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Great Wines
Years of Excellence
Girl drinking from water fountain. ~Enlarge
There has been lots of talk about spending the expected $400 million to $475 million in new federal Great Lakes funding effectively. But there hasn't been enough talk or action about one way to generate tangible results the public can see and build momentum for future years -- spending a big chunk of the change on land and rights in land for key habitat, recreation and scenic sites, especially along the thousands of miles of Great Lakes shoreline.
Over the last 20 years, one of the great conservation success stories in America has been the growth in the number and effectiveness of private land conservancies. Working in partnership with government land management agencies but with far more flexiblity, they have protected millions of acres of land that are important not just for fish and wildlife habitat but for tourism economies, science research, and filtering water pollutants naturally. Since all of these goals are consistent with the goals of the Great Lakes restoration plan, why isn't land conservation especially through conservancies one of the top spending priorities of the coming year?
The answers won't be found here, but some suggestions will be:
* Buy coastal wetlands or easements on same wherever possible. They're most at risk and often most valuable.
* Propose and develop an interstate or Basin-wide national conservation area or national recreation area with land or easement purchases targeted in states that don't have Great Lakes federal park units -- Minnesota, Ohio and New York.
* Create a multi-state Great Lakes Islands National Park or fish and wildlife habitat refuge with land purchases or easements.
Of course, there will be opponents for some or all of these ideas. But as Ken Burns' recent series on national parks for PBS shows, there were opponents for every park that is now much beloved by the American public -- many of them important for refreshing air and water as well as tha national spirit.
© 2010 Great Lakes Town Hall.
The Town Hall is a program of:
The Biodiversity Project - 4507 N. Ravenswood Ave #106 - Chicago, IL 60640
773-496-4020 -
project@biodiverse.org
Comments
I agree!
BUT... but, this piddly amount of money--- and it really is piddly compared to the monumental tasks required for restoration and protection no matter on what projects this money is spent (but we shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, eh?)--- won't purchase much land along the Great Lakes shorelines where land speculators have run up the price to where two acre lots in many areas are selling for $250,000.00 to $600,000.00... I recently inquired about some "bog land" within a quarter mile of the northern shore of Lake Michigan; and for ten acres the asking price was $280,000.00.
The Great Lakes shorelines are now largely privatized with hotels/motels and huge, lavish, expensive, multi-million dollar homes whose owners are so wealthy they might only be using these obscenely extravagant homes a couple weeks--- if that--- out of the year.
In my opinion, what is required is a modified version one of Dave's suggestions: The creation of not a national--- but an international---conservation area where all publicly owned lands of any kind, under any form of governmental ownership--- township, municipal, city, county, state, provincial or federal--- no matter the country, state or province becomes part of an interconnected international conservation area.
Those who say they are for real Canada-U.S. cooperation in protecting the Great Lakes should have no problem with this concept.
If this kind of joint U.S.-Canada cooperation is still not within reach then we should be consideraing nothing less than a national multi-state project with the same objectives.
To continue fighting to defend the Great Lakes watershed in the piecemeal fashion as we have been to date, has proven to be a losing battle even though there have been sporadic and important victories.
Considering that Canada now has appointed one of the most progressive politicians in modern politics, with a very keen sense of his responsibility in protecting our living environment and eco-systems as its ambassador to the United States--- socialist Gary Doer who had been the Premier and leader of the Manitoba New Democratic Party and who has proven to be one of the most popular, if not the most popular, politician in North America today who is well known as a friend of the Great Lakes.. so we now have, for the first time, an important and powerful ally representing all of us who are "friends of the Great Lakes"--- as odd as it may seem to Americans, a Canadian representing us and our Great Lakes' interests in Washington. And, if Barack Obama is the friend of the Great Lakes many are claiming him to be, such an initiative is within reach if we were to give it a big push.
Just an idea I am tossing out because Mother Nature can't bear the burden of too many more "Slag Beaches."
A suggestion: The Great Lakes Town Hall Forum should ask Gary Doer, Canada's new Ambassador to the United States, to write a series of essays regarding his views on what needs to be done to preserve and protect one of the world's most precious resources--- a resource shared by Americans and Canadians: our Great Lakes.
I would encourage all those working on projects protecting the Great Lakes watershed to begin beating a path to Gary Doer's office before the powerful multi-national corporations go to work on him as they are sure to do.
We mustn't forget that while Canada's most reactionary politician representing multi-national corporations, Stephen Harper, was forced by the progressive forces in Canada to send Gary Doer to Washington because of what appears to be a changing international outlook on the part of the Obama Administration claiming to be looking for international cooperation instead of "big stick" and "gun boat" diplomacy... this doesn't mean that this opening will not be closed as quickly as it opened up, just like the possibilities for real health care reform have been.
Great Lakes Region Protected Areas
I agree.
Unfortunately, here in Southwest Michigan, powerful business and development forces are going in the other direction.
A blatant example is the recent conversion of a public lake front park to a private golf course. A significant portion of the 73-acre Jean Klock Park and its wetlands have been altered or destroyed, in spite of a consent agreement that prevented further development. According to news reports, some of the mitigation parcels are contaminated from previous industrial use.
Even though there is a pending lawsuit, what kind of precendent does this set?
In the final analysis, just maybe this park conversion will be a poster-child for how NOT to do business.
Long term, a Great Lakes ballot initiative for national conservation area / recreation area might work.
Brad Anderson
Great Lakes Region Protected Areas: Add more protections
I agree with Dave's idea of using these funds for protecting additional lands in order to protect water. And providing an additional layer of protection for our numerous public lands and in particular, parklands, along Great Lakes coastlines, in a binational way, is an idea whose time has come. Our public parklands are the ones getting beaten up, grabbed up, and considered like cash by privatizers big and small.
Brad Anderson mentions the illegal taking of Jean Klock Park in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
There are actually two pending lawsuits, both of which, when the park-protectors win, will set pro-park protection precedents for all parks that are protected by the federal Land and Water Conservation Act, and/or whose deed restrictions were intended to protect public natural resources "forever." The Drake v. City of Benton Harbor case goes before the Michigan State Court of Appeals tomorrow (November 3, 2009) and is testing the language of the original park deed as well as a 2004 consent judgment by which six Benton Harbor area residents thought they had won protection for the park.
But it's the federal lawsuit, Weiss et. al. v. Salazar, by seven individual plaintiffs against the Secretary of the Interior, National Park Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, City of Benton Harbor, and Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, (and the Whirlpool Corp-funded Harbor Shores Inc, the developer putting the golf course in the park, which sued to be an intervening defendant) that holds the most promise for setting precedent for better protections for LWCF-assisted parklands--literally thousands across the country, including National Parks. We are still awaiting the federal district court's decision on this.
See: wwwprotectjkp.com and www.savejeanklockpark.org for more information on both cases.
LuAnne Kozma