New Endeavours
The Great Lakes have seen an enormous amount of environmental stress and pollution. Rapid industrialization in the 20th century left a lasting mark. Since the late 1950s, the Great Lakes have seen bacteria-filled beaches, lakes filled with algae, and fish contaminated through industrial waste. Of the most prominent man-made disasters, overfishing, invasive species, and industrial waste pose the biggest problems. The lakes suffer from three major sources of pollution: heavy industry, manufacturing, and agriculture.
Overfishing was a result of the poor practices of commercial fishing in the Lakes. When the fur trade began to decline in the 1830s, the American Fur Company began commercial fishing in Lake Superior between 1834 and 1841. By 1882, the impact of fishing had caused a “remarkable diminution, if not complete collapse.” The pattern of maximum harvest continued well into the 1900s. Over the past 200 years, most populations of commercially-exploited fish have either completely or partially collapsed.
Heavy industry, including lumbering, meant dredging. Americans dug and dredged canals in order make forests accessible by water. Such techniques required digging several tons of mud and silt from swampy lands to connect bodies of water. The works fundamentally changed the landscape, destroying streams and riverbeds for fish reproduction: “Nearly every stream and river was choked with logs en route to the lumber mills near the lake. These logs gouged and scraped river bottoms and banks, destroying vegetation and spreading sediments over spawning beds. Lumber mills dumped massive volumes of sawdust into rivers and bays, further smothering spawning grounds. Some rivers, such as the Milwaukee River, were so choked with sawdust that lake fish were physically unable to enter to spawn” (Egerton, 2018).
During the past two centuries, invasive species have significantly changed the Great Lakes ecosystem. These changes have greatly affected the economy, health, and well-being of the people that rely on the system for food, water, and recreation. The expansion of the Welland Canal brought the sea lamprey to the Great Lakes. Both greedy fishermen and the lamprey decimated the whitefish and lake trout populations in the 1930s. The invasion of zebra and quagga mussels in Lake Erie has only worsened the situation. Their presence dramatically changed the water quality and the structure of the lake food web. Pollution is primarily caused by phosphorous from farm runoff, and as a result, cyanobacteria blooms—blue-green algae—are a frequent occurrence in Lake Erie, Saginaw Bay, and Green Bay.
Conservation efforts in Michigan date back hundreds of years and continue today. While much of the state's early history included an overuse of natural resources—overlogging helped eliminate 92% of Michigan's forests by the 1920s—early conservationists like Charles A. Garfield dedicated years of their lives to educating citizens and advocating for state intervention. Over time, these efforts paid off; in 1901, after extensive advocating by Garfield and the rest of the forestry movement, Michigan's legislature created its first forest reserves, resulting in today's nearly 4-million acres of state forests.
Other brave efforts by citizens spurred improvements on water conservation in Michigan. The Michigan United Conservation Clubs (MUCC), for instance, once dumped the carcasses of dead ducks onto the walkway of the Michigan Capitol after pollution in the Detroit River killed thousands of ducks. Heart of the Lakes, a Michigan conservation organization, wrote that, "our state history is characterized by examples of heroic leadership by determined, sometimes lonely, citizens and their organizations. That kind of energy and vision will be equally important in the future to help us protect the land."
The dedication to protect our land does continue to manifest in Michigan conservation advocates, who face as many challenges today as they did 100 years ago, forging battles across the state. For instance, advocates pushed for the 2019 reintroduction of the Recovering America's Wildlife Act, which would provide $1.3 billion of state-led conservation efforts. While this act has yet to officially pass, supporters continue to champion it.
Today, perhaps the biggest pollution concern in Michigan is pollution that’s not even happened. Environmentalists, Native American communities, and a fair number of Great Lakes businesses want Enbridge Energy’s Line 5 shut down.
As one of the most significant battles facing Michigan conservationists, the Line 5 Tunnel Project Proposal: Enbridge Line 5 is a proposed tunnel that would replace segments of the Line 5 petroleum pipeline that crosses the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac. Line 5 transports over 22 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas liquids every day; 21,000 barrels of this crude oil spilled into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River in 2010. Indigenous groups, for whom the Straits of Mackinaw are a sacred, treaty-protected cultural site, argue that Line 5 has leaked at least 33 times already, and that Line 5 has been fined a total of $6.5 million in the past for failing to properly maintain its pipe system. They argue that this patchy history sets a precedent of poor environment behavior on the part of Enbridge, a trend they believe will continue with Line 5.
Michigan advocates and the Anishinaabe people continue to fight for the discontinuation of Line 5 and the conservation of Michigan's waters and natural resources. From its beginnings as a response to overlogging and overfishing in the 1800s, Michigan conservation has grown throughout the centuries to remain a key part of protecting Michigan's natural beauty and wildlife.
Of the current conservation fight against Line 5 in Michigan, Bay Mills Indian Community President, Whitney Gravelle, stated: "It's more than just our food and water that's at stake. it's our connectedness to the natural world, our cultural identity, and deep sense of community that this landscape keeps alive. This is not just a tribal fight; we are fighting on behalf of all who value the Great Lakes and our environment."
To learn more about Michigan's history and future with conservation, visit the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and to read more about the efforts against Line 5, visit the Native American Rights Fund.
