Newsroom

On May 11, 2018, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources captured two bighead carp during a search on the St. Croix River to recapture a tagged bighead carp they have been tracking as part of an invasive carp pilot project.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers undertook large-scale field studies in 2017 to examine two potential techniques for mitigating the risk of commercial barge tow-mediated fish passage at the Electric Dispersal Barrier System in Romeoville, IL; and to assess the potential inadvertent entrainment (trapping) and transport of Silver Carp by commercial barges transiting navigation pools currently populated by Asian carp in the Illinois Waterway.

Researchers will experiment with a riverbed bubbler and sound system as part of the ongoing effort to slow the spread of Asian carp throughout the Mississippi River basin. European technology originally designed to steer migrating salmon back into main river channels will be tested below Barkley Dam in western Kentucky as an environmentally friendly way to block passage of Asian carp upstream.

On November 29, 2017 the Critical Species Investigations branch of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources Fisheries Division captured the first ever documented black carp in Lake Barkley. Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources staff were working with a commercial fisherman targeting silver carp in Lake Barkley with gill nets when they captured the black carp.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released a preliminary report of a study documenting how barge traffic impacts fish movement within the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Electric Dispersal Barrier System.

Fisheries biologists from multiple agencies recently conducted a project on the Sandusky River to assess the ability to capture grass carp, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

An autopsy of the silver carp found this past June, 9 miles from Lake Michigan in the Little Calumet River of the Chicago Area Waterway System, finds that the fish originated in the Illinois/Middle Mississippi watershed.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has released The Great Lakes and Mississippi River Interbasin Study – Brandon Road Draft Integrated Feasibility Study and Environmental Impact Statement – Will County, Illinois (GLMRIS-Brandon Road Report) for public review and comment.

Minnesota Legislature granted the state's Department of Natural Resources the authority to use tagging as a research tool. For the first time in Minnesota, the DNR is using a tagged bighead carp to learn more about invasive carps.