Cruising down the Maumee River with Steve Pollick: Outdoors Advocate Forever

Steve Pollick with a few slides at Lourdes' Lifelong Learning program.

Steve Pollick may be retired from the Toledo Blade, where he was Outdoors Editor for over 30 years, but he's not retired from public life, including public education about the natural environment of Northwest Ohio and Southeastern Michigan. He knows this environment intimately; has written thousands of columns about it; and continues to explore it.

Pollick shared his love of the Maumee River Watershed on Lake Erie, at 6,600 square mile the largest of all the Great Lakes watersheds, at a talk to Lourdes University's ever-popular Lifelong Learning program on August 16, the inaugural program of the 2013/14 season.

Pollick took us along on his June 2011 canoe trip down the Maumee River from Fort Wayne to Toledo, with a slide show and talk about the natural habitat, the exuberant wildlife, the dangers, the beauty. What an adventure!

"When you're down on the river, way down from the land, the highways, farmland and bridges, you feel the wilderness."

He helped us feel it, too!  He called his talk "Beauty and the Beast."  He started with the "beasts," the current dangers to the river, mostly the spread of green algae, a thick, slimy mess, and proliferation of Asian carp, which can grow into huge feeders especially in western Lake Erie.  He followed with slides of the beauty of the river. He ended by reminding us we have a choice: Beauty, or the Beasts?


Steve Pollick photo, Sunset over the Maumee. Its beauty is in our hands,
he reminds us.