20 years since mussel's invasion noticed

...and still, as the Detroit Free Press says, we have seen no effective action by our governments.

"You can't recover the lakes of a generation ago. They're gone forever."

That may be the truest -- and cruelest -- elegy delivered as the Great Lakes mark the 20th anniversary of the discovery of zebra mussels on June 1, 1988, in Lake St. Clair. It comes from Carol Stepien, a University of Toledo researcher who studies gobies -- another notorious invader -- and who has found at least 18 more goby varieties in Europe that would probably love to call the Great Lakes home.

Freshwater species that originated in tributaries around the Black and Caspian Seas seem to adore the Great Lakes, and various Eurasian species had been showing up since the St. Lawrence Seaway opened to foreign ships in 1959. But most were microscopic plants and animals.

Zebra mussels showed how readily a bigger invader could not just survive, but thrive, threatening to wipe out some native species and alter the food web so drastically that even big lake fish no longer had enough food. It was not the first, it may not even be the worst, but it surely is the poster child for a problem that no one has yet had the will to address.