here to stay but can be managed somehow.

I think the Feds have resigned themselves to Asian carp getting in the Great Lakes. I just hope their plan to control it will work.