Great Lakes Now

Nibi Chronicles: Protecting the protectors

7 min read

Nibi Chronicles: Protecting the protectors

“Nibi Chronicles,” a monthly Great Lakes Now feature, is written by Staci Lola Drouillard. A Grand Portage Ojibwe direct descendant, she lives in Grand Marais on Minnesota’s North Shore of Lake Superior. Her nonfiction books “Walking the Old Road: A People’s History of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Anishinaabe” and “Seven Aunts” were published 2019 and 2022, and the children’s story “A Family Tree” in 2024.

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Great Lakes Now

The History of the Button Industry’s Impact on Freshwater Mussels

8 min read

The History of the Button Industry’s Impact on Freshwater Mussels

Ryan Schwegman is a relocation specialist but don’t ask for his help if you’re moving, unless you are an endangered species.

Schwegman is COO of BioSurvey Group, LLC. in Oxford, Ohio. He manages a team of commercial and scientific divers who travel across the Eastern United States, relocating threatened and endangered species before river restoration projects begin.

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Great Lakes Now Michigan

Great Lakes Moment: Connecting people to nature through The Great Lakes Way

6 min read

Great Lakes Moment: Connecting people to nature through The Great Lakes Way

A recent Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan report documents substantial progress in creating The Great Lakes Way — an interconnected set of greenways and water trails stretching from Port Huron, Michigan on southern Lake Huron to Toledo, Ohio on western Lake Erie.

In 2000, the Community Foundation polled metropolitan Detroit communities about obstacles to building greenways.

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Food Great Lakes Now

Winter Wellness Pantry: Elderberry Elixir

5 min read

Winter Wellness Pantry: Elderberry Elixir

Part of “A Year in the Wild Kitchen of the Great Lakes,” a series in partnership with expert forager Lisa M. Rose, with the mission of nurturing a deeper connection with the natural world through foraging. To get started with your foraging journey, begin here with our “Framework to Sustainable and Safe Practices” and check out Part 1 of “Winter Wellness Pantry” for tips and tricks to stay healthy this winter with wild herbs of the Great Lakes. 

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Great Lakes Now Lake Erie

Walleye Numbers are Down in Lake Erie

8 min read

Walleye Numbers are Down in Lake Erie

Ohio Division of Wildlife (ODW) officials have released their 2024 trawl survey indexes for Lake Erie’s two most-sought sportfish: yellow perch and walleye. This year’s results bring an end to a streak of wildly successful hatches for walleye. For yellow perch two of Ohio’s three management zones were above average, with the third zone down by 70% over last year.  

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Great Lakes Now

I Speak for the fish: Sammy the red-nosed sucker

1 min read

I Speak for the fish: Sammy the red-nosed sucker

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of stop-motion animated film Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, I Speak for the Fish columnist Kathy Johnson creates a whimsical remix of the classic holiday jingle. Check out her previous columns.

You know darters and daces and pickerel and gar
Catfish and chub and cisco and char
But do you recall
The most famous fish of them all?

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