Listen to episode five below, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Amazon Music.
Here’s a story as old as ice. 20,000 years ago, the Laurentide Glacier started to creep back up the continent. The last Ice Age had ended and the planet was warming again, but five million square miles of ice will leave a mark. As it retreated, the Laurentide etched itself into the Earth, creating deep basins that then filled with glacial melt. Today, we know these grooves by name — Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario. The Great Lakes.
Humans have reaped the bounty of the lakes for thousands of years. Indigenous tribes fished on them, and, after settlers arrived in the region in the 1800s, the Great Lakes supported a thriving commercial fishery. The industry soon became the driving force behind the Midwestern economy building a real global reputation for itself in the process.
The Great Lakes have changed enormously in the last sixty years, but the laws that govern fishing on those lakes have pretty much remained the same. That friction — between policy and reality — is at the heart of this story.
So, how did that drastic turn come about? How did the commercial fishing industry, once the economic engine of the Great Lakes, evaporate in just a few decades?
The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation was codified in 2002 at a general meeting of fish and wildlife agencies from across the continent. These are agencies like Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources, organizations that are tasked with ensuring that people interact with the great outdoors safely and responsibly.
That 2002 meeting wasn’t the first time that those groups had tried to set down some ground rules. Tax revenue was going towards wildlife conservation as far back as the 1930s, and the first concrete federal policy on the subject was established in 1973, the same year that the Endangered Species Act went into effect.
If you take a closer look at that 1973 policy, the origins of the conflict between commercial and recreational access to wildlife are plain to see. The policy proclaimed that “the esthetic, ‘nonconsumptive’ enjoyment of wildlife” was “by far the greatest value of this resource.” Sweeping statements like this one laid the foundations for a hierarchy of uses for natural resources — you can see the long-term consequences of that language playing out in Michigan’s fishing wars today.
The North American Model does require an audit every ten years, to make sure that the conservation community is still working towards the goals set forth by the Model, but also to give the community a chance to reflect on whether those goals were still worth pursuing. The most recent audit was conducted in 2024, and it brought up a few concerns.
One talking point was whether the community was fully aware of the conservation narrative that the original Model created and upheld. According to the audit, that narrative prioritized a “white, male, hunter-centered” perspective of the outdoors, which is little surprise, given that the Model was authored predominantly by white men who hunted.
The audit also flagged that, because of that narrative, the Model undermines all other perspectives on how to interact with the environment. Randy Claramunt, the head of the fisheries division of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, said that this logic makes his job much harder than it needs to be. After all, the first principle of the Model is to responsibly manage the resource for all citizens. If you fish responsibly, Randy says, the spirit of the Model would empower you to use your harvest in the manner you see fit. In his words, “it doesn’t matter to the fish.”
Learn more about fishing on the Great Lakes by exploring the data visuals below.
Commercial fishing catches across the Great Lakes dropped sharply over the past four decades. Lake Michigan saw the steepest fall – from nearly 50 million pounds in the early 1980s to under 10 million by the 2010s. Lake Huron and Lake Ontario followed a similar pattern, meanwhile Lake Erie and Lake Superior have seen an upward trend. These charts together show, lake by lake, how an industry that used to feed its people now gradually lost its peak.
In 1969, there were 339 Michigan state-issued commercial fishing licenses. By 2019, that number dropped 35 — a nearly 90% decline in 50 years. The few businesses that survived — like Lakon Williams’ Bay Port Fish Company — did so by adapting through regulatory changes.
Economic Impact
Recreational fishing in Michigan drives $3.9 billion in economic activity and creates nearly 35,400 jobs. This economic impact explains why the Michigan DNR prioritizes recreational fishing in its operations.
