"Our path lit only by headlamps, a waning sliver of moon, and what seemed to be thousands of stars, we made our way to a mucky riverbank about twenty feet below. At one point, I lost my footing and ended up wedged against a tree trunk. Porter, who had two tight braids that landed just below her shoulders, kept going."
"Porter, who was wearing forest-green DaddyGoFish waders, glided into the waist-deep rapids and walked a line between them, periodically dipping small plastic bottles into the water and then depositing them into a mesh bag. I stayed on the riverbank, breathing through pursed lips to avoid inhaling mosquitoes. Porter buoyantly shouted that an "adorable fish" had taken up residence in a submerged log. She was several hours into her fourth night shift in a row."
Sea lampreys are invasive, leechlike parasites that nearly destroyed the Great Lakes' fishing economy. A small U.S.-Canadian control program uses targeted pesticides, river treatments, and field monitoring to keep lamprey populations in check. Field crews perform night shifts, collect water samples in mobile chemistry labs, and operate pumps that disperse larvicides from submerged hoses while monitoring concentrations. Those intensive, hands-on operations protect commercial and recreational fisheries and native species. Proposed federal budget cuts threaten funding and operational capacity for these control measures, risking lamprey resurgence and renewed ecological and economic damage.
Read at The New Yorker
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