Mississippi Clamming Still Legal - For Now

From March 7, 1994 (update #20)

A recommendation that five states in the Upper Mississippi River basin implement an emergency ban on the commercial harvest of native clams has been postponed, according to Wisconsin DNR biologist and Upper Mississippi River Conservation Committee (UMRCC) member Ron Benjamin.

The clamming halt recommendation was the result of a UMRCC-funded study on zebra mussels' impact on native Unionid clams in the Illinois River. The study found that native clam populations were devastated by zebra mussels. Although the UMRCC executive board recommended that no emergency action be taken, they asked the organization's ad hoc committee to recommend management actions that could be implemented for the 1995 season. Wisconsin clamming revenues last year totaled nearly half a million dollars.

ID: 19940307-10.

The Zebra Mussel Update was a 4- to 8-page quarterly national newsletter published by the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute from May 1990 through May 1997. The ZMU documented the spread of the zebra mussel -- an exotic nuisance mussel -- through North America's freshwater environments, especially the Great Lakes, and on efforts to control it.