FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CHICAGO, IL (August 17, 2026) On Friday, August 14, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) announced in a press release that juvenile invasive carp were discovered a mere 80 miles from Lake Michigan, further upriver than they have ever been found through routine monitoring. This finding underscores the vital importance of the Brandon Road Interbasin Project, a suite of deterrents to stop damaging carp from entering the lakes via a chokepoint on the Illinois River. The project has seen over a decade of bipartisan planning and collaboration. Congress has appropriated funds for Phase I construction, and the states involved have met every funding commitment.
Construction on the Brandon Road project began this year, providing jobs for union workers, but earlier this month the US Army Corps of Engineers issued a stop-work order on the project. No warning and no reasons were given why the critical barrier construction was halted, despite repeated information requests from the bipartisan Congressional Great Lakes Task Force, Illinois and Michigan state agencies, and environmental organizations. The President previously directed federal agencies to implement the project with maximum speed and efficiency.
This is the farthest north that juvenile invasive carp have been discovered since monitoring began in 2010, according to IDNR, and the location indicates that a spawning event may have occurred even closer to Lake Michigan. Spawning activity is a sign of an established population and shows a higher risk of invasion than the presence of adult fish. The carp are closing in on the Great Lakes by advancing up the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, where they have already caused significant ecological and economic damage. The Brandon Road project is the best chance to stop them before they threaten the region’s $5.1 billion fishing and $16 billion recreational boating industries.
“Every day we don’t have shovels in the ground at the Brandon Road project puts us a day closer to seeing invasive carp cause irreversible harm to the Great Lakes ecosystem and economy that our region depends on,” said Joel Brammeier, President and CEO of the Alliance for the Great Lakes. “With carp spawning in the upper river, we don’t have any more time for administrative delay. The Army Corps must allow the construction teams to get back to work now – otherwise, years of bipartisan collaboration and investment to stop the carp will have been for nothing.”
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Contact: Don Carr, Media Director, Alliance for the Great Lakes dcarr@greatlakes.org