Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
as a resource and get eating. One popular Chicago fish bar, Dirk's Fish and Gourmet Shop, has put carp
burgers on the menu. Meanwhile, despite the angst, nobody knows if the carp would be a threat if it
reached the Great Lakes. Some were discovered swimming in Lake Erie a decade ago, but they disap-
peared again, suggesting an ecological takeover is unlikely.
32
Somewhere too, the striped mussel will surely meet the northern snakehead (
Channa argus
), a fish
with “teeth like a shark” and a voracious appetite, which can wriggle overland like a snake for up to
three days. This Chinese “Frankenfish” first grabbed America's attention in 2002 when it turned up in
Maryland. The story is that an Asian-born resident of Maryland ordered a couple of live snakeheads
from a Chinatown store in New York to make a traditional medicinal soup for his sick sister. But by the
time the fish arrived, his sister was well again. So he threw them into a nearby pond. There have since
been sightings across the country. But the idea of a wriggling scourge spreading across the United States
is probably far-fetched. Most sightings—including those in Lake Michigan and California—appear to
have been the result of individual local releases. But we naturally prefer the narrative of US interior
secretary Gale Norton, who banned the movement of snakeheads across state lines and said that their
odyssey was turning into a “bad horror movie.”
33
Following the snakehead, I went to California, which has more than a thousand known plant and animal
species from out of state. But only thirty native species are known to have become extinct as a result.
The resulting ecosystems are a cosmopolitan mishmash, which means any full-scale assault on aliens
would create a bloodbath.
Susan Schwartz, in her laid-back Californian way, knows this. She is president of the Friends of Five
Creeks, whose self-imposed task is eradicating aliens. The creeks of which she has informal charge are
all around Berkeley and drain into San Francisco Bay on its east side. All contain alien species in their
water or along their banks. The Friends brand themselves weed warriors. They go out most weeks and
rip up invaders. When I visited, Schwartz was on the hunt for Algerian sea lavender. “It arrived in 2006
and is exploding,” she said. It has “some very pretty flowers,” but it competes with native salt marsh
species.
Her other bugbear is French broom (
Teline monspessulana
), which is both invasive and a fire hazard.
The tall evergreen with yellow flowers took out over one hundred yards of waterfront in Berkeley. Rip-
ping it out is satisfying, she says, but the seeds stick around and the Friends have to go back every year
to remove new seedlings. Also on her hit list are southern Europe's pepperweed, German ivy, Japanese
dodder, Italian ryegrass, the Hottentot fig from South Africa, pampas grass from Argentina, English ivy,
and the Himalayan blackberry (
Rubus discolour
). But on second thought, she rather likes that last one.
It's not much of a problem. It shows up on waste ground and people go out and pick the berries. It's
useful. Let it be. But the English ivy has to go, more because it hides broken glass and dog poop than
for any ecological imperative, she says. I liked Schwartz. Her pragmatism was almost European.
By a shopping mall we check out Cerrito Creek. It isn't a natural creek at all. “They filled in a marsh
here for the mall and parking lot and put in a creek to drain it,” says Schwartz. Blackberry bushes soon
turned up, clogging the channel and providing cover for kids to smoke pot and ride their BMX bikes.
The bushes have been removed—mostly, I suspect, as part of a social cleanup of the neighborhood.
Local officials are putting up signs so you can recognize the creek's bird life, and regular citizens turn
up now for jogging and tai chi. This is California, after all.
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