Invasive species, climate change threaten Great Lakes

[BeckyDem]

New book presents long list of dangers but also offers hope

By
Cassie Martin
8:00am, March 7, 2017

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes
Dan Egan


Every summer, people flock to the Great Lakes to swim and fish in the seemingly infinite waters and hike along the idyllic shores. But an ominous undercurrent flows just out of sight. Below the water’s surface rages an environmental catastrophe 200 years in the making.

In The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, journalist Dan Egan describes how the lakes’ natural history gave way to an unnatural one. From the effects of global trade and urbanization to climate change, the book offers an exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) account of the abuses the lakes have endured.

Scars left by retreating glaciers and a failed continental rift, lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior are more like inland seas, holding about 20 percent of Earth’s surface freshwater. The lakes were mostly isolated from international waters until a series of canals and seaways let in freighters from around the world. “These ships are like syringes,” as one biologist put it, injecting into the lakes living pollution.

Nearly 200 nonnative species now call the lakes home. The worst offenders — alewives, sea lampreys and zebra and quagga mussels — have ruined food webs. Egan dedicates a third of the book to these invaders and biologists’ best, and sometimes misguided, efforts to contain them
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/invasive-species-climate-change-threaten-great-lakes

[ffr]

1. It won't matter. tRump's EPA will be powerless to prevent the lakes from becoming dumps

for industrial pollution.

So those invasive species are just temporary dwellers in what will end up being nothing short of toxic.

[BeckyDem]

2. Four years of Trump policy, scary to see the upcoming results. Not that we did not know. sigh.

[safeinOhio]

3. Nothing will be done about Pipe line #5 and it could be

the end of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. Enbridge Inc.’s Line 5 pipeline — two 20-inch pipelines that run parallel to the Mackinac Bridge across the Straits of Mackinac and that carry almost 23 million gallons a day of light crude oil and natural gas liquids. It was built in 1958 and is in bad shape. Enbridge has a terrible record on spills, but says there are no problems with #5.
Two Michigan Indian tribes are in Federal court to shut it down based on treaty rights. Please Help.

[BeckyDem]

4. Maybe put this up as an original opinion piece? Help is needed in so many ways and I think

it can't hurt to spread awareness about the court cases.