VIDEO: Five questions for author and invasive species gumshoe Jeff Alexander

Oct 16 2009 Andrew Norman 2 Comments

By Andrew Norman
Oct. 16, 2009

Covering the Great Lakes and its environment for two decades made Jeff Alexander the obvious environmental sleuth to write a comprehensive history and investigative exposé of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway.

The award-winning reporter and author’s most recent book, Pandora’s Locks: The Opening of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway, does just that. With evocative detail and carefully crafted imagery, he details how an engineering marvel allowed a biological plague into the Great Lakes.

Alexander covered the environment in the Great Lakes region for 20 years for Michigan newspapers, most recently The Muskegon Chronicle. Now a media consultant for the National Wildlife Federation, Alexander sat down in the Great Lakes Echo chamber recently to answer on video five questions about what went wrong with the seaway, why we should care and what (if anything) there is to do about it.

1. What’s the worst invasive species in the Great Lakes?

2. How has ballast contributed to this ecological nightmare?

3. How can regulation prevent more invasive species?

4. What don’t we know?

5. Why should we care?

Bonus: Alexander reads from Pandora’s Locks

[...] This technological marvel and economic engine also got a lot of attention in 2009 as an environmental nightmare. The system connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean is a route for thousands of ships carrying cargo to and from the nation’s heartland. That cargo includes invasive species pounding at the Great Lakes’ ecological door from the opposite end of the system where the threat described in story #3 emerged. They’ve been doing it much longer and more subtly than those high-profile carp and have already brought plenty of ecological havoc. It’s a story well-told in 2009 by Jeff Alexander in Pandora’s Locks: The Opening of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway. [...]

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# 30 December 2009 at 9:07 am