From the Editors

The contentious claims of groups seeking to use Lake Michigan's fisheries resources were at the center of modern America's emerging environmental politics in the middle of the twentieth century. Inheriting the environmental abuse, political oversights, and cultural inclinations of an earlier era, Lake Michigan's later twentieth century fisheries stakeholders found themselves relentlessly divided by a series of disputes arising from the promotion of sport fishing over commercial fishing, strident policy-making positions of state government, the ecological changes wrought by nonindigenous species, and the reclamation of treaty-rights fishing by Native Americans. Going beyond the chronicling of past events, Fish for All contextualizes the shared experiences that shape each group's collective memory and presents their historical narratives as discourse that legitimizes their current claims to the resource. Fish for All highlights the historically charged consciousness of fishing communities and points to the evolving communication that will take place between them, fisheries historians, fisheries anthropologists, scientists, and policymakers.
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A seminal and scholarly study of environmental history
The collaborative effort of Michael J. Chiarappa (Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Western Michigan University) and Kristin M. Szylvian (Associate Professor of History, Western Michigan University), Fish For All is a seminal and scholarly study of the environmental history of the Great Lakes freshwater fisheries. Fish For All reveals how tradition, cultural heritage, economic livelihood, scientific background, and more, have affected the carefully dispensed allocations of these resources in the Great Lakes region. Stressing the importance of building coalition over common concerns such as water pollution, habitat degradation, invasion of exotic species and more, Fish For All is an extensive, varied, and an intrinsically interesting collection of testimonials that combine for a sweeping, comprehensive, and very highly recommended regional environmental history of Great Lakes fish and fisheries.