Great Lakes Patrol assigned to operate against criminals who were ravaging the logging industry. These so called timber pirates conducted illegal cutting of timber on federal land and then smuggled the valuable commodity out of the area in order to sell it. The areas most affected were in the western Great Lakes region, along the coasts of Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota. Much of these forested areas controlled by the government were reserved for the building of new warships. The illegal timber trade centered on Chicago and Milwaukee. It was nearly as violent as the alcohol trade, which was carried out over the
Alliance for the Great Lakes Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition named Brammeier a co-chair of the 120-plus organization consortium, which among other efforts, campaigned for the establishment of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Brammeier has been a leading advocate for re-separating the Chicago Area Waterway System to protect the Great Lakes from invasive species such as Asian carp. The Alliance's reach has extended to Washington, D.C., where in 1974, based on PCBs' devastating impact in the Great Lakes, the organization led efforts for Congress to ban the chemical through the Toxic Substances Control Act. In 1989, it initiated a lawsuit to prevent the illegal sale of