Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

History of Ecological Sciences, Part 60: American Great Lakes before 2000

2018; Ecological Society of America; Volume: 99; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/bes2.1372

2327-6096

Frank N. Egerton,

Aquatic Ecosystems and Phytoplankton Dynamics

Five Great Lakes between Canada and the United States contain almost one-fifth of the world's freshwater and over 95% of North America's freshwater. Half of the water is from precipitation, half from rivers and streams. The drainage basin covers 295,000 square miles (767,000 square km), and the lakes cover 94,500 square miles and hold 5439 cubic miles of water; shorelines extend 10,210 miles. The distance from Kingston at the east end of Lake Ontario to Duluth at the west end of Lake Superior is 780 miles and from Gary at the south end of Lake Michigan to Nipigon on the north side of Lake Superior is some 500 miles. Canada has 31% of their area and the United States 69%. The lake basins were gouged out of river beds by glaciers, which gradually melted by 8000 years ago. Thus, both aquatic and terrestrial endemic species have only a brief association, geologically speaking. Before development of modern civilization, they contained virtually no pollution, and fishing by Native Americans had insignificant impacts upon fish populations. These lakes became a valuable asset for developing Euro-American economies: first, as means for transport of furs, and later for transport of lumber, fishes, agricultural products, minerals, sand, and people. There were about 300,000 people in the basin by the early 1800s; by 1990, there were 37 million (7.5 million in Canada and 29.5 million in the United States), and today, there are 105 million, with 46 million jobs. Neal Peirce and John Keefe wrote a general guide to five Great Lake States of America (1980). The ecology of the Great Lakes includes rivers which flow into them, as both waters and inhabitants of rivers and lakes intermingle. The quality of river waters is, in turn, influenced by what happens on adjacent land; logging, farming, and mining all had adverse effects, since early on precautions were rarely taken to prevent these effects (Hartman 1972, Bogue 2000:113–136). U.S. Congress established the U.S. Lake Survey in 1841. Significant adverse human impacts upon the lakes essentially began after the U.S. Civil War, in 1865. Overfishing was a problem by the later 1800s. Recreational use of these lakes began by 1865, but developed an impact much more slowly than did commercial fishing. Canals and locks by 1825 facilitated commerce and opened opportunities for invasive species to drastically transform these lakes' aquatic life. Canada established its Fisheries Research Board of Canada in 1901. An International Joint Commission (IJC) was established in 1912, under the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909, focused upon water management and quality. By 1972, it was supplemented by a Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement that included specific plans to reduce pollution, with controls. The Canadian St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation and U.S. St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation were both established in 1954. The binational Great Lakes Fishery Commission was established in 1954 and was operating in 1956. U.S. National Science Foundation was established by Congress in 1950 and became active in 1951. U.S. Sea Grant Program was established by Congress in 1966 Miloy (1983). An abundant literature describes "use and abuse of the Great Lakes" (title of Kuchenberg 1978), and some of that literature cites the vast scientific studies, mostly on fish or the fishery. Michigan author Alida Malkus wrote Blue-water Boundary: Epic Highway of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence (1960), a general history of peoples who have lived in this region. Her book appeared three years after the St. Lawrence Seaway opened, and her title emphasized her account in just two chapters. She provided a two-page bibliography. Illinoisan journalist and amateur historian Russell McKee wrote a readable, well-illustrated history, Great Lakes Country (1966), with numerous maps but no bibliography. American environmental writer William Ashworth wrote an environmental history, The Late Great Lakes (1986, six maps, one diagram). Canadian professional author Wayne Grady's "The Great Lakes: the Natural History of a Changing Region" (2007) is a comprehensive, well-illustrated survey, a beautiful book, and a pleasure to read. Michigan environmentalist-journalist Jeff Alexander's "Pandora's Locks: the Opening of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway" (2009) is broader in scope than his title indicates, documenting unforeseen consequences of improving commercial access to these lakes. His focus is biological, not engineering or nautical, and is highly critical of a project that facilitated a biological catastrophe. Canadian ecologist John L. Riley's "The Once and Future Great Lakes Country: an Ecological History" (2013) is an attractive, well-documented book that emphasized the lands around the lakes, especially the region around the three eastern lakes. A quick and accurate read is Michigan native Jerry Dennis's The Living Great Lakes (2003). An even quicker read is Barbara Spring's The Dynamic Great Lakes (2001:107 pages), written at the level of high school students, but including abundant information. American environmental historian Susan L. Flader edited for the Forest History Society a symposium volume, "The Great Lakes Forest: an Environmental and Social History" (1983), with 18 papers by 22 authors. It emphasized the three western lakes. On a more limited scale, Alfred Beeton and David Chandler (1963:542–555) briefly surveyed the history of limnological studies of these five lakes from the 1800s to 1961. My attempt to write a history of the Great Lakes fisheries met with some initial success but was ultimately stifled. I got off to a good start with "Overfishing or Pollution? Case History of a Controversy on the Great Lakes" (1985), about a disagreement between federal fishery biologist John Van Oosten (1891–1966) and Ohio State University fish ecologist Thomas (Hux) Langlois (1898–1968) over cause of decline in a commercial fishery. I explored further aspects of that situation in "Pollution and Aquatic Life in Lake Erie: Early Scientific Studies" (1987), and even further in "Missed Opportunities: U.S. Fishery Biologists and Productivity of Fish in Green Bay, Saginaw Bay and western Lake Erie" (1989a). My studies were supported by summer research funds from Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute, whose own funds were approved by a committee that included federal Great Lakes fishery biologists, whose predecessors I criticized in my third study. The Head of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute therefore asked me to find a different conclusion, and when I declined, I understood that I could expect no further Sea Grant funding of my research, which happened. Meanwhile, I had finished a fourth manuscript for publication by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission on The Role of Sea Lamprey Control in Restoration of Fisheries in the Great Lakes (1989b). That manuscript was turned down because I had only told the U.S. side of the story. I replied: Please find a Canadian coauthor to tell the other side of the story. A qualified coauthor was found, whose only action, however, was to give a talk at a symposium based entirely upon what I had written—he wrote nothing. (Since the Commission published Stephen Nepszy's Parasites of Fishes in the Canadian Waters of the Great Lakes 1988, perhaps if my title had indicated just the United States, it might have been accepted.) I also was one of the advisors on a fisheries exhibit at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc. As I now contemplate the mountain of reprints which I accumulated for that book, I have mixed emotions: regret that I did not persevere with my book, and pleasure that I can draw upon a portion of that literature for this essay. Margaret Beattie Bogue began researching history of Great Lakes fisheries about when I did and, without mishap, published "Fishing the Great Lakes: an Environmental History, 1783–1933" (2000). (My proposed book would have had much more discussion of limnology and fish population dynamics than hers did.) This essay is meant to provide an overview, not to provide an encyclopedic literature review. The topography of the Great Lakes Basin is fairly flat—with some local exceptions—leveled by glaciers, which also dug the lakes (Hough 1958, Beeton and Chandler 1963:536–542, Alexander 1986:13–30, Grady 2007:38–79, Riley 2013:5–7, fig. 3). Some glacial melt occurred 17,000 BP, though glacial remnants remained in Lake Superior 11,000 years BP. The land slopes west-to-east from Lake Superior at 600 feet (182 m) above sea level to Lake Ontario at 243 ft (74 m), and the sizes of the lakes vary greatly in depth, volume of water, length, width, and shoreline extent. The western three are much larger than the eastern two. (For two maps of the Great Lakes, see Egerton 2016a, b:262.) Congress established the U.S. Lake Survey in May 1841, with an appropriation of $15,000, under supervision by the Topographical Engineers, U.S. Army. Subsequently, Congress made annual appropriations (excepting 1847) for its operations. Its goal was to chart shorelines, islands, mouths of rivers, and other features of the lakes, and to make charts for use by ships, issued free to ships until 1890 (Blust 1976). Water-level fluctuations and surface temperatures were easily measured, and so were recorded in several locations (Smith 1957a, b). In June 1848, Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), a recently hired professor at Harvard University, led an expedition to explore Lake Superior (Lurie 1960:148–152, 1970), which I have previously discussed (Egerton 2011:165–166, 2012:150–151). It was the first U.S. exploration of the Great Lakes, and for that time, it was successful. He wrote over half of the volume which he assembled (1850); almost a third of it was a narrative of the expedition by Elliot Cabot. Agassiz's most important contributions to it were accounts of fishes collected and an essay on "The Erratic Phenomena about Lake Superior." Not surprisingly, a historian of geology who wrote a commentary on the book identified the latter essay as the book's most important part (Carozzi 1974). In Switzerland, Agassiz had been a pioneering student of the effects of glaciers, and he easily identified isolated boulders along the shores of Lake Superior as left there by retreating glaciers (1850b:395–416). Since industrial and domestic wastes were dumped into the same lakes from which drinking water came, it was prudent to determine surface currents. Canadian J. L. Clark set an example with his brief Currents in Lake Ontario (1892). By then, there were a U.S. Weather Bureau and a Meteorological Service of Canada, which collaborated in releasing almost 5000 drift bottles during warm months of 1892–1894, and later recovered 672, which data Mark Harrington used for a report (1895) on surface currents of the Great Lakes. Although not a detailed study (Smith 1957a, b:411–412), it was likely first to encompass all Great Lakes and first to involve cooperation between government agencies of both countries. Local residents of both countries very often built dams on rivers and streams for sawmills, and much later, a few were adapted to produce hydroelectric power. Meteorologist Val Eichenlaub wrote a useful study on Weather and Climate of the Great Lakes Region (1979). Weather and climate affect the lakes, but the lakes also affect the weather. Where I live, in Racine, Wisconsin, Lake Michigan loses heat during winter, and that slows the spring, since the lake is heated more slowly than is the land away from the lake. In compensation, our autumn also lasts longer than does land away from the lake, because the heat the lake absorbed during summer dissipates from the lake more slowly than the land. Eichenlaub's book retains its value today, though more recent knowledge on global warming presents an opportunity for someone to reexamine the subject (Dennis 2003:137). Cheap transport was also an asset for miners of ores in the Great Lakes region (McKee 1966:173–186, Ashworth 1986:81–93). Samuel de Champlain received a lump of copper from Natives when he founded Quebec in 1608, and was told it came from out West. In 1665, French missionary Father Allouez learned that an island in Lake Superior was a place where Natives obtained copper ore, but they declined to explain where it was. He searched the Keweenaw and Ontonagon and found chunks of copper. In 1727, Frenchmen mined for copper near the mouth of Ontonagon River and found some, but an Indian conflict ended their effort. Albany, New York native, Henry Schoolcraft (1793–1864), attended Middlebury College and studied geology (Shor 1975, Bremer 1987). He then explored in Missouri and Arkansas and published his findings (1820), which led to him joining a Michigan Territory expedition to Lake Superior and publication of his findings there also (1821) (Bremer 1982,). After Michigan became a state in 1837, its legislature hired Douglass Houghton (1809–45) as geologist (Schoolcraft had become an Indian Agent). Houghton was from Troy, New York, and he graduated from Troy's Rensselaer School in 1830, and then went to Detroit to teach science (Rezneck 1972, Krause 1989). He explored the Keweenaw Peninsula and published his findings in 1841. It stimulated the first U.S. mining rush, with most of the hopeful diggers finding only disappointment. Houghton's exploration proved to be hazardous, for on another expedition he drowned in Lake Superior. Also in 1845, a mining company found a profitable vein of copper which it mined at Cliff Mine, Keweenaw Peninsula, producing 38,000,000 pounds of copper over 35 years. Even richer than copper ores in the western Lake Superior region were iron ores, discovered by a federal survey crew under William A. Burt in 1844 (McKee 1966:182–186). At one point, the "compass man" announced that the compass was behaving irregularly. Burt asked the men to pick up rocks for analysis, and he recorded their find, but none of them pursued the matter. Someone else did. Merchant Philo M. Everett, in Jackson, Michigan, in 1845 founded the Jackson Mining Company, which in July sent out an exploratory expedition, which was shown by a Chippewa chief the location of a rich iron ore deposit at Teal Lake, southeast of the Keweenaw Peninsula. In 1847, the Jackson Mining Company began mining and smelting the iron ore, but its expenses were greater than its profits, and in 1849, it sold out to a new Marquette Iron Company. From the 1870s until 1905, five other iron ore deposits were discovered and mined in the same area. Mining continued to flourish in that region through 2014, before declining in 2015. There are sand dunes in various locations along shores of the lakes, most extensively around the south shore of Lake Michigan (Franklin and Schaeffer 1983, Mahan and Mahan 1991:94–99, Dennis 2003:56–62). "Shore dunes exist on other Great Lakes, on some North American sea-coasts, and in Europe, but none compare in size and grandeur to those of Lake Michigan" (Cassidy 2007:31; Grady 2007:218–219). On Indiana's Lake Michigan dunes, American plant ecologist Henry Chandler Cowles (1869–1939) conducted his pioneering studies on plant succession (Franklin and Schaeffer 1983:29–32, Cassidy 2007:30–37, Egerton 2015a:3, b:447–448). The earliest stage was along the beach, and progressively later stages could be seen as one moved inland. In later stages, the dunes became more and more stabilized. Cowles' landmark research was one of the motivations which led to the establishment of Indiana Dunes National Seashore in 1966, with only 8,300 acres; now it covers over 15,000 acres. Plants growing close to shore are identified by Ellen Weatherbee, Guide to Great Lakes Coastal Plants (2006). Natives appeared in the Great Lakes region before the glaciers which gouged out the lakes had disappeared, and that complex history is explained in simultaneous books, both by Canadian archeologist Peter Storch's Journey to the Ice Age (2004) and by Lawrence Jackson and Andrew Hinshelwood's (editors) The Late Paleo-Indian Great Lakes (2004), whose 21 authors include four U.S. Yanks. Helen Tanner's Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (1987) is a valuable, well-illustrated source, organized geographically, with many detailed maps and extensive bibliography. McKee's Great Lakes Country (1966) has a fairly extensive history of Natives both before and after contact with Europeans. More recently, Riley's The Once and Future Great Lakes Country (2013) has a less well-illustrated, but about as detailed, account, which includes endnotes and bibliography. About a dozen tribes lived around the Great Lakes—Algonquians to the north, east, and west, and Iroquoians to the south—all of whom hunted, fished, and gathered wild plant foods, which, for some, included collecting wild rice in canoes (Jenks 1900, Kinietz 1940, Tanner 1987:18–23, Ritzenthaler and Ritzenthaler 1991:18–28). Agriculture was practiced in southern portions of the region, but was impractical in northern portions. Birch-bark was used to make canoes and some containers, which killed some trees, but at an insignificant rate. Some also tapped sugar maples in the spring for sap, which was boiled to obtain sugar. They also had a variety of uses of particular species of trees, listed by Dickmann and Leefers (2003:76–78). They used animal meat for eating and skins for clothing, especially during winter, and when European fur traders arrived in the late 1600s, natives were willing to increase their kill of mammals to trade for European goods (Kinietz 1940, Saum 1965, Ashworth 1986:36–44, Time-Life Editors 1994:140–151, Grady 2007:29–30). That led to the only important decline in living resources which natives caused, and it was a response to foreign influences. The Great Lakes provided convenient routes for the fur trade. Natives fished year-round, including ice fishing, with little impact on fish populations (Rostlund 1952, White 1991:44–46, Time-Life Editors 1994:36–39). Between 3000 and 2000 BC, they developed a broad range of fishing gear (Bogue 2000:5). Some tribes found good fishing spots where they eventually settled: Straits of Mackinac, Sault Ste. Marie, Green Bay, Chequamegon, Detroit, and Chicago (Whittaker 1892:164). There were Atlantic salmon in Lake Ontario, which native fishermen caught for their people, but they did not significantly contribute to the decline of that fishery at the mid-1800s. The decline was due mainly to dams on streams which European settlers built (Parsons 1973:15, Bogue 2000:19–20). Salmon were still abundant in Lake Ontario in 1840, but declined during that and later decades and became extinct in Lake Ontario during the 1890s. Native Americans gradually adopted Euro-American technology. Rival European powers involved natives in their struggle for dominance and provided guns to them for some battles (Steele 1994). Iroquois used muskets to conquer and decimate rival Hurons (Nies 1996:143–144). Otherwise, tech adoptions were piecemeal, as is indicated in a painting by the Canadian artist, Paul Kane (1810–1871), who mentioned and painted Menominee natives fishing in the Fox River in 1845 (Kane 1971:58, 179). They were still using canoes and spears, but they attracted fish at night by using elevated torch lights in iron baskets obtained from European traders. The Fox River flows from Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin, into Green Bay, which is part of Lake Michigan. Natives made most tools out of wood, bone, and stone, but glaciers exposed copper ore in a few places along the western shores of Lake Superior, and Natives developed technology to make at least ten types of copper implements (Fitting 1975:87–88, Ritzenthaler and Goldstein 1985:32–33). Through trade, copper implements became available throughout the Great Lakes and neighboring regions east, west, and south. The native relationship with the French was that of trading and was mutually advantageous. After the French lost the French and Indian War in 1763, relationship with British settlers was much more difficult, since the British wanted farmland and the Indians gone (Eckert 1967, 1983:xi): "The white race is a monster who is always hungry and what he eats is land," Chiksika, 19 March 1779. The Great Lakes forests before coming of Euro-Americans were spectacular (Grady 2007:85–179). Louis Agassiz's two chapters on vegetation of the north shore of Lake Superior (1850:137–190) provide a glimpse of those forests, though his main focus was on a comparison between that vegetation and alpine vegetation of his native Switzerland. Even earlier, the U.S. General Land Office Survey had begun surveying territorial lands for selling to settlers (Stewart 1935, Dickmann and Leefers 2003:94–115). Surveyors described boundaries between parcels of land according to conspicuous landmarks, which in the Great Lakes region were usually features of vegetation. Those descriptions were sufficient for later botanists to use as evidence to construct vegetation maps for the 1800s (Manies and Mladenoff 2000). The first edition of Asa Gray's Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, 1848, 710 pages, covered a region that included Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; the eighth edition includes all of the Great Lakes region (Gray and Fernald 1950, lxiv + 1632 pages). The first large-scale blow to the lake's ecology came with the logging boom that flourished in the second half if the 19th century. Nearly every stream and river was choked with logs en route to the lumber mills near the lake. These logs gouged and scraped river bottoms and banks, destroying vegetation and spreading sediments over spawning beds. Lumber mills dumped massive volumes of sawdust into rivers and bays, further smothering spawning grounds. Some rivers, such as the Milwaukee River, were so choked with sawdust that lake fish were physically unable to enter to spawn. The rapidity of this trend raised alarm in Wisconsin in 1867, and three commissioners were appointed to assess the situation. They responded with a Report on the Disastrous Effects of the Destruction of Forest Trees, now going on so rapidly in the State of Wisconsin (Lapham et al. 1867). Their concerns included the effects on soil erosion and weather, but they overlooked the danger of forest fires. Their remedy was to actively plant trees, and they discussed the merits of different species for rapid growth and lumber. The twin cities of Menominee, Wisconsin, and Marinette, Michigan, divided by the Menominee River, which empties into Green Bay, were primarily lumbering towns (Krog 1972). Their combined populations were 800 in 1860 and 30,000 in 1900. Lumber was their important export, but they would not have prospered and they did without the Great Lakes to transport their lumber to Milwaukee, Chicago, and elsewhere. One unintended consequence of logging the forests was that limbs, stumps, and sawdust were left behind. That was unsightly, but more seriously, forest refuse was highly inflammable, and destructive forest fires were frequently the result. Following an unusual summer drought, on 8 October 1871 there were two very destructive fires. The well-remembered Chicago fire destroyed a city and killed 300 people (Longstreet 1973:121–136). Less well known was the fire 262 miles north, at Peshtigo, Wisconsin, that burned 2,400 square miles of forest and houses and killed 2,200 people (Kouba 1973:100–104, Gess and Lutz 2002). In Canada, an average of 9,000 forest fires are started every year, 85 percent of them by lightning and most of them in the boreal forest. They consume nearly 5 million hectares (74 million acres) of forested area. By comparison, spruce budworm infestations destroy an average of 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) per year, and logging accounts for about 800,000 hectares (2 million acres). By the early 1900s, lumberjacks and lumber mills had moved west, because they had logged Great Lakes forests. Where there had not been suitable rivers to move logs, railroads had been built, and there were already railroads out west to do what rivers had mostly done around the Great Lakes in transporting lumber. Tamarack was logged for railroad ties (Grady 2007:106–109). During the 1890s, larch sawflies killed many tamarack trees. However, by 1915 Austin Nicholson Company, Chapleau, Ontario, was producing 4000 tamarack ties a day. In 1920, creosote was introduced, which increased the life of a tie from seven to twenty years. By the 1920s, Canada was exporting from boreal forests more newsprint than any other country, mainly to America. After the land was cleared and some was burnt, farmers were expected to move in. Some did, but glaciated northern lands that supported forests were less suited for crops than were unglaciated lands cleared further south (Buenker 1998:75, 84–86). Forest lands south of Lake Erie became good farmland. However, in recent times, the amount of land used for agriculture has begun to shrink; in 1949, 42.5% of Michigan land was agricultural, but by 1982, only 30% was, with corresponding increases in forests. Grady (2007) has three fine chapters on different kinds of forests, with wildlife, around the Great Lakes: Boreal Forest being northernmost, Great Lakes–St. Lawrence Forest being central, and Carolinian Forest being southernmost. Eric Duffey's vegetation map of North America (1980:34) shows the same three kinds of forests, with different names. University of Wisconsin botany professor John Curtis, The Vegetation of Wisconsin: an Ordination of Plant Communities (1959) is relevant for the three westernmost Great Lakes region. Curtis' Vegetation is supplemented by the Department of Natural Resources' Forest Trees of Wisconsin: How to Know Them (Wilson n.d.). Quite different is Michigan foresters Donald Dickmann and Larry Leefers' The Forests of Michigan (2003), which celebrates those forests, while telling their history, with numerous black-and-white and color photographs and bibliography. University of Michigan botany professors Burton Barnes and Warren Wagner provide a somewhat different survey of Great Lakes forests (2004:361–393). The Great Lakes region also had areas without forests; Curtis' Vegetation of Wisconsin (1959) devoted chapters 5–13 to different types of forests, and chapters 14–21 to other vegetation: prairie, sand barrens and bracken-grassland, savanna, tall shrubs, fens and meadows and bogs, aquatic communities, beach and dune and cliffs, and weed communities. All Great Lakes have aquatic plants in shallows, and the Great Lakes region contains numerous smaller lakes, rivers, and streams with aquatic plants. Norman Fassett's A Manual of Aquatic Plants (1957) covers a region from Minnesota and Missouri to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Virginia; it is supplemented by Neil Hotchkiss, Common Marsh, Underwater and Floating-leaved Plants of the United States and Canada (1972). On land, Edgar Wherry compiled a "Wild Flower Guide: Northeastern and Midland United States" (1948), later supplemented and updated by William Niering and Nancy Olmstead, The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers: Eastern Region (1979). Michigan mammalogist William Burt's Mammals of the Great Lakes region (1957:3) described 74 living endemic species, but Allen Kurta's second edition (1995:viii) had a slightly broader scope and included 83 species; Canadian naturalist Wayne Grady (2007:37) discussed 71 species. There are also more detailed accounts of species in state treatises: Hartley Jackson (1881–1976), Mammals of Wisconsin (1961, xiii + 504 pages), illustrated with photographs and drawings and distribution maps. Stan Tekiela has devoted his career to publishing field guides to groups of plants and animals of particular states, such as Mammals of Wisconsin (2005; see Amazon Web site for his others). European traders' early interest was in furs, taken from a number of different species, but beaver was the foundation of the fur trade (McKee 1966:112–129, Gates et al. 1983:57–71, Ashworth 1986:37–44, Grady 2007:130–136, Riley 2013:111–148). Beaver skin hats for men in upper classes were highly valued in England and in Western Europe. Initially, natives obtained the furs and traded them for European goods. By 1800, however, there were British and French Americans who also trapped and hunted mammals, for both meat to eat and furs to trade. In the 1830s, the fur trade moved further west, as the Great Lakes beaver and other popular furbearers were decimated in the region. In an environmental history of the Toledo area and the Maumee River flowing into Lake Erie, Harold Mayfield (1962:43–45) noted that bison disappeared by 1812, elk by 1822, beaver by 1837, wolverine by 1842, mountain lions by 1845, lynx by 1848, gray wolves and black bears were rare by the 1860s and probably disappeared during the 1870s, and white-tailed deer vanished by 1889. As forests were cleared to make way for farms, gray squirrels and gray foxes disappeared and were replaced by fox squirrels and red foxes. Moose are typically associated with grazing aquatic vegetation in northern ponds, but they actually play a role in environmental change. After a fire in a coniferous forest, aspens, willows, and birches typically spring up and crowd out slower growing coniferous seedlings. Moose, however, eat deciduous seedlings, which allows coniferous seedlings to then gain an advantage (Grady 2007:99). The most conspicuous animals around the Great Lakes are birds, of which some species interact with other animal species in or on the lakes. Bird books are so numerous that it seems unnecessary to explore small land birds in the Great Lakes Basin here. Identification guides are usually very broad in coverage, for example, eastern North America or western North America. Each Great Lakes state and Ontario also has its own bird book, which gives more information on natural history than do ID guides. Earlier bird books, such as Charles Cory's The Birds of Illinois and Wisconsin (1909), can provide