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Yale University Press, 2017

How can communities help sustain the health of Lake Superior in the face of mining, climate change, forest change, invasive species, and emerging chemicals of concern?

The challenges facing Lake Superior are many--yet local, regional, and international communities overcame enormous threats to the lake's ecosystems in the past century.

Sustaining Lake Superior asks: What can we learn from the recoveries around Lake Superior over the past century, as we face new interconnected challenges from climate change, synthetic chemicals, and forest change?

Lake Superior has witnessed several significant conservation success stories in the past half century:

the recovery of forests after the devastation of the cutover era
the recovery of fisheries after the collapse of fish populations from overfishing, industrialization, habitat loss, and invasive species in the second half of the 20th century,
the substantial cleaning up of many toxic waste sites

None of these recoveries are complete: the recovered forests are very different than the forests that were logged so quickly, toxics still present huge challenges, a new mining boom is underway just as regulations are being relaxed, and fisheries are certainly not fully recovered. Yet they are still significant, and they offer us hope as we face new environmental challenges, trying to shape resilient strategies in the face of an uncertain future.

“A stirring biography of a most important place. Writing with insight and passion at the confluence of geography, ecology, and history, Nancy Langston connects the human story to that of the world’s largest lake, an enigma to many of us and an endangered species that affects all of us. Her voice is clear and honest, though never judgmental; it conveys welcome answers and hope for the future.”—Jack E. Davis, author of The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea