CAUSE OF INVASIVE SPECIES DOCUMENTED IN PAGE-TURNER

Peter Wege has long admired and supported Michigan journalist and Great Lakes environmentalist Jeff Alexander. For twenty years Alexander has kept readers informed about Great Lakes issues through his job as a reporter for several Michigan newspapers. In 2007, Alexander’s book The Muskegon: The Majesty and Tragedy of Michigan’s Rarest River, won the Library of Michigan Foundation’s Notable Book Prize, the History Award from the Michigan Historical Society, and ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the year Award. That book brought attention to the damage done to the Muskegon River by the thoughtlessness of human activity.

This spring Michigan State University published Alexander’s latest book Pandora’s Locks that documents for the first time how invasive species began their destruction of the Great Lakes fish and plant life. The mighty St. Lawrence Seaway opened to such international fanfare 50 years ago that no one foresaw the natural disaster this engineering feat would trigger. But as Alexander’s title suggests, opening the fresh-water Great Lakes to the ocean ballast from foreign ships was, indeed, comparable to the Greek myth. Pandora disobeyed Zeus and opened the box that released evil into the world.

In chilling language and scientific detail, Pandora’s Locks lays out the ecological destruction done when the St. Lawrence locks opened in 1959. That launched the invasion into the Great Lakes of the zebra and quagga mussels, round goby, Eurasian Ruffe, and spiny water flea. The damage they have done in 50 short years reads like a murder story with the alien species slowly killing off the Great Lakes’ native fish and plant life.

It is entirely possible that one day environmental historians will consider Pandora’s Locks the Silent Spring of the Great Lakes. As readable as Rachel Carson’s 1962 book on pesticides was, Pandora’s Box also shares the hard science researched in Silent Spring. Carson had to fight the chemical industry; Jeff Alexander has to fight the shipping interests and the Coast Guard who protects them. But Carson ended up saving the birds, and Alexander could end up saving the Great Lakes from its DDT in the form of invasive species.

Peter Wege helped Alexander find the time to write this historic environmental book. A native of Los Angeles, Jeff Alexander is a full-fledged Great Lakes convert. Jeff’s passion and affection for his adopted Great Lakes shines through every page in Pandora’s Box. He makes believers out of his readers. For interviews, contact author Jeff Alexander at (616) 402-4061, or via email at scribe88@yahoo.com or Michigan State University Press Marketing Manager, Julie Reaume at 517-355-9543, ext. 109, or reaumej@msu.edu .

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