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A Joint Strategic Plan for Management of Great Lakesfisheries: A cooperative regime in a multi-jurisdictionalsettingMarc Gaden a; Charles Krueger a; Christopher Goddard a; Gerald Barnhart aa Great Lakes Fishery Commission, Ann Arbor, MI

Online Publication Date: 01 January 2008To cite this Article: Gaden, Marc, Krueger, Charles, Goddard, Christopher andBarnhart, Gerald (2008) 'A Joint Strategic Plan for Management of Great Lakesfisheries: A cooperative regime in a multi-jurisdictional setting', Aquatic EcosystemHealth & Management, 11:1, 50 - 60

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A Joint Strategic Plan for Management of Great Lakesfisheries: A cooperative regime in a

multi-jurisdictional settingMarc Gaden,∗ Charles Krueger, Christopher Goddard, and Gerald Barnhart

Great Lakes Fishery Commission, 2100 Commonwealth Blvd. Ste. 100, Ann Arbor, MI 48105∗Corresponding author: marc@glfc.org

Two nations, eight states, the province of Ontario, two U.S. intertribal authorities, and the binationalGreat Lakes Fishery Commission all play a role in managing the Great Lakes fishery. No overarchinginstitution has the authority to compel cross-border cooperation. Rather, the fishery agencies adhere toA Joint Strategic Plan for Management of Great Lakes Fisheries, a voluntary, multi-jurisdictional agreementsigned in 1981. This article provides a brief overview of the roles and responsibilities of the managementjurisdictions and describes how the Joint Strategic Plan helps agencies cooperate across jurisdictionalboundaries. The plan relies on four strategies—consensus, accountability, information sharing, and ecosys-tem management—to foster cooperation, and to operationalize collective action on both lake and technicalcommittees. The plan is a model for multi-jurisdictional cooperation in a politically fragmented region.

Keywords: Governance, institutions, cooperation, ecosystem management

Introduction

The Great Lakes are both biologically and polit-ically complex. These complexities, which includethe inter-relationships among aquatic species andgovernments, make fishery management an inexactand difficult process. The development and imple-mentation of fishery policies—particularly policiesthat are needed to manage shared species—are a ma-jor challenge because of the large number of man-agement jurisdictions. Voluntary inter-jurisdictionalcooperation is essential as each province, state, andU.S. tribe has authority over its portion of the GreatLakes fishery. Cooperation allows fishery managersto leverage resources, better understand all avail-able information, and undertake fishery manage-ment on a lakewide or basinwide level; the requisitelevel, as fish migrate across political jurisdictions.Cooperation also prevents agencies from work-

ing at cross purposes or undermining each others’initiatives.

The history of Great Lakes fishery managementis one of parochialism. Starting in the mid-1800s andcontinuing to the mid-twentieth century, the severalagencies attempted, and failed repeatedly, to estab-lish a robust mechanism to help them coordinatepolicies and implement actions strategically. Evenafter the Great Lakes Fishery Commission estab-lished multi-jurisdictional lake committees in the1960s, the agencies still did little more then keepeach other abreast of their individual activities. Itwas not until the agencies developed and signed AJoint Strategic Plan for Management of Great LakesFisheries in 1981 that a strategic means emergedto manage the Great Lakes fishery across politicalboundaries.

This paper provides a brief overview of theroles and responsibilities of the various fishery

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Aquatic Ecosystem Health & Management, 11(1):50–60, 2008. Copyright C© 2008 AEHMS. ISSN: 1463-4988 print / 1539-4077 onlineDOI: 10.1080/14634980701877043

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management jurisdictions in the Great Lakes region.It describes the Joint Strategic Plan as a tool to helpthe agencies develop and implement shared policies,and discusses the strategies to facilitate collectiveaction.

The three pillars of Great Lakesfishery management

Contemporary fishery management, say Kruegerand Decker (1999, p. 31), “incorporates not onlyscientific understanding about fisheries and theirhabitats but also considers economics, aesthetics,user attitudes and desires, and the interests of en-vironmentalists and the general public.” Moreover,for management to be effective, the various govern-mental jurisdictions must be empowered to integratepolicies relating to all elements of the ecosystem.Those elements include traditional fishery manage-ment practices like harvest controls and stocking,and efforts from other disciplines like habitat pro-tection and improvement, water quality and use, landuse, aquatic invasive species, and biodiversity.

Figure 1. The three pillars of Great Lakes fishery management.

Two nations, eight states, the province of Ontario,two U.S. intertribal authorities, and the binationalGreat Lakes Fishery Commission all have roles inmanaging the Great Lakes fishery. The jurisdictionalauthorities coalesce into three complementary pil-lars (Figure 1): (1) The non-federal governments(states, the province of Ontario, and the two U.S. in-tertribal agencies); (2) the federal governments; and(3) the U.S.-Canadian Great Lakes Fishery Commis-sion. The role of each level of government overlapslittle with those of the other levels, and no single gov-ernmental authority has the responsibility over allelements of the Great Lakes ecosystem. The JointStrategic Plan helps officials integrate their other-wise fragmented work into a coherent approach toGreat Lakes fishery management.

Pillar 1: Provincial, state, and U.S.tribal management authority

Primary management authority rests on the firstpillar: the states, the province, and two U.S. in-tertribal agencies. This non-federal management

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authority has been long-established through com-mon law, constitutional authority, and court cases.In Canada, the provinces own the fish in their wa-ters, though the British North America Act (BNA,the Canadian Constitution) grants inland fisherymanagement authority to both the provinces andthe federal government (Ollivier, 1962; Thompson,1974). As such, a cooperative arrangement be-tween the two levels of government has emergedwhereby the province of Ontario establishes fisheryregulations and then refers most of the regulationsto the federal government for assent. The federalgovernment incorporates those regulations into thefederal Fisheries Act and the province of Ontariothen implements the regulations (Dochoda, 1999;Gibson, 1973; Lamb and Lybecker, 1999; Piper,1967; Rideout and Ritter, 2002; Thompson, 1974).Commercial fishing harvest in the Canadian wa-ters of the Great Lakes is regulated by individualtransferable quotas. Such regulations are viewed asstrictly a property issue and, therefore, do not requirefederal approval (Brown et al., 1999). This arrange-ment, while complex, has been largely amenable toboth sides and allows for the two levels of govern-ment to operate under the unique situation that theBNA allows (Gibson, 1973).

The province of Ontario maintains responsibil-ities over many other aspects of the Great Lakesecosystem including protecting water quality, pre-venting invasive species, and addressing land use is-sues. As discussed below, the Canadian federal gov-ernment relies on federally legislated mandates to beinvolved in these and other areas as well. The majormechanism for the province of Ontario and the Cana-dian federal government to work together in integrat-ing management is the Canada-Ontario Agreement(COA). COA establishes shared policies betweenthe two levels of government, outlines managementstrategies, and delineates the federal and provincialroles and responsibilities (Anonymous, 2002). Theagreement also commits resources from the two lev-els of government to fulfill the agreement. For ex-ample, the COA of 2002 called upon Canada andOntario to “[Rehabilitate] aquatic and riparian habi-tat leading to the reestablishment of fish and wildlifepopulations.” As such, Canada pledged to help inthe development of Habitat Management Strategiesand Ontario was to develop lakewide and regionalfish community objectives and provide technicalsupport.

In Canada, invasive species are addressed at theprovincial and federal levels, and several statutes

and initiatives, including the Alien Invasive SpeciesStrategy for Canada (Anonymous, 2004), the Na-tional Code for Introductions and Transfers ofAquatic Organisms (Anonymous, 2003), OntarioFisheries Regulations (Government of Ontario,1997), Ontario’s Biodiversity Strategy (Anonymous,2005), federal ballast water regulations in theShipping Act (Government of Canada, 2001), theFisheries Act (Government of Canada, 2004) andCOA (Anonymous, 2002) together evaluate pro-posed transfer of organisms before the transfer takesplace, establish strategies for controlling nuisancespecies, and authorize regulations. All of these in-vasive species initiatives depend on cooperation be-tween the federal and provincial governments forimplementation.

In the United States, the states and the tribeshave a well-established authority to manage fish andwildlife, particularly the non-migratory animals thatremain entirely within their boundaries (Nielsen,1999; Piper, 1967). One basis for state managementauthority is how the borders were established orig-inally in the Great Lakes region. While the inter-national border runs through the middle of four ofthe five Great Lakes (all but Lake Michigan), stateboundaries were extended to the international bor-der (Bogue, 2000; Piper, 1967); thus no internationalwaters exist in the basin (Piper, 1967). Great Lakesboundaries stand in contrast to oceanic coastal ar-eas where state jurisdiction ends three miles from thestate’s shores. The fact that state boundaries extendto the international border allowed states to deny theexistence of federal waters and assert their authorityover Great Lakes’ lake beds, waters, and the fish ofthose waters (Piper, 1967).

Although nineteenth century court decisionsbased state management on the state ownership oflake beds (Davis, 1896; Dochoda, 1999; Howard,1901; Killian and Beck, 1987; Otto, 1901; Piper,1967), twentieth century decisions shifted the focusto which level of government had the enumeratedpower to manage fish and wildlife resources. As aresult of this shift, while states retained their man-agement authority, the federal government was alsoable to assert its constitutional powers in some ar-eas, and play a role in what was previously a stateaffair. The 1920 case Missouri v. Holland (Knaebel,1920) had the Supreme Court upholding the Migra-tory Bird Treaty Act (USGPO, 1918) on the groundsthat the Constitution granted the federal govern-ment treaty-making authority; the court allowedthe federal power to supersede the state authority

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(Holmes, 1920; Killian and Beck, 1987; Knaebel,1920; Moore, 1965; Willoughby, 1979). The Mis-souri case did not deny the fundamental right ofstates to manage resources; rather, it said that insome instances, the national interest would be moreimportant than a state interest, thus allowing fed-eral involvement (Willoughby, 1979). In 1948, inthe Supreme Court case Toomer v. Witsell (Wyatt,1948),the court further backed away from earlierownership decisions, referring to state ownership as“fiction” (Killian and Beck, 1987); while the 1979case Hughes v. Oklahoma (Lind, 1981) essentiallyended the state ownership issue, asserting that own-ership could not prevent the federal governmentfrom exerting its powers, in this case, commercepowers (Killian and Beck, 1987).

Clearly, while state management authority wasnot revoked, the state claim of exclusive authoritybased on ownership would not stand if the federalgovernment chose to exercise its powers. In fact,state governments throughout the Great Lakes basininvolve themselves in a number of policy arenas re-lated to managing the Great Lakes ecosystem. Statesconduct biological assessments through the depart-ments of natural resources; they protect and improvehabitat and water quality through zoning and permit-ting processes; and, increasingly, promulgate inva-sive species regulations (most notably, ballast waterrequirements), particularly in the absence of federallegislation in the United States.

U.S. tribal authority is rooted in the 1832Supreme Court decision Worcester v. Georgia(Peters, 1901), where the court affirmed that anIndian tribe is a political power with authorityof self-governance (Cohen, 1988). In the GreatLakes region, other court cases, particularly U.S. v.Michigan(United States District Court, 1979) of1978 and Lac Courte Oreilles v. Voight of 1983(United States Court of Appeals, 1983), have af-firmed tribal fishing rights on and off-reservationand have mandated agreements with U.S. states infisheries management (Busiahn, 1985; Chiarappaand Szylvian, 2003; Dochoda, 1999; Zorn, 2003).Two U.S. intertribal authorities—the Chippewa-Ottawa Resource Authority and the Great Lakes In-dian Fish and Wildlife Commission—exist in theGreat Lakes basin to coordinate tribal fisheries man-agement. In Canada, the Canadian Constitution,treaties, and court cases have resulted in a complexrelationship between the First Nations and the fed-eral and provincial governments in exercising fish-eries management responsibilities. While the rights

of Canadian tribal fishers is found in treaties and inthe constitution, the responsibility to manage fish-eries, Indian policy, and Crown lands rests with thefederal and provincial governments. Courts haveruled that federal and provincial regulations do notinherently infringe on the constitutional rights oftribes and, therefore, are not inconsistent with eithertribal fishing rights or the responsibility to pro-tect tribal rights (Supreme Court of Canada, 1990;Supreme Court of Canada, 1996).

On a day-to-day basis, the states, the province,and the two U.S. intertribal agencies exercise theirfishery management authority by establishing andenforcing harvest regulations, issuing fishing li-censes, stocking fish, implementing fisheries reha-bilitation plans they develop separately and together,carrying out fish population assessment, and pro-tecting, assessing, and improving habitat.

Pillar 2: Federal capability

The second pillar of Great Lakes fishery manage-ment is the federal governments of Canada and theUnited States. Even though the states, the province,and the two U.S. intertribal agencies retain primaryfishery management authority on the Great Lakes,the federal governments are also engaged in the pro-cess. The federal governments play critical support-ing roles in a number of areas including research,fishery rehabilitation, and invasive species control.Federal agencies like the U.S. Fish and WildlifeService, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Depart-ment of State, the U.S. Geological Survey, and theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationsupport the common goal of protecting the resourceand enhancing knowledge. They conduct importantresearch into the physical and biological systemsof the Great Lakes; research that is used by othergovernment agencies at all levels, universities, pri-vate institutions, and the general public. The federalgovernments are involved in fishery rehabilitationthrough stocking and habitat improvement. Also, thefederal governments help control invasive speciesby working with the Great Lakes Fishery Commis-sion to control sea lampreys, conducting researchinto new invasive species, and enforcing ballast wa-ter guidelines to protect from new exotic speciesinvasions.

The relationship between the Canadian federalgovernment and the Province of Ontario in GreatLakes fishery management is complex. Article VI,§91 of the BNA of 1867 lists the management

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of freshwater fisheries (which includes the GreatLakes) and conservation as a federal power (Ollivier,1962). It also grants the federal government au-thority to protect fish habitat, including water qual-ity. The federal government exercises this authoritythrough its Fisheries Act (Dochoda, 1999; Govern-ment of Canada, 2004; Harrison, 1996). This act au-thorizes the federal government to conduct law en-forcement (§5), issue fishing licenses in unlicensedareas (§7), construct fishways around obstructions(§20), protect fish habitat (§35), and promulgatefishery regulations, including regulations govern-ing conservation, harvest quantity, harvest methods,fish marketing, licensing, and inter-provincial com-merce (Government of Canada, 2004; Lamb andLybecker, 1999; Rideout and Ritter, 2002).

In addition to the federal Fisheries Act, the Cana-dian federal government has several other legislatedauthorities that facilitate involvement in Great Lakesfisheries. The federal Species at Risk Act (SARA),for instance, calls for provincial and federal minis-ters to work together to list a species as threatened orendangered; once the species is listed, it is affordedimmediate protection on federal lands (Governmentof Canada, 2002). A recovery strategy—includinga management plan—is then prepared and carriedout through a cooperative agreement between thefederal and provincial governments. Other authori-ties, listed above, allow federal involvement in theprevention and management of invasive species.

In the United States, federal mandates tend alsoto provide the authorization for the various fed-eral agencies to conduct complementary activitiesin the Great Lakes basin, rather than to supersedestate management authority. For example, the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Restoration Act of 2006 (originallypassed in 1990) authorizes the Fish and Wildlife Ser-vice to work with the states and tribes in identify-ing and implementing fishery restoration projects(USGPO, 2006). The Federal Aid in SportfishRestoration Act of 1950 (USGPO, 1950) (knownwidely as “Dingell-Johnson” or “Federal Aid” andsubsequently amended many times), distributesfunds from taxes on sportfishing equipment to thevarious states for restoration programs. For statesto participate in this program, they must use theirfishing license fees for fishery department purposesand they must comply with many other require-ments that Congress and the Fish and WildlifeService institute. The Anadromous Fish Conserva-tion Act of 1965 (USGPO, 1965) authorizes statesto enter into cooperative agreements with the de-

partments of commerce and interior to undertakemeasures that conserve and improve anadromousfish stocks. The act allows for the federal agen-cies to contribute up to 50% of the costs of suchprojects, which includes things like biological sur-veys, habitat improvement, stream enhancement topromote spawning, and construction and operationof hatcheries. Under the Endangered Species Actof 1973 (USGPO, 1973), the federal governmentcan list a species as threatened or endangered, andonce listed, the trade, sale, and transportation ofthe species would be prohibited. Federal agencieswould then be required to undertake programs toconserve the species and prohibit activities that un-dermine protection or restoration of the species, withstate laws no longer then valid.

The Tenth Amendment grants authorities notexpressly vested in the federal government to thestates. Authority over fish, wildlife, and natural re-sources is not an express power given to the fed-eral government and, therefore, it is retained bythe states. While many natural resource issues aremulti-state matters, and while the courts have ruledthat strong federal powers—such as regulating com-merce, protecting habitat, managing navigation andentering into treaties—could overrule state authori-ties (Zimmerman, 2005), state authority to manageits natural resources, in the Great Lakes region hasnevertheless remained relatively intact.

Pillar 3: Bi-nationalresponsibilities

A bi-national fishery institution—the GreatLakes Fishery Commission—exists on the GreatLakes and is the third pillar of Great Lakes fish-ery management. For many decades, cross-bordercooperation was irregular, and while many peo-ple strongly believed an overarching institutionfor Great Lakes fishery management would helpmake the many disparate management policies moreuniform, the U.S. states were reluctant to surren-der any of their authority to a bi-national institution(Fetterolf, 1980). The destructive sea lamprey(Petromyzon marinus) in the mid-twentieth century,and the need to control the predator basinwide, ulti-mately convinced the jurisdictions that a binationalinstitution was warranted. Sea lampreys invaded theGreat Lakes through shipping canals and quicklyspread throughout the system. Sea lampreys dec-imated the Great Lakes fishery and significantly

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reduced the commercial harvest. Sea lampreys werean international problem (Smith and Elliott, 1952)and by the late 1940s, harvest of lake trout, a key-stone species, had fallen by 99% from the averagecatch of the 1930s (Fetterolf, 1980).

The Canadian and U.S. Federal governments de-cided to address the sea lamprey problem through atreaty. The treaty—the Convention on Great LakesFisheries (U.S. Department of State, 1956)—wassigned September 10, 1954 by the two nationsand created the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.Not wanting to upset the defined state, provincial,and federal authorities, the governments gave thecommission limited responsibilities. The treaty ex-pressly prohibited the commission from encroach-ing on other jurisdictions’ authorities, stating theconvention “does not change the established rightsand jurisdiction over the fishery held by the ripar-ian states, the federal government of Canada, andthe Province of Ontario” (U.S. Department of State,1956). The treaty did give the commission powersto:

1. formulate a research program designed to deter-mine the need for measures to make possible themaximum sustained productivity of any stock offish in the Convention Area;

2. coordinate the implementation of the researchprogram, or to carry out research;

3. make recommendations to the governmentsbased on the research findings;

4. develop and implement a sea lamprey manage-ment program; and

5. publish scientific studies.

The commission consists of four members fromeach country plus one alternate from the UnitedStates. The Canadian commissioners are appointedby Privy Council; the U.S. commissioners are ap-pointed by the President and do not require Sen-ate confirmation. The treaty allows the commissionto operate independently of any federal, provincial,state, or tribal agency and, in fact, the commissionersactively manage the program and are accountable tothe Privy Council and the President for their perfor-mance. Despite this independence, the conventiondoes urge (though does not mandate) the commis-sioners to use existing government agencies in thedischarge of its duties. As such, the commission con-tracts its on-the-ground sea lamprey control programto Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the U.S. Fishand Wildlife Service. The commission also works

in cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey forsea lamprey research and the U.S. Army Corps ofEngineers for assistance with the design and con-struction of physical sea lamprey control structures,such as barriers and traps. The commission worksclosely with the provincial, state, and tribal govern-ments to ensure that its program is consistent withtheir fishery management objectives.

Together, the bi-national, federal, and non-federal management agencies approach the GreatLakes from the same general perspective and withthe same goals in mind. These perspectives and goalsinclude:

� Using science-based information as an input tomanagement decisions

� Sustaining Great Lakes fish stocks� Protecting biological diversity� Promoting balance between predators and prey� Balancing the interests of stakeholders, including

those of sport, commercial, and tribal fisheries,the environmental community, and many others.

The emergence of cooperation

Management authorities are relatively clear, dif-fuse, and autonomous and, thus, agencies must makean effort to cooperate. Indeed, cooperation is nei-ther natural nor easy, as each jurisdiction has its ownmanagement philosophy, its own suite of politics andstakeholders, and its own independent authority tomanage in its waters. Prior to the 1950s, the variousagencies managed the Great Lakes fishery with littleor no formal cooperation (Bogue, 2000; Gallagheret al., 1942). In 1955, the Convention on Great LakesFisheries began an era of cross-border cooperation,and the commission’s formation of lake committeesin 1964 created an ongoing forum for jurisdictionsto share information. By the late 1970s, however,the agencies realized that they needed to be morestrategic if they were to move beyond informationsharing and become proactive in rehabilitating thefishery. Subsequently, in 1981, the eight states andthe province of Ontario signed A Joint Strategic Planfor Management of Great Lakes Fisheries. Federalagencies also signed the plan, as did two U.S. in-tertribal organizations in 1989, after endorsing theplan and developing the capacity to participate in theprocess. The Great Lakes Fishery Commission—atthe request of the plan’s signatories—agreed to pro-vide ongoing implementation services by convening

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meetings, publishing reports, and maintaining theprocess.

The Joint Strategic Plan fosters cooperationamong the many fishery agencies on the Great Lakeswhen those agencies, being independent, might oth-erwise act parochially. The plan calls for agencies towork together to identify their shared goals and ob-jectives and then to take the necessary steps neededto achieve those goals. The plan identifies four broadstrategies—consensus, accountability, informationsharing, and ecosystem management—to make co-operation occur and succeed.

Consensus

Action under the Joint Strategic Plan occurs afterconsensus among the participants has been reached.The plan defines consensus as general agreement ora shared view. Consensus emerges after all pointsof view have been heard and when no participantobjects to the position taken (GLFC, 2007). Par-ticipants generally have a shared understanding ofwhat consensus means. They recognize that it doesnot mean unanimity or universal happiness. Rather,in the words of a plan participant, “consensus meanseverybody agrees or chooses not to disagree.” Agen-cies pledge to reach consensus on management prac-tices that affect each other’s jurisdiction before theyimplement major initiatives. To help achieve con-sensus, agencies have developed shared fish com-munity objectives (e.g., Ryan et al., 2003) and, often,operational plans (e.g., Hansen, 1996) to put thoseobjectives into action. Consensus is essential to theprocess, because the plan is non-binding; membersmust be comfortable with their decisions, as nothingcompels them in a legal sense to implement theiragreements. When decisions are reached by con-sensus, they are decisions all committee membersendorse (or can at least tolerate) and, therefore, im-plementation and adherence is heightened. In therare instance where consensus cannot be achieved,the Joint Strategic Plan contains provisions for con-flict resolution through the Great Lakes FisheryCommission or third parties.

Accountability

The plan depends on each agency taking steps toimplement the shared decisions. Because agencieshave the right to manage their own fisheries, ac-countability encourages agencies to adhere to theirshared objectives and plans. The plan is non-binding

and depends on gentle ways to achieve account-ability, as opposed to more forceful ways typicallyassociated with binding agreements. For instance,participants in the lake committee process use suchthings as openness and peer pressure to encourageimplementation. Minutes and other lake committeedocuments serve to communicate actions and deci-sions to participants and to the public, and thereforeserve to heighten accountability. Because agenciespledge through the plan to keep each other informedabout their agencies’ activities, members have a wayto keep track of who is doing what and whether thereis progress toward the achievement of shared ob-jectives. Overall, the plan’s accountability measuresacknowledge that the participating agencies remainindependent but still have some shared obligations.

Information sharing

Sound information is vital to fishery manage-ment; all agencies require it. As such, informationsharing is a key element of cooperation as it helpsfishery managers make consistent and defensible de-cisions and it allows agencies to leverage resources.Information sharing has not always been easy giventhat the jurisdictions generate data in a variety offormats and are not required to share data with oth-ers. The plan envisions the agencies coming to con-sensus on the data required for them to developand achieve their shared goals and then agreeing onwhich agencies will collect the data. Whenever prac-tical, the agencies also cooperatively collect data. Tomaximize information sharing, the Joint StrategicPlan calls upon agencies to record, maintain, and dis-seminate fishery management and assessment datain a standard format and for agencies and the GreatLakes Fishery Commission to help make the infor-mation available. The Joint Strategic Plan has helpedcreated a culture where information sharing is ex-pected.

Ecosystem management

The Great Lakes is a large ecosystem, and fish-ery management involves more than just the fishthemselves. Managers must consider the lakes assystems of interacting biotic and abiotic variables.Managers learned decades ago that they must lookbeyond single species fishery management and in-stead consider a myriad of issues that affect the GreatLakes, including water quality and quantity, habitat,land use, invasive species, and other factors. The

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Joint Strategic Plan recognizes the complexity ofthe Great Lakes ecosystem and calls upon agen-cies to develop environmental objectives and plans,as they develop their fishery objectives. For exam-ple, the Joint Strategic Plan envisions fishery man-agers working with environmental officials involvedin activities like Remedial Action Plans (plansmandated in the Canadian/U.S. Great Lakes WaterQuality Agreement to clean up degraded areas) tointegrate fishery needs and objectives with environ-mental needs and objectives.

Implementing the Joint StrategicPlan through Lake committees

Lake committees (Figure 2) are the mechanismsfishery managers use to implement the Joint Strate-gic Plan. Prior to the Joint Strategic Plan, the GreatLakes Fishery Commission established lake com-mittees to help the commission and agencies keepeach other informed about their respective activities.When the agencies produced the Joint Strategic Planin 1981, they expanded the lake committees beyondinformation sharing to make them more strategic,and thus they became the agencies’ means to im-plement the Joint Strategic Plan. Today, these com-mittees comprise high-ranking officials from fisheryagencies on each lake who meet to address thatlake’s shared needs. For example, fishery managersfrom jurisdictions on Lake Huron—which include

Figure 2. Lake Committee organization.

Ontario, Michigan, and the Chippewa-Ottawa Re-source Authority—meet as the Lake Huron Com-mittee. The committees are the forum for agenciesto work together to identify and achieve their sharedgoals and objectives.

The Joint Strategic Plan facilitates managementdecisions through a bottom-up process, where man-agement decisions are driven by science generatedby field researchers. Lake committee members thenintegrate science with policy. To foster that design,each lake committee has a technical subcommit-tee comprising field-level biologists who conductand analyze research and report those findings tothe lake committees. This structure allows the fieldresearchers and assessment biologists to develop ashared understanding of the science, as free as pos-sible from political considerations. Specifically, fishcommunity objectives are developed for each lakethat provide a description of the desired fish com-munity, an objective for harvest levels of the im-portant species, and, often, specific plans for howthe fisheries are to be rehabilitated. Managers de-velop the objectives together and base them on sci-ence and data proffered by the technical committees.Fish Community Objectives are usually accompa-nied by specific plans for restoration or how the ob-jectives shall be achieved. Such plans are predicatedon information produced and shared through thelake committee and technical committee processes,and reflect the deliberations and consensus among

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the members. A Council of Lake Committees—comprising all members of the lake committees—addresses issues from a basinwide perspective.

The Joint Strategic Plan also provides for a coor-dinated approach to law enforcement. Each federaland non-federal jurisdiction has law enforcementresponsibilities, and law enforcement agencies op-erate more effectively and efficiently when theywork together. To facilitate cross-border law en-forcement, the agencies created the Law Enforce-ment Committee, which reports to the Council ofLake Committees. The Law Enforcement Commit-tee develops and implements many law enforcementinitiatives such as multi-jurisdictional enforcementteams, uniform efforts to identify and stop the trafficof invasive species, memorandums of agreement oncrossing borders to pursue lawbreakers, and com-bined training exercises.

What does the Joint Strategic Plan not do? Beinga non-binding agreement, Joint Strategic Plan deci-sions do not force, in any legal sense, an agency toact. The Joint Strategic Plan does not establish anoverarching, centralized political authority to com-pel cooperation; thus, the Joint Strategic Plan doesnot reduce or abrogate the authority of the individualjurisdictions. Finally, the Joint Strategic Plan doesnot alter federal rights and responsibilities or theduties of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.

Conclusions

The Great Lakes region is fragmented politicallyamong several independent jurisdictions. While theareas of authority are relatively clear and respected,agencies nevertheless need a way to work together.They do so through A Joint Strategic Plan for Man-agement of Great Lakes Fisheries. Without a wayto cooperate, agencies could gravitate towards theirparochial needs and desires. The Joint Strategic Planserves as a way for agencies to define their sharedobjectives strategically, combine their efforts, pooltheir resources, and approach fishery managementin a unified fashion. The plan creates a culture of co-operation where management community membersexpect to work together, and includes strategies likeconsensus, accountability, information sharing, andecosystem management to help the members staycommitted to their agreement. Cooperative GreatLakes fishery management depends on the agenciesremaining committed to this voluntary process. In aregion that might gravitate toward the parochial, theplan nurtures a cooperative atmosphere where fish-

ery managers expect to work together and createsan ongoing mechanism to ensure collective actionoccurs.

The Council of Lake Committees, the lake com-mittees, and the technical committees are clearly thestrength of the Joint Strategic Plan. Through thesecommittees, agencies come together to share infor-mation, to strategize, and to commit to implement-ing their shared goals. The processes helps fisherymanagers from around the basin get to know eachother and to develop durable, working relationships,which builds trust and understanding. Above all, theprocess is rooted in science, as it relies on the workof the technical committees as the foundation formanagement decisions. While all decisions madethrough the Joint Strategic Plan must still be imple-mented by the individual agencies, the consensus-based process helps ensure that policies reflect themanagers’ shared will and, therefore, are more likelyto be implemented. The Joint Strategic Plan is amodel for multi-jurisdictional cooperation in a po-litically complex setting.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the Great Lakes Fishery Com-mission for supporting this research and the orga-nizers of the Great Lakes of the World Conferencefor convening the symposium in Bagamoyo, Tan-zania. We are also grateful to Barry Rabe of theUniversity of Michigan, Elizabeth Brabec of UtahState University, Ann Chih Lin of the University ofMichigan, and Denise Scheberle of the Universityof Wisconsin—Green Bay for their comments onearly versions of this manuscript. Finally, commentsfrom two anonymous reviewers greatly improved themanuscript.

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