In the Shadow of the Union Jack: British Legacies and Great Lakes Fishery Policy

Abstract

Environmental and economic policies-what are they made of? Those associated with the Great Lakes fisheries for the last one hundred and eighty years have blended many ingredients. A range of economic realities has combined to produce legislation designed, however imperfectly, to maintain the fisheries as a source of food. Political considerations have loomed large in that policy making. Elected officials have responded to a variety of constituencies: consumers, commercial fishermen, sportsmen, and Indian people trying to insure fishing rights guaranteed by treaties with the United States. All of those groups have had agendas that put them in adversarial positions. Enormous changes in the use of the land area in the Great Lakes watershed and the ensuing rise of powerful commercial, industrial, and agricultural interests have exerted a major influence on the way legislators have treated fishery policy making. Influences from many other sources shaped Great Lakes fishery policy, including the broad course of relationships between the United States and Canada. Fishery laws have mirrored changing ideas about the appropriate sphere of government as well as the changing roles of dominion and province in Canada and patterns of federal and state relations in the United States. In recent years the environmental movement has made a significant impact on policy as have shifts in scientific thought about fishery management. The realities of weather patterns, seasons noted for temperature extremes, varying precipitation amounts, and the cyclical high and low water levels of the lakes have also left their mark. Natural accidents like the uncontrolled rampage of predator fish on commercially preferred species have greatly influenced policy makers. Nor should one ignore cultural factors such as the dietary preferences of consumers or the ethnic composition of commercial fishermen. In addition to all of the above, historians of North American economic and environmental history need to consider carefully the implications of the British legacy on the Great Lakes fishery and on those who make policy. That legacy has strongly influenced legislators for the past 180 years. It has shaped political and economic institutions and provided a veritable grab bag of ideas about the economics and conservation of