Who manages the Great Lakes and Lake Michigan?
The interagency management of fishery resources in the Great Lakes was formalized in the 1980s when A Joint Strategic Plan for Management of Great Lakes Fisheries (Great Lakes Fishery Commission 1980) was ratified by the heads of federal, state, provincial, and tribal resource agencies (known as the Committee of the Whole, COMW) concerned with these water bodies (Eshenroder et. al. 1995). The Joint Plan implemented a framework for cooperative fishery management under the aegis of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC). The Joint Plan established procedures for achieving a consensus approach among Great Lakes fisheries-management agencies. Fish communities in each lake must be managed as a whole. The Joint Plan ensures that each agency has a stake in the entire system and recognizes that the interactions among fish species is important in the overall management of the Lakes’ fisheries. Individual lake committees are responsible for implementing this consensus approach to fish communi
