Great Lakes Cooperation, Regardless

As the United States federal government continues to cascade into confusion and disarray, the impacts are magnifying for the Great Lakes. At a March 3 Great Lakes Day conference, the opening session on sea lamprey controls began with a slide featuring 12 key staff from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, all fired in the recent meat-ax federal cuts that included, for no logical reason, the lamprey control program. Twelve dedicated public servants with skills and know-how in the ongoing decades-long battle to control one of most notorious and destructive invasive species in the Great Lakes, instantly sidelined, careers disrupted, and talent and promise squandered.

Decades of research and field experience have helped the U.S., Canada, and Indigenous governments in their common effort to hold the line, and the progress has been impressive, with a “blip” rebound due to the limits on field work during the pandemic and the complex multi-year life-cycle of lampreys. These firings will erode progress, and who knows for how long. And that’s just one Great Lakes threat.

On February 28, the Sierra Club reported, “more than 300 career staffers have departed the agency since the November election, and on February 14, Trump fired nearly 400 probationary employees. These cuts include Region V, which houses the U.S. Great Lakes National Program Office. The day before, Trump stated he wanted to cut 65% of EPA staff, then “clarified” that he meant a mix of staff cuts and funding cuts—but how do you keep an agency functional at that scale? All this upheaval is of course, intentional. Couple this with the Supreme Court’s newest carve-out from the Clean Water Act and we’re back to rudimentary struggles on keeping sewage out of our waters.

NOAA is under intensive attack. This agency’s remarkable science capacity is helping us understand atmospheric influences on the Great Lakes, from climate change, storm events, lake-level trends, etc., as well as a wide range of environmental dynamics and conditions in the lakes themselves. And many other federal agencies are trying to grapple with losing trained professionals. USDA staff, from foresters to soil scientists, join National Park and National Wildlife Refuge staff on the list of tragic loss of dedication and skills caring for our public lands and agricultural lands. We will need to wait to see whether recent legal decisions will restore these positions, but so much damage has already been done.

The many U.S. tribal nations that provide protection and stewardship for Great Lakes lands, water and wildlife are also under multiple assaults, from the loss of grants to the closure of tribal facilities. The Trump Administration also seems to be dead-set on destroying the U.S. relationship with Canada through insults, tariffs, and disrespect.

On March 8, the New York Times reported that in early February, Trump had communicated with incoming Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, during which Lutnick learned that Trump wanted, among other things, “to tear up the Agreements and Conventions between the two nations that lay out how they share and manage Lake Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario.”

And here we are, two federal governments, dozens of Indigenous nations, eight states, two provinces, and hundreds, if not thousands of local governments, with a common responsibility to safeguard one-fifth of the world’s fresh surface water and the life and livelihoods it supports. We can argue that the many commissions, boards, and jurisdictions constitute a cumbersome patchwork, but they have also woven a vast network of knowledge, common goals, and an imperfect but in many-ways effective governmental regime to protect the Great Lakes.

We understand cooperation across borders. We need each other. We need the on-the-ground knowledge of local governments, the traditional knowledge of the first nations and tribes, and the world-class science and scientific institutions to grapple with global-scale threats. We need the engagement and commitment of state and provincial governments, the federal legal frameworks and the oversight and capacity of federal, Indigenous, state, and local agencies, and all the threads in between. We, and the Great Lakes, are better, together, than in fragments.

Regardless of the storm on the Potomac, let us in Great Lakes leadership from all walks of life, commit to maintain the bonds across borders that have helped safeguard the lakes for more than fifty years. Let’s fight to support the institutions, and the science, and the work on the ground to help each other, with whatever resources remain, to carry on the work that we know is essential.

—Jane Elder, March 18, 2025