AUGUSTA (AP) – A legislative panel has unanimously rejected an experimental plan to introduce a species of exotic fish from Siberia and eastern China as a way to rid Maine lakes of invasive plants.

“The bill is dead,” said state Rep. Matthew Dunlap, D-Old Town, after a work session Tuesday of the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee, which he co-chairs.

State agencies, conservationists and sport fishing groups had opposed the bill, citing risks that grass carp pose to Maine’s lake ecology.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Ronald Usher, D-Westbrook, directed the state to import plant-eating grass carp to a test site to see if it can control milfoil, a plant that has appeared in at least a dozen lakes in Maine.

Testimony at last week’s public hearing included warnings that the voracious grass carp’s appetite was unlikely to be sated by invasive plants alone.

“The committee’s sense is that this is just too risky. The fish is a vacuum cleaner. It is not selective about what it eats. We heard testimony that it was tried in Illinois and went all through their watershed,” Dunlap said.

With no competing solution in sight, state biologists say Maine’s milfoil problem looks set to stay for a while.

Even as legislators sealed the fate of grass carp, the state’s inter-agency task force on invasive aquatic plants and nuisance species underlined the same conclusion.

“We pointed out that we have the same understanding (as the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife),” said Roy Bouchard, an aquatic biologist with the Department of Environmental Protection. “None of them felt that it was a particularly good prospect.”

Lake associations that previously supported the grass carp proposal had second thoughts.

“Our board voted to be in favor (of the grass carp bill), but we didn’t know any of the details,” said Susan Alto, secretary of the Messalonskee Lake Association.

“We didn’t make a decision to have it in our lake. They carry some bad diseases. You have to keep them in a pen. And they take five years to grow.”

With Usher’s bill dead in the water, state agencies are back to considering preventive measures as their primary weapon of control.

“There’s not a lot of promise in biological controls, hoping to find native insects or disease organisms that would get around the problem of importing species,” Bouchard said. “But there’s no question that milfoil will be a problem for some time.”

AP-ES-01-29-04 0726EST