SOLEC Logo - graphic courtesy of SOLEC

The 7^th biennial State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference (SOLEC) was held this year in Milwaukee Wisconsin, November 1-3. The conference was sponsored by the Federal Governments of the United States and Canada. 

This year’s SOLEC presented a comprehensive assessment of the state of the Great Lakes basin ecosystem based on the assessments provided from 60 indicators.  The assessments were presented in 9 indicator groups including: biotic communities, contaminants, human health, coastal zones, land-use land-cover, aquatic habitats, invasive species, resource utilization and climate change.

Ted Koehler from the Ashland FRO attended this year’s conference in order to assist with the Binational Program’s Lake Superior Work Group Habitat and Wildlife Committee’s Lake Superior Breakout Session.  This session presented work on the Lake Superior Work Group’s Ecosystem Goals which are now developed in draft form.  The Lake Superior Work Group’s Ecosystem Goals are a list of goals to restore and protect the ecosystem of the Lake Superior basin, and if implemented would achieve the groups desired state of the ecosystem.  Selected goals were presented and feedback from the participants was collected to better define the goals as well as explore paths for their implementation.  This information will be used to develop final ecosystem goals which will be used by the Lake Superior Work Group to implement objectives of the Lake Superior Lakewide Management Plan.