Overview:

- In the Great Lakes region, recent cuts to federal environmental programs and deregulation efforts are raising alarms about long-term impacts on vital ecosystems and industries.
- The downsizing of sea lamprey control programs threatens the multi-billion-dollar fishing industry, while the loss of staff at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could hinder crucial research and conservation efforts.
- Deregulation moves, including weakening the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, risk undoing decades of environmental progress.
- Without sustained management and monitoring, invasive species may rebound, jeopardizing the region's ecological and economic health.

This story was originally published by Great Lakes Now. Sign up for Great Lakes Now’s weekly newsletter here.

There is always room to improve program effectiveness and efficiency in government, as well as business, nongovernmental organizations and other institutions. However, the “chainsaw” approach of recent months to downsizing, defunding and dismantling federal environmental programs while degrading Great Lakes scientific capacity and deregulating environmental protections could have long-term consequences.

It is worth examining some of the federal environmental cuts in metropolitan Detroit, which serves as a microcosm for the Great Lakes region.

Sea lamprey control

For more than six decades, fishery managers — working through the Great Lakes Fishery Commission — implemented a lamprey control program that included targeted application of a selective lampricide (a chemical used to kill lamprey larvae) called TFM (3-trifluoromethyl-4-nitrophenol). The program was a resounding success, decreasing invasive lamprey populations by more than 90% and protecting the multi-billion-dollar fishing industry.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted this joint U.S.-Canadian lamprey control program during 2020 and 2021, and lamprey were left to breed undeterred. By 2024, lamprey numbers exceeded the targets in all the Great Lakes. Fishery managers expected this outcome, and predict that lamprey populations will remain high through 2025-2026.

A major lesson learned from this was that lamprey must be controlled continuously. In direct contradiction to this lesson learned, federal employee layoffs and budget cuts started in early 2025, including 14 from the Great Lakes sea lamprey control program, and a hiring freeze. This threatened the program’s ability to control the invasive sea lamprey, potentially impacting the Great Lakes fishery. Some of these positions have been restored, but now large numbers of experienced staff are retiring from the program, leading to much uncertainty relative to the future ability to carry out a sea lamprey control program in 2025 and beyond.

“Members of Congress and Parliament, from all parties, are extremely supportive of sea lamprey control, which sustains the $5.1 billion Great Lakes fishery,” said Dr. Marc Gaden, executive secretary of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, the agency responsible for the binational sea lamprey control program, which occurs under an agreement with Canada. “Funding is not the issue; staffing is. Retirements and hiring freezes have left the sea lamprey control program vulnerable. The one thing we do know is that if we ease up on control, even for a short amount of time, the species will rebound quickly and with lethality. The ‘covid pause’ cost us hundreds of millions of dollars in lost fish, and we don’t want to see that repeated.”

In 2024, after 60 years of binational management efforts, including sea lamprey control, the Lake Superior Committee of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission declared that the Lake Superior lake trout population was fully restored to pre-lamprey invasion numbers. In the 1970s, the walleye population of western Lake Erie and the Detroit River was in a state of crisis. Today, both Lake Erie and the Detroit River are recognized as part of the “Walleye Capital of North America.” Both these Great Lakes success stories could be undermined without continuous management, monitoring, and research support for controlling sea lamprey.

Climate change

President Donald Trump has ordered the federal government to “immediately pause” spending on key climate change programs. According to The Hill, the Trump administration is cutting contracts that fund work on the National Climate Assessment, which is published every few years and details how climate change impacts the United States. Closer to home, Bridge Michigan has shown that this “pause” on unspent federal climate funding directly affects Michigan’s efforts to expand its electric vehicle charging network, which in turn could hinder automakers’ efforts to sell electric vehicles. Incidentally, both the United Auto Workers (UAW) and Unifor support the fight against climate change, including a just transition to electric vehicles.

President Trump has also signed an Executive Order that starts the process of withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change, citing potential economic damage and unfair burdens.

Research

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab (GLERL) in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The lab performs fundamental research, including developing forecast models such as the Great Lakes Coastal Forecast System and the Harmful Algal Bloom Tracker, which NOAA uses to issue watches and warnings for public safety.

As of April, GLERL has lost 17 employees, representing 33% of its workforce, and is prohibited from hiring. The loss of highly specialized expertise, as well as the administrative underpinnings, will be very difficult to recover from.

The work of the lab is further complicated by $1 limits on purchase and travel cards, and only two procurement cards are allowed for the entire lab. Normally, GLERL does about $1 million in credit card purchases for lab supplies and vessel operations and maintenance per year. Travel is also restricted and must be approved at headquarters. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick must approve contracts and grants greater than $100,000, and between $10,000 and $100,000 by the NOAA political appointees.

The Detroit Free Press has reported that a Fiscal Year 2026 budget document from the Administration’s Office of Management and Budget calls for deep cuts to NOAA programs. Cuts include:

  • Eliminating NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (which includes GLERL).
  • Providing no funding for Coastal Zone Management Grants, the National Coastal Resilience Fund, or the National Estuarine Research Reserve System (two reserves are located in the Great Lakes).
  • Eliminating the Integrated Ocean Observing System (which includes the Great Lakes Observing System — a network of observation buoys that improves national weather and marine forecasts, as well as providing data to researchers and the private sector).
  • Terminating funding for Sea Grant programs nationwide, including Michigan Sea Grant, a collaboration between NOAA, the University of Michigan and Michigan State University since 1969.

“The staff at GLERL are hardworking and committed to the President’s priorities of safety, security, and economic prosperity by ensuring the health of the Great Lakes for the millions of U.S. citizens who depend upon them for their livelihoods and call them home,” said Deborah H. Lee, retired Great Lakes research administrator. “GLERL is a regional center delivering vital services that are the underpinning of regional tourism, safe drinking water, commercial transportation, productive fisheries, oil spill response and geodetic services. As a taxpayer, I support the President’s agenda of seeking efficiency, but in his words ‘we need a scalpel, not a sledgehammer,’ and GLERL has been hammered.”

National resource management

The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is to work with others to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. It has two primary programmatic offices in metropolitan Detroit — Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge and the Detroit River Substation of the Alpena Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office.

WBUR has reported that 420 probationary workers at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were fired in February. Locally, staff at the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge has lost its deputy refuge manager to voluntary early retirement, with no current possibility of replacement because of the hiring freeze. The refuge has also had funding from a federal grant frozen that was going to allow hiring of two employees for its cooperative weed management area, which is dedicated to removing and preventing the spread of invasive species. Without those two positions, local ecosystems may be under greater threat from invasive species.

The Alpena Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office and the Detroit River Substation have lost almost 25% of their staff. Key activities of this office and substation include:

  • Restoring native species.
  • Rehabilitating habitats like Detroit River spawning reefs for lake sturgeon, lake whitefish, walleye and other species.
  • Early detection of exotic species like grass carp, bighead carp, silver carp, snakehead and others.
  • Rapid response to these invasive species.

Just like the sea lamprey experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, if these early detection and rapid response activities are not continuous, catastrophic harm could come to the multi-billion-dollar Great Lakes fishery.

Environmental cuts and deregulation

It has been the stated goal of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin to cut EPA spending and staff by 65%. Such massive cuts will reduce EPA’s capacity to protect air and water quality, perform oversight, undertake necessary monitoring and research, clean up Superfund sites and more.

But what is also underway is deregulation that undermines environmental protection. On March 12, EPA Administrator Zeldin announced that the agency will undertake 31 historic actions that represent “the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history.”

Specific examples of deregulation include:

  • EPA Administrator Zeldin’s proposed regulatory changes will weaken the Clean Water Act by restricting protections for streams, wetlands and other vital waterways.
  • The administration’s Council of Environmental Quality announced the repeal of key regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), that requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of their actions before making decisions, thus preventing pollution and environmental and health problems.
  • The Clean Air Task Force has reported that among the regulatory changes under the Clean Air Act will be deregulating emissions from power plants, oil and gas facilities, cars, trucks, and more.
  • According to The Hill, the administration has proposed to loosen federal protections for endangered species under the Endangered Species Act, including repealing the current definition of “harm” that is prohibited under this act.
  • According to Great Lakes Now, President Trump has proposed tearing up the Boundary Waters Treaty and the U.S.-Canada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement that lay out how to manage the shared Great Lakes that represent one-fifth of the standing freshwater on the Earth’s surface.

It is important to remember that back in the 1960s, pollution was rampant in the Detroit River. At that time, there were no bald eagles, peregrine falcons or osprey reproducing in the watershed. There was no lake sturgeon or lake whitefish reproducing in the river. Walleye was considered in a crisis state. Beaver and river otter were long gone. This helped lead to an “environmental awakening” and the first Earth Day. Today, all these species are back because of federal laws like the Clean Water Act, NEPA, the Endangered Species Act, and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

It is also important to point out that the Detroit River has benefited enormously from tens of millions of dollars of EPA funding from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and the Great Lakes Legacy Act for habitat rehabilitation and contaminated sediment remediation. Along the Detroit RiverWalk — voted the top riverwalk in the nation by USA Today for three years in a row — both the former Uniroyal site and the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Centennial Park have been beneficiaries of such federal funding.

In fact, without those EPA funds, the completion of those sections of the riverwalk would not have been possible. The last unfinished section of the riverwalk is the property immediately adjacent and east of the Ambassador Bridge. This segment will also require contaminated sediment remediation and habitat rehabilitation, hopefully with funding from Great Lakes Legacy Act and Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

The Detroit RiverWalk is a good example of how remediation leads to restoration, which leads to the reconnection of people to water and the revitalization of communities. For example, the initial cleanup of the Detroit River helped people rediscover the waterfront as a quality-of-life asset that can provide many environmental, social and economic benefits. In the first ten years, approximately $140 million was spent on building the Riverwalk by the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy. This resulted in $1 billion of additional waterfront development, which represents an impressive return on investment.

National parks

National parks are considered the natural and cultural resource jewels of the country. The National Parks Conservation Association has recently reported that the Trump Administration has proposed a more than $1 billion cut to the 2026 National Park Service budget. This would be the largest cut in the Park Service’s 109-year history if enacted.

The River Raisin National Battlefield Park in Monroe has recently lost its superintendent to a voluntary early retirement, with no current possibility of replacement because of a hiring freeze. It is well known that cuts in park staff can lead to diminished park maintenance and delays in emergency responses. The National Parks Conservation Association interviewed former National Park Service employee Angela Moxley who said, “Without staff, the National Park Service will be unable to carry out its 100+ year mission to leave parks unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

It is also important to remember that national parks not only inspire awe, wonder and connection to nature and cultural heritage, but are a key player in helping develop a stewardship ethic.

Environmental spring — a call to action

The Great Lakes have been an international leader in environmental protection and ecosystem-based management for more than five decades. Cutting federal environmental programs and weakening environmental laws could set back restoration efforts, diminish trust and weaken collaborative working relationships that have been more than 50 years in the making. Much like the “environmental awakening” of the 1960s, what is needed today is an “environmental spring” — a surge of environmental activism and awareness that prioritizes environmental protection as a cornerstone of healthy communities and economies.

Opportunities to voice concerns include:

  • Contact your Member of Congress and attend town hall meetings.
  • Write op-ed pieces and letters to the editor in local papers.
  • Work with local and regional nongovernmental organizations (Healing our Waters Coalition, National Wildlife Federation, Alliance for the Great Lakes, The Nature Conservancy) to amplify concerns about downsizing, defunding and deregulating that will endanger human and ecosystem health.
  • Attend rallies and marches in support of environmental action.
  • Stay informed about threats to human health and the environment in your area and report them to federal and state officials.

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John Hartig is a board member at the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy. He serves as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Windsor’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research and has written numerous books and publications on the environment and the Great Lakes. Hartig also helped create the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge, where he worked for 14 years as the refuge manager.