You Are Not Alone: Using Resolutions and Organizations as Advocacy Tools

The situation my agency faced in 1999 was the intentional stocking of a nonnative fish, black carp, Mylopharyngodon piceus,  in aquaculture ponds as a means of biological disease control.  No other disease treatment options were available to combat a new disease. My agency used science in the form of an USGS risk assessment and AFS resolutions to inform the permitting agency, the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce (MDAC) and the aquaculture industry that stocking black carp posed a potentially serious threat to native mussel resources should black carp escape from the stocked ponds.  An interstate organization, the Mississippi Interstate Cooperative Resource Association (MICRA), became aware that the permitting agency decided to allow the stocking of black carp in Mississippi. MICRA members debated the issue and petitioned the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 2000 to list black carp as an injurious species of wildlife under the Lacy Act. Notices appealing for information on this proposed Lacy Act listing were published in the Federal Register in 2002, 2003 and 2005. The MDAC and the aquaculture industry opposed this listing. Black carp were added to the Lacy Act as an injurious species of wildlife in November 2007.