Michigan and Illinois have partnered to spend $114 million to try to keep invasive silver and bighead carp out of Lake Michigan.
Invasive carp can outcompete native species for food, and these carp species have been known to leap out of the water when they're startled, and can land in boats or injure people in those boats if they get hit by the carp.
Michigan lawmakers have approved spending $64 million to fortify the Brandon Road Lock and Dam on the Des Plaines River with technology to try to keep the carp out of Lake Michigan.
Molly Flanagan is with the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
“It's a project that would be in Joliet, Illinois and would put into place multiple technologies, sort of like a fish gauntlet, intended to keep invasive carp from moving any closer to Lake Michigan and the rest of the Great Lakes," she said.
Tammy Newcomb is with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
“They grow very rapidly; they grow so quickly that they will exceed the size of predators' ability to eat them and they reproduce at very high rates, and so we just generally don't want them here as part of our ecology," said Newcomb.
