Table 1. Suggested activities for compensating for program restraint measures in the Great Lakes Basin.

Clarify and Reach Agreement On Priorities

• Use mechanisms like the International Joint Commission (IJC), Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC), or other binational institutional structures to clarify and reach agreement on research priorities
• Ensure that research priorities explicitly address management goals and needs
• Weigh influence of stressor, potential for management impact, and benefits of prevention/remediation in clarifying and reaching agreement on priorities

Plan Cooperatively

• Use formal mechanisms like the IJC, GLFC, or other binational institutional structures to foster cooperative, ecosystem-based planning
• Make greater use of informal mechanisms of binational, scientific cooperation (e.g., Lake Ontario Transfer Study which addressed food web dynamics)
• Champion cooperative planning processes like remedial action plans (RAPs) and lakewide management plans (LAMPs) that require and benefit from research and science
• Maximize science use and management result (i.e., by ensuring use of available science, ensuring no conflict among management goals, and furthering integrated action)
• Develop jurisdictional, congressional, and parliamentary intercommittee task forces to increase communication and cooperation on budgeting and coordinating inter-agency and university partnerships on science and research (e.g., the U.S. Global Climate Change Program)

Share Responsibilities In Delivery of Programs

• Combine U.S. and Canadian surveillance efforts into a single, binational program
• Develop government-university and public-private centers of specialty in science, analysis, etc.
• Further community-based, volunteer, monitoring programs (e.g., Lake Superior Secchi Disc Program) and ensure that data can be used in management programs
• Ensure that Canada becomes a contributing member of the Great Lakes Protection Fund and ensure that the Great Lakes Protection Fund is involved in the government-led, binational effort to identify and address research priorities
• Create the framework and conditions for greater private and nongovernmental involvement in Great Lakes research and capitalize on their enterprise, initiative, creativity for investment

Share Capital Resources

• Create a Great Lakes Research Vessel Pool and transfer vessels to the Pool which would charge user fees and maximize and rationalize vessel use
• Utilize Canadian and U.S. Coast Guard ships and other "ships of opportunity" to perform research and monitoring
• Share analytical equipment (e.g., GC/MS between government and university labs)
• Establish more government-funded, faculty positions within universities in order to take advantage of university laboratories and equipment, and address management priorities (e.g., Partnership on Ecosystem and Resource Management between Michigan Department of Natural Resources-Fishery Division and Michigan State University)
• Encourage university scientists to spend sabbatical leaves at government laboratories to collaborate with government scientists and establish more secondments and intergovernmental exchanges of staff between government laboratories and between government laboratories and universities
• Establish more cooperative agreements between governments and universities (e.g., Cooperative Institute on Limnology and Ecosystem Research - CILER)
• Combine research activities within different federal, state, and provincial agencies into a single facility (e.g., NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab and National Biological Service's Great Lakes Science Center)

Build Partnerships and Cooperatives

• Utilize partnerships like HabCARES (Habitat Conservation and Restoration Strategies) which pooled monies from numerous partners and created a common "pot of money" to further a management and research priority in an issue-driven and product- driven fashion for management action
• Develop partnerships like Canada's Lake Superior Programs Office where federal and provincial or state staff are co- located, thereby ensuring complementary and reinforcing research efforts and management actions with community buy-in
• Co-locate government laboratories on university campuses in order to foster collaborative, interdisciplinary research
• Establish more centers of excellence which promote public- private interaction and cooperation (e.g., University of Waterloo's Groundwater Centre; University of Windsor's London Life Great Lakes Environmental Research Centre)
• Undertake cooperative projects among Council of Great Lakes Industries, IJC, governments, International Association for Great Lakes Research, etc., which advance the effective use of science in Great Lakes management

Develop New Approaches To Management and Science Issues

• Undertake resource management projects as experiments with strong management-research linkages (e.g., Green Bay Mass Balance Study; Hamilton Harbour Habitat Rehabilitation Project)
• Develop new data sources (e.g., habitat inventory data collected by naturalist clubs; high school monitoring programs)
• Explore new funding alternatives (e.g., a portion of licence plate fees designated for research and ecosystem-based management; designated income tax donations; leverage, challenge, and partnership grants)
• Pool resources to move research and ecosystem-based management issues forward (e.g., all states bordering Lake Michigan contributing financial resources to a common "pot of money" that would be used to undertake necessary research and monitoring called for under the Lake Michigan LAMP)

Communicate Value and Benefits of Research and Science

• All Great Lakes researchers and scientists must take personal responsibility for communicating the value and benefits of their work in public, ecosystem-based management initiatives
• Data and information from all research should be easily accessible through INTERNET to foster communication and dialogue
• Governments should ensure that all monitoring and assessment data are compiled in a user-friendly format and placed on "home pages" within INTERNET to maximize utility
• Governments, in cooperation with the International Association for Great Lakes Research, should sponsor a collaborative effort which quantifies the economic and non-economic benefits of research support of ecosystem-based management in the Great Lakes Basin

Revised: 24 February 1997
Maintained by Kevin McGunagle, mcgunaglek@ijc.wincom.net

URL: www.ijc.org/rel/comm/table1.html