In Champaign, Illinois the largemouth bass, catfish, and bluegill populations in the Illinois River are booming as in seen in Diana Yates’ article. This is striking compared to the early 1900’s where the fish were close to dying out in the river. Looking at the history of the river, one can see how the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal opening drastically changed the ecosystem. With untreated sewage flowing into the river the once productive ecosystem started to suffer.
As a result, the impacts of pollution not only affected the fish but the people who survived off them. At the turn of the century, twenty-five percent of the value of commercial fisheries existed within the river. Despite this, the introduction of sewage fueled the growth of organisms that eventually depleted dissolved oxygen levels. Starting in 1957, researchers started to monitor the fish populations more carefully extending their research from Chicago down the Mississippi. Their methods also included stunning the fish to easily capture and identify them. The complexity of this issue would fail to be completely understood for another fifteen years.
Moving forward to 1972, Richard Sparks joined the team of researchers where he found appalling devastation. Fish were missing fins and eyes along with a multitude of diseases and cancers. Luckily, in the same year, Congress passed the Clean Water Act which provided federal regulations to waterways. With three billion dollars being allocated toward preventing runoff and sewage treatment plants, by 1980 Chicago had already lifted a burden of the dying ecosystem. In eight short years, the populations were at an all-time high since the beginning of the century. Subsequently, scientists were finding less and less carp and goldfish which are non-native pollution-tolerant fish. Despite the sports fish rebound, they still faced invasive species, fertilizer runoff, and chemical leaching from cities and families’ homes. Researchers continue to monitor the delicate balance of human interaction and species survival.
In light of this story, one can easily see the correlation between habitat clean up and a population of species. I imagine numerous stories exists in this nature across the country and have the potential to do something quite remarkable. For those who do not see federal environmental regulation as important or necessary one can reach a proportion of this population-those who hunt or fish. Competitive or casual fishers depend on the health of an ecosystem to enjoy their livelihood and by marketing regulation as a means of protecting the sport perhaps more would jump on the environmental bandwagon. This concept, while not revolutionary, has been proven to work in my own experiences I had over the summer with my internship. By connecting energy to hunting, we were able to make a large seemingly untouchable concept have consequences in someone’s leisure and daily life. All in all, how we market and portray environmental success could be the future of environmental reporting to shape environmental support.
(October 2017 )
Works Cited
Yates, Diana. “Illinois sportfish recovery a result of 1972 Clean Water Act, scientists report.” News
Bureau, Environmental News Network, 18 Oct. 2017, news.illinois.edu/blog/view/6367/568319.
