Do dying fish in Lincoln Park pond feel pain?

This would be a dreary day to be a fish in Lincoln Park's South Pond, what with the poison in the water and the sight of hundreds of your fish colleagues slowly floating to the surface.

So if you're reading this, be thankful you're not a black crappie or a largemouth bass. But, for the sake of those that went belly up on Friday to make way for a $12 million pond restoration project, ponder for a moment this age-old question: Do fish feel pain?

I could understand killing exotic, undesirable species such as carp but weren’t koi and goldfish deliberately stocked in that pond?

It’s sad because koi can live over 200 years. One koi that died in 1957 was born before our country...

What can I say about Illinois? I was born in IL and they do everything wrong there...

This is truly sad. Although the pictures below are not the actual pictures of the pond that was fish-killed or the fish, this is very sad. I will tell you that studies show that within 5 years, the lake will have returned to 50% of it’s previous state. Within 12 years, similar fish will again be swimming in that pond.

The fishing pressure and lack of regulation/enforcement mean that the resource (predator fish) will be over taxed.

Poisoning urban waters and restocking is a primitive solution to the problem.

This pond was so good - I had an angler on a paid guided fishing session on Lincoln Park pond. With 150,000 condos & apartment residents and fishbowls the goldfish will return.

Lastly - native fish is incorrect. The bass was not native to Illinois and came from the East Coast in the late 1800s when this fish was stocked nation-wide. The bass then is also an exotic. Because the bass requires much greater surface area and territory to live, along with much more oxygen to thrive, the bass does not do as well in our urban waters. The goldfish however, requires very little and can live in polluted water in poor conditions. Thus, the lone survivor in a pond gone bad- goldfish & bullheads.

The “native” fish will last a while and be plucked out and the “exotic”, where “exotic” = survivor will again swim in Lincoln Park’s South pond.

If it were my model, I would have kept it nearly the same as it was and tweaked the shoreline for about $2 million. I would have spent the rest of the money on children of homeless or soldiers children who might not have a parent who lives at home.

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