The Amazing, Misunderstood White Amur

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PHOTOS: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF
LEFT: Ponds choked by excessive foliage are now an all-too-common sight. CENTER: Six-inch fingerlings of the white amur are stocked in overgrown lakes. RIGHT: The clear water of such "treated" lakelets speaks for itself.

Until nine years ago, Bill and Harry Whiting ran an expensive, exclusive fish camp in northern Canada . . . one of the few regions “untouched” enough to offer the kind of angling their famous clients expected. In fact, the operation had been moved to the far north after the Whitings watched fishing in their native Minnesota decline until it no longer held much interest for the true sports fisherman.

The fate suffered by the brothers’ own private trout pond in their hometown of Edina is an example of what was happening: As the area built up, fertilizer runoff from neighboring property drained into the water, causing excessive vegetation growth. Like many other people, the Whiting brothers used the recommended chemicals to kill the plants, but the dying foliage sucked up oxygen. . . a process which, in turn, suffocated the fish and eventually turned their lake into a dead body of water. Bill and Harry packed up and moved to Canada.

The same scenario repeats itself constantly all over North America. Records show that around 200,000 man-made lakes and ponds have succumbed to similar fates in the last 10 years.

“Sure,” Bill Whiting said, “some of ’em were little more than puddles, but big reservoirs have been affected, too. For example, the 22,000-acre water supply of Houston, Texas is infested with 6,000 acres of hydrilla that’s spreading at a rate of 254% a year. And the Lone Star State appropriated $50 million for waterweed-killing chemicals in 1978 alone.”

A Natural Alternative

  • Published on May 1, 1980
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