Tribal-land trust collaboration in Michigan is protecting water and restoring fish and wildlife populations
A Tribal-land trust collaboration in Michigan called the Tribal Stream and Michigan Fruitbelt Collaborative is working toward "the preservation and restoration of the fragmented multi-tribal fisheries and wildlife populations in northwest Lower Michigan.”
The federal government is an important source of funding for land and natural resource conservation in the United States — the Farm Bill, for instance, is the single largest federal source of funding for private land conservation, creating significant opportunities for land trusts to protect high-priority farm and ranch lands, grasslands, wetlands and forests. The Regional Conservation Partnership Program is one of these programs, established in the 2014 Farm Bill to promote coordination between the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service — or NRCS — and its partners on innovative projects to address conservation concerns on farms, across states and regions.
NRCS recently announced its latest set of RCPP-funded projects, which thanks to a boost from the Inflation Reduction Act resulted in a historic $1+ billion investment in 81 conservation projects focused on water quality and quantity, the protection and restoration of wildlife corridors, climate resiliency and urban agriculture. One of these announced projects is a Tribal-land trust collaboration in Michigan called the Tribal Stream and Michigan Fruitbelt Collaborative, the primary goal of which “is the preservation and restoration of the fragmented multi-tribal fisheries and wildlife populations in northwest Lower Michigan.”
The collaborative is led by the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and includes the accredited Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy and the accredited Leelanau Conservancy. In total, the partnership boasts a diverse membership, including nineteen tribal, federal, state and local government agencies and nonprofit organizations, and is one of the earliest RCPP projects to receive funding dating back to 2016.
So far, its work has resulted in more than 3,000 acres of agricultural and natural land conserved and the opening of more than 290 miles of streams in multiple watersheds. The collaborative — which also includes the nonprofit Conservation Resource Alliance — shares a vision to safeguard high-risk development areas, restore pristine streams vital for Tribal fisheries and contribute to the overall health of the Great Lakes.
“This recent award is a strong testament to the maturity and trust among the partners in the Grand Traverse Region,” said D.J. Shook, a senior project manager and biologist with Conservation Resource Alliance, in a release following the award. “We hit the ground running, came together and delivered such strong results in the first rounds that NRCS came back to double their investment in this partnership.”
The collaborative has also inspired a documentary, called “Restoring Aquatic Ecosystems,” a 26-minute look at the historical, cultural and scientific approach to “water is life” broadcast on WCMU public television in late 2022.
In the documentary, Kira Davis, Anishinaabe kwe citizen of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, described the region’s rivers as the veins and the water that flows in them as the lifeblood of Mother Earth.
“The Tribal Stream and Michigan Fruitbelt Collaborative is one of the most unique partnerships in the United States,” said Glen Chown, executive director of Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy, in the film. “The primary ecological restoration goals are to restore connectivity of streams while also protecting them and doing habitat restoration so that the water quality is improved.”
His colleague, Laura Rigan, farmland program manager at the conservancy, agreed, saying that “limiting impervious surfaces and the runoff that would typically end up in surface waters and streams and out into the bay, is really important.” She noted that the RCPP initiative takes a regional, landscape view of water quality protection and land protection, specifically farmland protection.
“The unique part about this program is it protects water quality and working family farms,” said Tom Nelson, executive director at the Leelanau Conservancy. “What people often don’t recognize in this part of the world is that most family farms are not farmed from fencerow to fencerow. Roughly 40, 50, 60 percent of those farms are steep slopes, forestland, wildlife habitat, they’re wetlands, they’re watershed features. And this program, unlike other programs that have come before, protect all of those things.”
Photo credit: Restoring blocked sections of streams, like the Millers Creek restoration done here as part of the Tribal Stream and Michigan Fruitbelt Collaborative, is important because fish and wildlife navigate waterways much like people navigate highways — when a stream is blocked, complete ecosystems can suffer.