dan egan death and life of the great lakes

What makes the Great Lakes - which contain 21 percent of the earth’s surface freshwater - unique, Egan argues, is also what makes them uniquely vulnerable. At the same time, the book emphasizes the difficulty of foreseeing the potentially dire consequences of seemingly innocuous actions. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, is full of stories like this one: head-slapping moments of human error, with a whiff of hubris. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, Egan’s first book and the winner of the Graduate School of Journalism’s J. But the damage may have already been done. Upon realizing his mistake, the farmer did the right thing and turned his carp stocks over to state fishery workers. In Egan’s meticulous retelling, the presence of the invasive carp in US waters can be traced to an Arkansas farmer who, in the late 1960s or early 1970s, imported what he thought was grass carp - a more benign relative that helpfully devours aquatic weeds - to assist in the cleanup of polluted streams. And, as Egan reports, there is evidence that the carp may already have made it into Lake Michigan, rendering the contest moot. The Great Lakes, for all their beauty and wonder, have no natural defenses against bighead and silver carp, which eat so much plankton that they threaten to decimate the food chain of any body of water they inhabit. Only, to hear Dan Egan ’12JRN, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, tell it, this was not going to be easy money. Earlier this year, Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources made a novel offer in the name of environmental stewardship: come up with a plan to keep invasive Asian carp out of the Great Lakes and you could win a million dollars.

Dan egan death and life of the great lakes