According to an increasing number of experts, it's only a matter of time before Asian carp enter the Great Lakes and begin the process of literally eating away at the Lakes' ecosystem.

"You know it's big when academics and the management community say we don't need five more years of study," says Bill Taylor, a distinguished professor in global fisheries sustainability at Michigan State University. "I am tired of studying what we already know is going to happen. We've watched this coming on for 10 years. We know what's going to happen."

The worst-case scenario would see the destructive Asian carp dominating Ontario's fresh water lakes and rivers.

If the carp do establish themselves, there's little doubt they would soon threaten the native fish species that support important recreational and commercial fisheries in the province, including the Windsor-Essex area.

They quickly eat algae and plankton and cut off the food supply of young fish. Asian carp can weigh up to 100 pounds and they reproduce quickly.

The Mississippi River is literally jam-packed with Asian carp after they were imported by catfish farmers in the American south in the 1970s to remove algae and suspended matter from ponds. But in the early '90s, flooding resulted in the ponds overflowing their banks and releasing the carp into the Mississippi.

Taylor says it's not the vast open areas of the Great Lakes he sees as being threatened, but rather the shore areas, wetlands and tributaries that now serve as a rich habitat for diverse and highly productive fish communities that support commercial and sports fishing.

"The Asian carp are going to whack the tributaries," Taylor says. "They're going to eat all the food - they eat anything they get in their mouth and that means they'll eat the food base that our resident fish would normally eat. They will change the food web and dominate our streams and near shore regions in the Great Lakes basin."

So far research tends to confirm that Lake Erie - the warmest, shallowest and home of the world's largest fresh water fishery - would provide a welcoming spot for both the silver and bighead Asian carp. One spot that's considered to be particularly inviting for Asian carp is the Maumee River near Toledo - the source of about onethird of the entire walleye population in Lake Erie.

There have already been signs that carp are on the verge of invading the Great Lakes. For example, over the past 15 years, at least three Asian carp have been found healthy and growing rapidly in Lake Erie. Also live carp have been illegally imported into Ontario.

Earlier this year, a judge handed out a $50,000 fine in a Windsor courtroom to a Markham fish importer who was caught trying to illegally bring 4,000 pounds of live bighead and grass carp into Ontario via the Ambassador Bridge. Soon after that case, an Indiana fish-importing company was fined $20,000 after 6,000 pounds of live bighead carp were discovered at the Blue Water Bridge.

But the real concern is that Asian carp will eventually make their way up the Mississippi and into Lake Michigan through the man-made Chicago diversion. Taylor and his colleagues believe that the time has come to once again look at separating the two basins.

While the ultimate solution can still be debated, what's clear is that the threat of the Asian carp is very real, and its encroachment into the Great Lakes will have a damaging impact in terms of the environment and economy unless we do something quickly.