Traverse City author Dave Dempsey has helped shape conservation and Great Lakes policy for 30 years and has written or co-authored six conservation books. He is currently a policy advisor for FLOW, a nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to protecting Great Lakes waters using the public trust doctrine.

            In a new book, Half Wild: People, Dogs and Environmental Policy, he connects the environment with a love of dogs, with the goal of personalizing environmental issues. Dempsey has owned nine dogs, mostly rescued animals, and says that humans are a mixture of wild and domesticated—that is why people should change the way they look at themselves as masters of the environment.

            “We’ve allowed all these invasive species in the Great Lakes because we didn’t make the connections,” he explains. Dempsey likens them to a computer system with thousands of inputs, but without understanding how they interact. The more than 35 million people that live among the Great Lakes overwhelmingly profess devotion to these waters, yet the lakes are in mediocre condition.

For more information, visit DaveDempseyBooks.com and ForLoveOfWater.org.