CHICAGO, IL (April 10, 2025) – Yesterday, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Speaker of the Michigan House Matt Hall engaged with the White House on finalizing the pending Brandon Road invasive carp barrier project. After more than a decade of planning and design, the Brandon Road project was scheduled to move forward in 2025. This project is intended to stop invasive carp from entering the Great Lakes and causing irreversible damage to the Great Lakes and to the people who call it home.
“We greatly appreciate Michigan Governor Whitmer’s and Michigan Speaker Matt Hall’s commitment to the Brandon Road project and applaud their continued efforts to get this critical invasive carp barrier built,” said Joel Brammeier, president and CEO of the Alliance for the Great Lakes and Marc Smith, Great Lakes policy director for the National Wildlife Federation in a joint statement.
The Brandon Road Lock and Dam was identified as the crucial bottleneck where layered underwater deterrent technologies will be used to stop invasive carp populations from moving into the Great Lakes. Using the Illinois River and other waterways to expand their territory, invasive carp pose a significant threat to the world class fishery and economic vitality of Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes.
These invasive fish have already wreaked havoc on the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, causing damage to native fish populations by outcompeting them for food. Silver carp leap into the air when startled, posing the risk of serious injury to people and making infested waters off-limits to boating. Great Lakes communities and industries would be deeply harmed if invasive carp were to get into the Great Lakes or its tributaries and inland lakes.
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Contacts:
- Don Carr, Media Director, Alliance for the Great Lakes, dcarr@greatlakes.org
- Anna Marie Zorn, Great Lakes Senior Communications Manager, National Wildlife Federation zorna@nwf.org