Wildlife

GUEST COMMENTARY: Speak up to stop the spotted lanternfly and other invaders

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By David Strayer

If you’ve driven Michigan’s highways lately, you’ve probably seen the billboards: a big picture of a lanternfly, with the message, “See it. Squish it. Report it.” This is good advice, as far as it goes, but it should go further. The spotted lanternfly is a serious pest that is poised to cause major economic and ecological damage across the Great Lakes region. It was accidently brought into Pennsylvania about 10 years ago, probably in a shipment of landscaping stone from China that was not properly inspected or disinfected.

Echo

Michigan resources help deliver clean water to parched land

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Surrounded as we are by the greatest freshwater system on the planet, even those occasional pesky dry spells rarely give us pause to consider how blessed we are.

Recent days have brought announcements that help me both appreciate our abundance and the growing scarcity of clean fresh water that faces much of the planet.

Echo

Farewell to Great Lakes United — what now for bi-national citizen leadership?

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Great Lakes cormorants with deformed beaks like this one were used by members of Great Lakes United in the 1980s to lobby Congress for stricter pollution regulations.

The binational organization claims many longtime respected researchers and activists among its founders. It recently closed.

Jane Elder, a founding member of GLU when she led Great Lakes programs for the Sierra Club, reflects on the vacuum left by the loss of the binational coalition.

Deperate Alewives: Jane’s Extremely Brief GLWQA Comment Guide for Extremely Busy People

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by Jane Elder

Ah, July in the Great Lakes region, kicking off with Canada Day/Fête du Canada, followed by a quick segue into Independence Day, and then a blur of festivals, picnics, barbecues, mosquitoes, raspberry and cherry season, county fairs, beaches and boats, lemonade, and maybe baseball on the radio. We squeeze a lot into these rare weeks of precious Midwestern summer, which is why carving out time to get substantive comments into the US-Canada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement negotiating team by July 9 seems even harder than a deadline in say, January. If you are feeling as busy as I am, maybe you’d appreciate a quick guide to saying something meaningful on binational.net before the parades (4th of July and otherwise) pass you by. So here is my extremely truncated guide to comments on the GLWQA. 1.