Great Lakes land trusts focus on improving water quality

The Great Lakes encompass the largest surface of fresh water in the world, but they face multiple threats, including invasive species, pollutants, loss of natural lands, algal blooms, climate change and more.

To help land trusts protect and restore freshwater resources in the Great Lakes basin, this year the Land Trust Alliance has awarded more than $100,000 in grants to 15 land trusts in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin.

The grants will help Great Lakes land trusts develop strategic protection plans and effectively steward one of the world’s greatest freshwater resources. For instance, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula Land Conservancy received funding to collaborate with local Indigenous communities on strategic conservation planning, and Indiana’s Little River Wetlands Project was awarded money to restore wetlands in Eagle Marsh, one of the country’s largest urban wetland restoration projects.

In 2019 and 2020, the Alliance assessed how Midwest member land trusts are already protecting Great Lakes water quality and what could help them increase their impact, and in 2022 the Alliance used the findings to launch the Great Lakes Land and Water Initiative, funded by The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and The Volgenau Foundation.

“There is an intimate connection between what happens on our land and the health of the water that flows from it, making land trusts perfectly positioned to lead water quality initiatives that are critically important to their communities,” said Andrew Bowman, the Alliance’s president and CEO.