Opinion | Attacks threaten Canada-US teamwork on Great Lakes

For more than 100 years, the United States and Canada have benefited from a peaceful, 5,525-mile border and cooperation on many issues of common concern. Michigan has benefited from this relationship, and without Canada, restoration efforts in the Great Lakes would not have begun in the 1970s and continued to transform the region’s bi-national Rust Belt legacy. 

But the partnership between Canada and the US on the Great Lakes that has worked so well is in jeopardy. Those who care about the Great Lakes should be concerned. 

Partnerships like the one between the United States and Canada are uncommon in the rest of the world. The partnership rests on a respectful, collaborative, and trust-based coexistence. This has led to joint efforts to restore native species, block invasive species, upgrade drinking and sanitary water infrastructure, control nutrient and toxic pollution of the Great Lakes, and many other pressing concerns. Coordinated work by researchers on both sides of the border has led to world-class freshwater science.

These advances depend on robust and open communication and coordination between scientists on both sides of the border. The US government is threatening that. Scientists are concerned that their communications may be monitored. In a recent episode of the Unsalted podcast, the director of the International Association for Great Lakes Research said some US Great Lakes scientists are shunning government phones and using personal phones to communicate with outsiders to avoid sanctions. An astonishing and alarming wall has been erected around US scientists and agency staff.

Critical Great Lakes programs are also on the line thanks to budget cuts. A vivid example is the control of the parasitic, non-native sea lamprey in the Lakes. Lamprey control efforts taken by Canada and the US under a 1954 treaty have successfully limited the parasitic non-native sea lamprey and protected the $5.1 billion Great Lakes fishery. The recent firing of one-third of the US field staff involved in on-site lamprey control could lead to a resurgence of lamprey. Each lamprey destroys approximately 40 pounds of fish. If sea lamprey were allowed to rebound to their peak abundance in the Great Lakes, more than 80,000,000 pounds of fish, valued at nearly $2 billion, would be destroyed.

Other successful Great Lakes partnerships involving the US and Canada include the 2008 Great Lakes Compact and a parallel agreement with Ontario and Quebec, the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty, and the 1972 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Terminating or limiting US participation in implementing these agreements will leave the Lakes vulnerable as they have not been in the last 50 years.

Michigan has a special reason to be a strong partner with Canada in addition to a common boundary on four of the five Great Lakes. Fish don’t stop swimming at the international border in the Lakes. Pollutants don’t require passports to cross a Great Lake from province to state and vice versa.

There is a great deal of unfinished business left in Great Lakes protection. The Lakes face convulsive pressures from climate change, microplastics, PFAs and other significant threats. The best way to handle those issues is through a strong and continuing partnership with Canada and Canadians.

Rather than suppressing joint Great Lakes science and program efforts with Canada, our government should be increasing its investment in protecting the Great Lakes. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and other Great Lakes governors should be speaking out against the Trump administration’s attacks on the critical Great Lakes cooperation between the two nations. More than 50 years of Great Lakes progress is at risk.