Stuart Carlton 0:00
Stu teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. Welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes. A twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice, ask people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton, and I work with Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, and I know a lot about the precise amount of S and E allocation. That is the right amount of SME allocation, but I don't know a lot about the Great Lakes, and that's the point of this show. And we're joined today by Megan Gunn, our aquatic education associate, Megan, it's been a minute. How are things all the way across the quad there

Megan Gunn 0:37
the buildings? Things are good. It was a busy summer with all kinds of outreach and hands on activities and Lake Michigan adventuring. And, yeah, glad to be back.

Stuart Carlton 0:49
Yeah, let's talk about those adventures. At some point we should. But what kind of outreach gives people know the cool stuff you're doing in terms of outreach over the summer, because you do a lot of work with students and your role as an engineer. So

Megan Gunn 0:59
a lot of the fun things that I got to do this summer as they relate to Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant. I took a group of high school students to Lake Michigan to that was very close to where some of the mills are and some spills have happened, and they got to test the water quality and determine how healthy it is compared to what it was when these spills were happening. What we found out is, yes, it is very healthy, and those contaminants are not able to be found anymore, which

Stuart Carlton 1:31
is, what are students for these?

Megan Gunn 1:32
These are high school students. High

Stuart Carlton 1:34
school students. Fantastic. That's super well. That's fun stuff. I love to hear about the stuff you do. Let's talk about it more. But for now, we have to get an announcement, and then onto our interview. The announcement is, this is that teach me about the early driving a live recording Evanston, Illinois, whoop, whoop, on the 19th of September. That's a Tuesday at sometime in the early evening, late evening, early night. We don't, I'll be honest, we don't have a time or location yet. The reason I'm talking around this is because I haven't actually sent out the emails, but we'll be there as part of the Great Lake Sea Grant network meeting, but the event is open to all. What I want you to do is just go to follow us on social media, either Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, or teach me about the Great Lakes, or just send us an email, teach me about the Great lakes@gmail.com for the details, we hope to have those worked out in the next week or so, maybe by the time this episode is released, actually. So you can also check in the show notes, because Lord knows, but it's the summer of, you know, maybe last minute. But we're super pumped to do these live shows. They're really fun. It'll be from some as Ed verhamme Put it on some noisy pub somewhere, and maybe outdoors because of certain global viral situations. But regardless, it's a lot of fun. We recommend you come. I recommend you come. Last time we had when we were in Toronto, what do we have? About 50 people. Yeah, it

Megan Gunn 2:55
was a good crowd. Lots of midges,

Stuart Carlton 2:57
lots of midges. The bugs. You bugs. Yes, tons of midges there, but, but there won't be midges this time. We're hoping I what I want is I want a plover to fly by, even though I think, Oh, that would be awesome. But I just want a plover to just fly by, maybe a baby to wobble anyway. I'm wasting our time and our guest time. We have an awesome guest this week, so let's just go ahead straight into the interview. And I'm not gonna lie, our guest is semi retired scientist, which means there's only one transitional song that we could possibly play. So here it is,

researcher, feature, a feature in which your research, can I add a weird quirk that

Megan Gunn 3:56
I was super excited about when I saw that you were still doing researchy things. I was like, Yeah, we're gonna get the researcher feature theme song. So excited, one of my favorites.

Stuart Carlton 4:08
Anyway, I apologize for not warning you about it in advance. Our guest today is Dr John Hartig. He's a visiting scholar at the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research at the University of Windsor in Windsor, Canada, and he is also the author of, let me get the title, the full title, Great Lakes champions grassroots efforts to clean up polluted watersheds. John, thank you so much for coming on.

John Hartig 4:33
It's a real pleasure to be with both of you. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, this

Stuart Carlton 4:37
is exciting. This has been months, months in the making, because we got in touch back in January, maybe. But it took me a while to read the book, because there's been a lot going on, and I wanted to have actually read the book before talking with you, and I have it. It's really great. It's a, it's a series of, I think it's about 13 or 14 stories of individual Great Lakes champions, and there's some through lines that you can kind of connect. But why don't we start with that? So the book is called Great. Lakes champions. What? What led you to want to focus on on champions? Exactly.

John Hartig 5:04
Well, I've spent my career working on these most polluted areas, the Great Lakes, these great lakes, areas of concern. And so in working on them, I, you know, I first started out in state of Michigan, worth working with Michigan DNR on reporting on them. You know, what's the status of them? What do we need to do to clean up? And then I went over to the International Joint Commission to put the the remedial action plan program together in in the mid 1980s and so I've worked on all of them. I've worked with all the different groups in both Canada, the United States and and I've, obviously, I've met lots of people in these really passionate, effective team builders and these people that really can bring together the coalition it takes to make some measurable progress in restoring these great lakes, areas of concern. So I decide, one day, I said, Well, you know, I've done this for so long, why don't I pick out a, you know, like 13 or 12 or however many and and, and tell their story, you know, of not only what they did, but what they achieved, and then kind of tease out some lessons learned as well. So that's the reason I did the one, and I also wanted to make sure that the lessons learned from all this are not lost, but indeed passed on to the next generation, you know, and hopefully, you know, get taught in universities and elsewhere and become an inspiration for the next generation of Great Lakes champions.

Megan Gunn 6:48
That was kind of one of my favorites, like it was all, all of the things that have happened across the basin is in one place right now, and you can that, and then also seeing that, okay, it has taken a long time to get to where we are, but there are, there are steps that we can, can use and we can do to continue moving what they have started forward. So that was fantastic. And thank you for compiling this all for us.

John Hartig 7:16
Yeah, wonderful. My pleasure. You know. I mean, you know people say, Why does it take so long? Well, these problems are, in some cases, 100 to 200 years old, you know. And and how can you, you know, solve them in a few short years, or a decade, or something like that, and so, so you've got to break it down into those incremental steps, and you've got to be able to show progress and sustain momentum and keep people at the table, and all those unique skills to to reach a vision that you want,

Stuart Carlton 7:55
fantastic. And so you said that you sort of, I'm always curious. I've never written a book. I don't write nearly as much as you did, or do, I think, but I try to avoid writing. But so, so you said, these are people that you've met. Did you was it? Did you have to, like, call down for how'd you select these? I think it was 12, but a couple is probably 13 people, I think, right? Because there was at least one couple in there. How did you settle on those stories, as opposed to others? Were you looking for the individual stories, or how well they connected to some greater themes about the Great

John Hartig 8:25
Lakes? Yeah, this theme that that's throughout is is working together, you know, you know, what is the desired future state? You know, what's the vision you have that can be carried in the hearts and minds of all people. How do you co produce knowledge, co innovate solutions and make measurable progress, you know? So I looked at both the individuals, but then I looked at the measurable progress in the areas of concern, and, and. And obviously I wanted some Canadian stories, and I want some us stories, and so I picked these out, and I decided to write their stories. So I interviewed them. I came up with a core set of questions that I would ask each of them. But then, of course, I would allow them to to expand and and expand out a little more in some of their answers. And that was the basis. And then, of course, having worked on all of these, you know, I've got, I was familiar with the literature, and I could pull it together and and put this together like this.

Megan Gunn 9:36
It seems like all of this is one of the, one of the key phrases that I picked up several times was the Great Lakes tapestry. And you finding these people across the basin and their stories, can you, I guess, can you talk a little bit more about what the Great Lakes tapestry is for those our listeners that haven't read the book yet, yeah,

John Hartig 9:56
that you know, like, you know, the Great Lakes and. Made up a big tapestry, not only of biota, you know, flora and fauna, but humans, right, a whole bunch. And so some of them live in rural areas. Some of them live in big urban areas. Some of them live in rust belt cities that are in going through major decline. So so I wanted to draw on that broad tapestry of people too, to tell different stories so that we can lift up and celebrate what they have been doing clearly, also to identify remaining challenges, but to show that progress can be made and that can give hope to others working on this.

Megan Gunn 10:48
And they're all connected, everybody's everybody's work is connected to each other's absolutely

John Hartig 10:52
we all you know, it's, you know, we teach all the time. You know, ecosystem. You know. You know the difference between environment and ecosystem is like the difference between house and home. House is external and detached. It sits across the street over there, but a home is something you see yourself in, even when you're not there. You know you're part of it. So we are part of our ecosystem, and what we do to the ecosystem, then we do to ourselves. And we are all part of this ecosystem. And so, you know, long range transport of persistent toxic substances biomagnify up the food webs and and are in the fish. And so we are all part of that, and we have to realize that. And then what was one of the catalysts for the cleanup of areas concern is that, you know, back in the 70s and early 80s, it was all top down, command and control, management, you know, governments telling Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, stakeholders. You know how to do it. But this called for a bottom up collaborative approach. You know, this ecosystem approach, you know, account for the interrelationships between land, air, water and all living things, including humans. And you know, val of all user groups and management. So, so this whole theme of, you know, how did people bring, come together around this desired future, state, this, this, you know, this vision that they want, and then co produce knowledge, co innovate solutions and practice adaptive management. It's just a great learning tool for a lot of people.

Stuart Carlton 12:44
But so you talk about the importance of bringing people together and working together, and that's been a theme for a lot of your work, but then you're focusing on champions. Here is part of what makes them champions, their ability to bring different groups of people together.

John Hartig 12:59
Absolutely they wouldn't be, they wouldn't be a champion, if, unless they could do that, because that's what it takes. Just think of these problems. You know, whether it's in a big urban area, it's, you know, combined sewer overflows, because we have combined storm and sanitary sewers, or we have contaminated sediment or massive loss of habitat or or, you know, whatever urban or agricultural runoff problems that takes collaboration. So each of these have to be very collaborative and know how to build teams and how to move a team forward, so to speak, in incremental fashion to be able to make decisions and and affect change.

Megan Gunn 13:46
Are there any notable stories about the Great Lakes champions that you would like to share? Yeah.

John Hartig 13:51
I mean, absolutely there's, there's lots of good ones. I mean, you know, the husband and wife team are, are bud and Vicki Harris out of Green Bay, you know, and and course, the Fox River is the big tributary that goes into Green Bay. And, you know, it had the the highest density of pulp and paper mills in the world at one time. Can you imagine that? And then you know the rest of the story of recycling paper and PCBs and ink, and it led to this just massive PCB problem that was manifested not only in health advisories, but reproductive failure of species And birds and so what a story, and they used science and produced actionable science to be able to make decisions. And so starting, you know, with the Fox River and Green Bay remille Action Plan, and then the Green Bay Mass. Balance study to figure out, what are all the sources in this case, let's talk about PCBs. What are all the sources of it? What's the relative contribution, and where would we get the biggest bang for our buck? And and today, here they are, with spending $1.3 billion on the cleanup, not million, but billion dollars on that cleanup, and now restoring habitats. And, you know, they're doing a really innovative cat island chain habitat restoration project, and and then, of course, the end of the story is reconnecting people to it as well. So that's an example of one, a husband and wife team. I'll give you another one. And Hamilton, Ontario is the steel capital of Canada. Megan, you know that you should know that, right? And and so Hamilton, you know, it had big steel companies, and for over 100 years, you know, they filled in portions of of Hamilton Harbor, you know, all the wetlands, and built out, you know, so that they could expand their steel mills, and then they had all The effluents, so they ended up with a massive contaminated sediment problem, the largest in all of the Canadian portion of the Great Lakes. And a person who was a planner by trade worked for a local conservation authority, which is like a watershed council in the United States, so a really good background to bring people together. And so today, fast forward, they have the Randall reef contaminated sediment remediation project, the largest and all of the Canadian portion of Great Lakes is completed, and they remove the contaminated sediments from the harbor, put it into this big containment cell and capped it and connected to the land. And so now the port authority there can expand their operation. So there's actually an economic benefit from it as well and and then, of course, that was then a catalyst for for lots of habitat rehabilitation. They went to one of the most notable places in the Canadian portion of the Great Lakes for habitat loss, to being a leader in habitat rehabilitation and enhancement. And now people are rediscovering portions of Hamilton harbor, and they're connecting to it with Greenway trails and waterfront developments as well, but those are two of the of the champions and their stories in the book, what makes

Stuart Carlton 17:58
a great great lakes champion.

John Hartig 18:02
Well, I would say to you that they all are, you know, passionate about the Great Lakes, right? They all have this love, love for the Great Lakes, but they're big dreamers, right? They can, and they are. They were able to bring people together to like in the case of Bud and Vicki Harris, develop this desired future state. You're not going to go back to pristine, you know, conditions, but you can reach agreement on what you want for your ecosystem. And it's something that then all the different stakeholder groups can carry in their hearts and minds. They are, you know, they're, they're, they're people who are, have an eagerness to learn and want to share it with others. They're practical problem solvers. You know, you have to be to work in this area. They're, they're in it for the long haul. You know many of them have been at this for decades. You know they are you know they're impeccable for their honesty and their integrity and their generous servant leaders. You know they are the first one to acknowledge the importance of other stakeholders. They're all they're very generous and giving credit and and doing that, and you put all those together, and that makes a champion.

Megan Gunn 19:28
It really is a wonder that humans have survived this long with all the like, all the things that we've done to the environment, whether it's just putting in industrial pollution or our own waste into our drinking water. It just, it's a wonder that we survived this long. And did you? Did you see any of your the champions that you interviewed, like thinking about that or or is that? Was that ever a concern as you've been going through your career? I.

John Hartig 19:59
Absolutely you know. Like, you know, how have we survived all of this? How many mistakes as a society can we make? And you know, most people you know, like, you know, most people in the United States and Canada live in urban areas. 80% of all the people in the United States and Canada live in urban areas and oh, now, hold

Stuart Carlton 20:23
on, hold on, John, I apologize to interrupt you, but that sounds a lot like a Great Lakes factoid. And so we have to introduce little factoids with the Great Lakes factoid song. So I apologize, no problem. So anyway, I want to hear that 80% again, but not until after this. It's a great lakes factoid, a Great Lakes factoid. It's a great factoid about the Great Lakes. That's

John Hartig 20:46
what we're saying. Did you know that 80% of all the people in the United States and Canada live in urban areas, I mean, and most Megan, you know this, most are disconnected from the outdoors, from nature, from water, they don't understand they're part of an ecosystem. And what we do the ecosystem, we do to ourselves. And so what we need to do is reconnect people with nature and and that is the next phase of this areas of concern experiment is we've gone through some significant cleanup and remediation and habitat restoration. The next phase is reconnecting people to water to give them those compelling experiences out outdoors, to see your plover right to see your plover, to see to catch a fish, to make memories, for people to do place, making out there. So people then can you know, know that they're part of their ecosystem, and this will be helping with developing a stewardship ethic, you know, a conservation ethic for the Great Lakes and and hopefully we won't be able to, we won't be making as many mistakes like we did in the past, you know, but with That, is absolutely critical to reconnect people to water, and then where we see that already, you know, think of where I'm from, Detroit, and we were an industrial town that supported industry and commerce, and the waterfront was all industry. And if you went to downtown Detroit at the Renaissance Center just 20 years ago, and you looked up river, alls you would see is three sets of cement silos, dilapidated and abandoned buildings, material storage piles, you know, limestone and salt and and then surface parking lots. We had so limited public access to the river. So in this cleanup of the river and remediation and habitat restoration, you know, and people started saying, why can't we have more access? And people also then wanted, you know, other modes of transportation. We were the automobile capital of the United States. We specialized in driving places. Well, they wanted alternative modes of transportation, like greenways, and so now they fast forward. We have the Detroit Riverwalk. It's the number one riverwal in the United States three years in a row, and that reconnecting people to water is not just about, you know, a good feeling that Detroit Riverwalk, they invested roughly $140 million in The first 10 years, a big, rigorous economic benefit study at the end of that and the return on that investment was a billion dollars of additional investment. So it's also part of a strategy of, you know, revitalizing Detroit, and as you said, Stuart, taking that step to the next economy.

Stuart Carlton 24:21
So here's a question I always think about when I hear about the economic returns. So why are we investing this money everywhere? In your mind? So if it's a 10 to one, let's assume the study is overly optimistic and it's only a two to one, or let's assume it's a one to one. You know, why aren't we making either way? It's a common sense investment, right? Why aren't we making those everywhere? In your opinion?

John Hartig 24:45
Well, there was a great, you know, the GLRI, as you know, is a multi billion dollar initiative, Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, and there was a big study done on that for every dollar invested by the federal government. I. In, you know, clean up, restoration habitat, you get a $3.38 cent return on your investment. It is just common sense, and in some cases, you know not, it's your property values go up. But it attracts other things. It attracts some of the the amenities that young people want in these cities and towns too. They want they don't just want a job, they want a lifestyle, and they want to be connected to the water, and they want to have nice coffee shops, and they want to canoe and kayak livery over here, and they want these experiences where you can go birding and where you can fish, and so it's part of a strategy. I agree Stuart, we need to be doing more of that. I think we're early on in this kind of economic benefits study implementation, you know, I think you're going to see more. I think just look at this, contaminated sediments. There were two places on the riverwalk of the Detroit Riverwalk where they could not build the riverwalk because of contaminated sediment. So then they had to get involved in contaminated sediment remediation. That's not their expertise. They you know, they were a reluctant partner, but they did that, and then the benefits from that are amazing. On the lower Rouge River, which is a tributary that goes into the Detroit River, that is also an area of concern, they can't build any more kayak launches and landings in that section because of contaminated sediment? So we we need to be talking about this and showing the value and benefit of what we do. All

Stuart Carlton 26:55
right. Now I have three questions that I've jotted down because I find myself agreeing with everything that you're saying. And so that makes me nervous for our listener, because there's some listener out there who's screaming right now, and so I've tried it down three devil's advocate questions, all right, and I'm going to, I'm going to dump these on you with no prep, but I think you can handle absolutely okay, here we go. So one is, You talk a lot about the importance of evolving the broader community in these restorations process, right? First of all, is that too slow to do that? You know, that involves a lot of sort of work that isn't the work of restoration, and I think a lot of times to find out things that you most of which you could have guessed, or might have guessed, just if you were doing it kind of more top down. So does that add too much, too many processes onto the restoration project? If that makes sense.

John Hartig 27:47
Yes, it does. You know, we talk about it as transactional costs, the number of meetings, the Zoom meetings, in person, meetings. How do you bring them together and reach agreement on this. You know, you operate by consensus. So in this kind of bottom up collaborative ecosystem approach, transactional costs are high. You know, that is clearly a challenge. So these Great Lakes champions have to be impatient with the process. You know, they have to want to be the you know, not only you've got Devil's advocates out there, but you want to make sure you're pushing that that process forward, you know, and making the decisions and and you know, your science is Not perfect, but we have the precautionary principle in the absence of perfect knowledge that this is causing that, if the potential consequences of it are so great, you can take action. And these, these Great Lakes champions, these boundary spanners, are people who are adept at at moving that process forward and not allowing it to languish and bog down. Fantastic.

Stuart Carlton 29:07
All right, devil's advocate for question number two. So all of your work, well, much of your work, how about that? And the focus of this book is on the areas of concern. But those are just 43 areas that were designated. Was it 1987 or the process led up to the 1987 water quality agreement? There are many, many, many polluted areas in the Great Lakes, and I don't know what went into designating those 43 and not others, but are we? Do we run the risk of folks focusing too much on these areas and ignoring other areas that may be similarly polluted, but weren't included in the AOC process. For whatever reason, it's

John Hartig 29:48
always good to be a devil's advocate. GLRI, you know Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. You know money is spent on other areas, but I think you know the. Areas of concern are really important because they're crucibles for learning, you know. And to be honest, in any one of these, and I they'll they would say it in Fox River and Green Bay, Wisconsin. They would say it in Milwaukee. They would say it in Gary, Indiana, Detroit, Cleveland, Ohio, on the Cuyahoga that mistakes, some mistakes get made, you know, and so it's important to be able to share those things, not only what you did right, but what didn't work. Why didn't it work? And what's your advice for somebody else in another watershed that has facing similar problems, to learn from you and to accelerate their process of cleanup and remediation and restoration.

Stuart Carlton 30:47
Oh, sounds good. All right. Last one, I taught middle school for a while, and I went through an alternative certification program. And as I was going through that Jamie Escalante, who was a calculus teacher featured in a movie in the 1980s probably called Stand and Deliver, who like did this heroic thing where he taught people who had no business learning calculus, given their sort of social and economic situation, he taught them calculus. And he was a real hero of that. But it occurred to me, as I was going through this, I was in Pinellas County, Florida, in a kind of a rough school, that if we have to rely on Jamie escalantes, we will never fix whatever's wrong with our education system. And so I worry with the Great Lakes champion model, not that you develop this model, but but like it's not it's not necessarily portable. There isn't necessarily a champion in every polluted area, right? So is there a way to make this happen without champions, or is it something that you just need in order to push restoration and revitalization forward?

John Hartig 31:50
I would say to you, none of these 13 individuals thought they'd be a champion when they started down this road, you know, and but we need to be teaching. So if you take Sea Grant, if you take universities, if you take government agencies, whether it's federal, state, provincial, we need to be having people in these organizations that are that can are collaborative. They know facilitation, how to move a group forward, something that is not part of most. You know University curricula. You know what I mean. And we need to teach that. We need to teach about how to become a boundary spanner. How to work in a boundary organization network? I think that's really important so that, I think some of these, you know, like Vicki Harris came from Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, so she was in that and affiliated also with Sea Grant in Wisconsin. And so that's that's a good example, right there, but we need to develop these expertise in lots of different places. So in terms of next steps for the ecosystem approach, we need to re energize it, and that we need to be able to teach this within different organizations, like conservation authorities in Ontario, watershed councils, sea grants and and and other places as well.

Megan Gunn 33:35
So John, what gives you hope for the future of the Great Lakes? I

John Hartig 33:43
I am really excited about this, reconnecting people to water, you know, I'm not. That's not my background, you know. So I'm, I'm, I get to be a novice, right? I get to, but to be really low on the learning curve. But what we have looked at, you know, I've been on the board of directors the Detroit riverfront conservancy from its onset 20 years ago, and I'm now working with the community foundation for Southeast Michigan to say we've got these amazing water resources that Go from Southern Lake Huron at Port Huron, the St Clair River is a area of concern. It has then Lake St Clair. It has the Clinton river coming into it. That's an area of concern. The Detroit River is one, the Rouge river, the river raisin, the Maumee River, those are all areas of concern. So what we're doing is we have a big vision for something called the Great Lakes way. It's an interconnected set of greenways and water trails stretching from Southern Lake Huron through Western Lake Erie that is going to not tell people how to do things. Things, but to collaborate and say, We want to lift up and amplify what you're doing, and if you have a gap, how do we come together and use some of this infrastructure money and other monies and state funds to fill in these gaps and realize the benefits? The more economic benefit studies you read about this, the more compelling it becomes. And so right now, everyone is on board, all the communities, all the counties, businesses are coming on board. So it's a very exciting time to create this and and then connect it to Canada. You may know Megan. You may know that we have a bridge under construction, this brand new bridge in Detroit called the Gordie Howe International Bridge and

Stuart Carlton 35:48
Gordon International Bridge. How come? All right, how,

John Hartig 35:52
how Canadian and it's but it but obviously anyone from Detroit loves Gordie Howe and will love that name. So anyways, we they have invited us to be on some focus groups, and we came in weren't satisfied, so we we stayed on the focus group, but we put together a binational group of people and said, We want to advocate for connections between Detroit and Windsor by bicycle. So we want improvements to the tunnel bus system that goes on to the Detroit River with the bike rack so you can get across and enjoy either side. We want a dedicated bicycle and pedestrian lane on the new Gordie Howe bridge. We've won both of those. How exciting is that so you'll be on the Detroit Riverwalk, you'll be able to enjoy this new Ralph C Wilson Jr Centennial Park, an $80 million park under construction. Go over the Gordie Howe bridge and experience Ojibwe national urban park. They're creating a whole series of national urban parks to connect people with nature. And the first one was Rouge national urban park in Toronto, that was so successful. Now they're they think the next one hopefully will be Ojibwe national urban park in Windsor, and you'll be able to do all of that by bicycle and and you know, have conservation experiences, have outdoor recreational experiences, experience the Underground Railroad, experience first nations history, all by bicycle, and that is something that will lead us to this, this love of the river and the outdoors, and be a stepping stone towards a conservation ethic. We hope

Megan Gunn 37:41
this makes me so happy. It's like, so a lot of the, a lot of the people that you talk to like they grew up in nature, but it sounds like our next generation that isn't necessarily growing up in nature, they're going to literally run into or bike into these natural spaces, and it just, and I say something, bike and

John Hartig 37:56
kayak. I mean, it is, it is amazing and and, you know, it's just, it's, fun to watch, and it's just exciting to be part of it.

Stuart Carlton 38:07
Well, John, this is really interesting. You have a wealth of experience to share, and we could, you know about AOCs and Great Lakes champions and the way that things are moving and where we're headed. And I think it's a very hopeful message, which is nice to hear, because we don't always hear hopeful messages, especially environmental ones lately. But that's actually not why we invited you here on teach me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason we invited you on teach me about the Great Lakes is to ask you two questions. And the first one is this, if you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which one would you choose?

John Hartig 38:42
Well, that would be easy for me. I'm a big lover of bread, and I would love to go to a deli or something like that, and have a good rye bread and amazing sandwich. So I think that was that's something that I seek out when I go out.

Stuart Carlton 38:58
Fantastic. And so you're up in Windsor. Now follow up question. I did more known this one, you're up in Windsor. Next year, I eggler is going to be a Windsor, and so I'm going to go to my sessions or whatever. I will give my talk, assuming every talk I give, and then I will be hungry for a sandwich. Where should I go in Windsor to get a really great sandwich?

Speaker 2 39:16
Well, you can go to a place called Bubbies, which is in sort of walking distance from where the the conference will be held. At the casino. You can go to a number of different the green bean is a great coffee shop with sad sandwiches, which is on wind out on the edge of the university. So there, yeah, there's two. And then, of course, you can experience Italian town and go down Erie Street, and they've got 50 restaurants, and you cannot you could have a great sandwich, or you could have a great Italian dinner. There

Megan Gunn 39:58
hope and I are going to. Next Conference,

Stuart Carlton 40:01
my kids came with me to igler in Toronto, and so we enjoy going. I don't think they're coming to Windsor, but if, regardless, I'm, we're going to tour all of those that'll be done. Yes,

Megan Gunn 40:10
what is a special place? Sorry, I was writing down that I need to tell hope that we oh, sorry, places. What is a special place in the Great Lakes that you'd like to share with our audience, and what makes it special?

John Hartig 40:30
That place, that list could be pretty long, I think, you know, there's lots of special places that I would like to go, but I guess the one I is is now where I live. You know, I live in metropolitan Detroit. I live off the lower end of the Detroit River. There's a big Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant in the Detroit River. By the way, Detroit River has 20, about 23 islands, depending on which ones you count. The biggest one is grossell, and it's connected by a couple of bridges, and it's got lots of open space and great Greenway trails and everything else in there. On Grosse, there's a little some little small islands on the very southern end of Grosse ill, they have a small little island called hickory Island, and it has all these mature trees on it. And so you can imagine, if you put a small island, even with people in it, in the middle of Detroit River, which is the intersection of the Atlantic and Mississippi flyways. And 350 species of birds have been identified in the area you are living in, you know, stopover habitat. So you've got all these, you know, birds, the Warblers, in the spring, you've got bald eagles around, and you've got a, we've got a nearby blue heron rookery. And of course, in the fall, you've got the fall raptor migration. And there's 23 species of birds that cross the river and over this island, and you can see kettles of hawks circling up ahead, and then they glide down, and then rise up on another rising column of warm air, a thermal and that's how they hop across the river because they don't want to go over to Western Lake Erie, the open waters. And so I live on that island right now, in a small, little place on this island, and I can experience the outdoors, not just daily, but almost hourly. And we get to see things, and we see mink running around, and we've got beaver that'll cut down a tree periodically and and it's really neat to be part of that yet be in this major metropolitan area with over 4 million people. So I feel very fortunate and blessed to to live in the on on this hickory Island.

Stuart Carlton 43:00
What a resource that's amazing. Well, Dr John Hartig, visiting scholar at the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research at the University of Windsor, and the author of Great Lakes champions, grassroots efforts to clean up polluted watersheds. Thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

John Hartig 43:17
Thank you both. This is really special, really a lot of fun. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 43:21
We loved it. Thank you.

Well, I think that might have been a Hall of Famer. What a I mean, the book is really fun. And boy, it's I could listen to him talk Great Lakes forever.

Megan Gunn 43:47
I know I just had so many questions, but I will ask him when we go eat together.

Stuart Carlton 43:52
There we go. That's the thing. Yes, that's fantastic. Now I do want to point out, because I know people are wondering. So he did talk about all the wonderful birds nearest house, and that sounds really cool. We are, of course, working under Foley's assumption with this one. So I just wanted to let people know that Foley's

Megan Gunn 44:07
assumption that birds are real, that is exactly Foley's Yes, yes. Okay, that's the one to make sure I'm on the same Well,

Stuart Carlton 44:13
you see, no, that's better. I like to leave that hanging so that the one person who might remember that, out of our listenership, out of, you know, the one out of however many 1000 or whatever? Yeah, but no, no, I Yes, that is holy assumption. The birds are real, and so we're operating under that assumption. But it's the assumption. It's just an assumption. I do it.

Megan Gunn 44:35
Teach me about the Great Lakes. Is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant. We encourage you to check out the cool stuff we do at IIC grant.org, and at Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

Stuart Carlton 44:49
Teach me about the Great Lakes. Is produced by hope charters, Megan Gunn and Renee miles. Carolyn Foley is our senior producer. Ethan chitt is our associate producer, and he's our fixer. Or if it's broke, he's gonna fix it. Our super fun podcast artwork is by Joel Davenport. Those show is edited by me while we find someone to replace the irreplaceable coin rose.

Megan Gunn 45:13
If you have a question or a comment about the show, please email it to teach me about the Great lakes@gmail.com or leave a message on our hotline at 765, 496, iisg, which is 4474, for those of you that don't remember t9 You can also follow the show on Twitter at Great Lakes. In the Great Lakes, nobody over here is feeling much like a champion these days. Thanks for listening and keep graying those links.

Stuart Carlton 45:53
Cool. Well, thank you, Megan,

Megan Gunn 45:57
thank you. Can I Can you stop recording? And then I'll tell you an honest when you stop recording, I will tell you an honest sure hold on statement so that you can't include it in the bloopers.

Stuart Carlton 46:07
Okay, sounds good. I.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai