Carp and Rhetoric

Sepic, Matt. 2012. "Critics of War on Invasive Carp Decry Cost, Environmental Impact." MPRnews. Minnesota Public Radio. May 7. http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/05/07/asian-carp/

Today I heard a report on Minnesota Public Radio about the carp problem. Many people in the land of 10,000 lakes are concerned about a particular carp. This fish is a You Tube sensation for its hilarious antics on the rivers of Illinois. When a loud sound disturbs the carp, it jumps out of the water. Because the fish can reach upwards of 100 pounds, they can really knock a fisherman for a loop, especially if her or she is traveling at high speeds on the river.

The MPR report didn’t mention much new information, just that someone at the U of M was “waging war” to prevent the carp from reaching the Upper Mississippi River. One carp has been found in the St. Croix river, another in the Mississippi down by Iowa. They could be moved by swimming upstream or by hitching a ride in boat ballast. Most agree that the carp could devastate the river ecology because they eat so much food, there is little left for the native fish.

However, one of the interviewees pointed to the rhetoric and suggested we reframe it. This is what he said:

And Greg Breining says all this war rhetoric reinforces the myth that humans can control nature. “It's just not very effective. It's like a war on terrorism or a war on drugs. It's just a way to spend a lot of money to no particularly beneficial end,” he said.

Terms like war provide strong reactions, but they end up sustaining “money pits,” where the government recognized the immediate emergency and dumps money into the problem without ample benchmarks to evaluate success—or without doing enough research before hand to ensure success.

Even the term “invasive” was called into question. What is invasive; what is native? This interviewee suggested that more research was called for in order to make better understand how the dynamics are changing underwater for the native species. They might not be suffering as much as first expected.

The language used in the fight against invasive species apparently does matter.