5-1 IAN Asian Clams

 I don’t know what’s going on in Idaho when it comes to clams but for some reason they had a penchant for showing up at our door. The quagga and zebras are being very diligently looked out for by Idaho Department of Agriculture and now news from IDA specialist and spokesman Tom Wolf that there is a new clam knocking at our door. It is the Asian clam: “Just in January we identified Asian clams in Lake Pend Oreille. Asian clams are a non-native species. They are not anything like the zebra and quagga muscles, they don’t stick to things. On the threat matrix they are not any where near as bad as zebra and quagga muscles, zebra and quagga muscles stick to things like inside pipes and so on. Asian clams live in the mud and they are filter feeders. They can cause negative impacts to water quality just in high densities with their waste products. They are filter feeders so they do remove food from the bottom of the food chain. Right now we are just trying to figure out the distribution of them, how many we have and then what to do from there. We have never taken action against these things before. Asian plans are fairly common in the Snake River south of Boise. Where they cause the most problems regionally is In  real clean clear water such as Lake Pend Oreille, Lake Tahoe and so on where there are  programs to try and eradicate these things.”  Too bad they’re not delicious.