By Anita Huslin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 16, 2002; Page B05

The offensive will begin at dawn Sunday, launched from the parking lot of a suburban Maryland strip mall that abuts the infamous Crofton snakehead pond.

So ordered Natural Resources Secretary J. Charles Fox yesterday, declaring the state's plan to poison the fishing hole with herbicides and then a fish toxin a necessary step "to protect the environment and the Chesapeake Bay and the Patuxent River" from the alien invasive northern snakehead fish.

Native to China and capable of surviving in environments as cold as Siberia and hot as the tropics, the northern snakehead is also a notorious feeder with a voracious appetite. Adding to its mystique is the creature's ability to breathe air and survive out of water for days, slithering along the ground if necessary.

On Sunday, workers will apply two herbicides to the pond to clear the overgrowth of water lilies, algae and other plants. Ten days later, they will apply the fish toxin rotenone to kill the snakeheads.

Natural resource officials have been negotiating for several weeks with the owners of the pond for permission to administer the poisons. Yesterday, they announced that Danny and Bill MacQuilliam had signed a contract to lease the pond to the state for the year, allowing the state to go to work.

"We are going to proceed on Sunday, when all the businesses are closed, to minimize disruption," Fox said. "We'll be starting this operation bright and early."

But state officials ran into a snag with their plans to poison two smaller ponds nearby. Though no snakeheads have been found in those ponds, a panel of experts recommended they also be treated as a precaution. Officials do not want any snakeheads to escape into the nearby Patuxent River, where they could prey on native fish.

As of yesterday, the owner of the smaller ponds had refused to give state officials permission to proceed.

"The panel's recommendation was to treat all three ponds, and that is still our intention," Fox said. State lawyers will begin investigating what legal steps they may take. John Klocko, an attorney for property owner Bill Berkshire, said his client was uncomfortable with the protections the state was offering against liability, should anything go awry.

Biologists first identified the snakehead in the Crofton pond after an angler sent them a photo of one he caught there in May. Unfortunately, the fisherman threw it back. Another was caught a month later, followed by dozens of juvenile fish, which confirmed scientists' fears: The creature had spawned.

Investigators traced the origin of the fish to a local man who had ordered them from an Asian fish market in New York to make soup for his ailing sister. Though releasing a nonnative animal is a crime, the man was not charged because the statute of limitations had lapsed.