Wildlife Promise » Celia Haven

Reclaiming Rapids for the Great Lakes

Celia Haven — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 20:39:46 +0000

There is no one quick, easy answer for wildlife conservation. A huge part of the challenge is balancing actions that are good for humans with those that are good for wildlife. Often, these are the same (clean water, clean air, open spaces, etc.), but sometimes there are tradeoffs, and we as conservationists work hard to protect wildlife habitat while promoting thriving human systems.

A prime example of this is the Soo Locks, in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan (prounounced Soo-Saint-Marie). The locks were created to allow freighters to travel through the shallow and turbulent St. Marys River, into Lake Superior, and on to cities like Marquette, Mich., and Duluth, Minn. Allowing shipping to reach these ports—bringing loads of coal into and transporting mining materials outside the Great Lakes was an important economic advancement for the Great Lakes.

A Legacy of Problems

A Great Lakes freighter goes through the Soo Locks. Photo/Melinda Koslow

Unfortunately, the locks (along with hydroelectric dams, compensating gates to control flows, causeways to let residents drive among the river’s islands, and dredging to let larger freighters through the channel) dramatically changed the hydrology of the river. These pieces of important human infrastructure brought a river once abundant in fish spawning habitat down to merely a few acres of rapids.

One of the few places that can still be restored close to its original state is the Little Rapids—located about two miles downstream from the Soo Locks and adjacent to Sugar Island. The Little Rapids were once prime fish-spawning habitat with fast flowing shallow water over exposed pebbles. Now, due to an inter-island causeway that blocks all but a fraction of the river from flowing between two islands, the Little Rapids are slow and stagnant, allowing sediments to settle onto the rocky bottom.

These two culverts are the only source of water flow downstream of the Sugar Island Causeway. Photo/Celia Haven

This is where it gets tricky—the causeway isn’t the only option for getting cars around the island; there are other options that would allow the historic rapids to return and create more spawning habitat for fish. A team led by the Eastern Upper Peninsula Regional Planning and Development Commission is exploring this option. In 2011, they received a grant from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration to do the engineering and design to restore the Little Rapids. The grant will allow them, along with their project partners, to take a thorough look at what removing all or part of the causeway would mean for people and wildlife around the islands, and what options are plausible for allowing transportation among the islands. The project will undergo all of the pre-construction tasks for restoring the rapids:

Hydraulic Flow Modeling to assess what effects the project will have on navigation and ice formation in the St. Marys River
Engineering Design to modify the Sugar Island Causeway to restore flow to the Little Rapids and allow for fish passage.
An Environmental Assessment to examine the effects the project will have on the surrounding environment.
Environmental Monitoring to look at physical and biological aspects of the project before, during, and after implementation. Monitoring will make sure that environmentally sensitive species and habitats are not harmed by any step of the project and allow us to learn from the project.
Outreach and Education efforts to involve the many stakeholder interests of the Little Rapids project by making sure groups like sportsmen, residents, recreational boaters, and other entities are informed engaged as the project progresses.

Climate Considerations

National Wildlife Federation and EcoAdapt are working with this and other NOAA-funded projects to help them address climate change, using our 2011 report Restoring the Great Lakes Coastal Future as a guidance. Last month, I traveled up to Sault Ste. Marie to visit the Little Rapids site and meet with project leaders to discuss what kinds of climate change impacts we need to consider. We came up with the following main concerns:

Near Sugar Island – no longer rapids. Photo/Melinda Koslow

Water Levels: Climate projections show that Great Lakes water levels may go either up or down, and that they will likely be more variable than they have in the past. Water levels in the St. Marys River are heavily controlled by the locks and compensating gates, but do change to follow Lake Huron’s levels.

Ice Cover: With warmer air and water temperatures, Great Lakes ice cover may be decreasing in coming years. Many residents of Sugar Island are worried that removing the causeway may divert enough water flow from the current channel to slow the current, allowing more ice to form and preventing the ferry—their only access to the mainland for buses and emergency vehicles—from crossing the channel. Less ice cover due to climate change may, in fact, eliminate one challenge in removing the causeway. However, many island residents enjoy walking on the ice near the rapids site to visit their neighbors.

Water Temperatures: Since one of the main goals of this project is to establish rapids for fish spawning and habitat, we will have to consider if anticipated changes in water temperatures will have an effect on the types of fish who will be using the rapids.

Next Steps

The project team will now move on to finding the best way to restore the rapids while maintaining infrastructure for those on the island. Because of our preliminary discussions, future models and assessments will take into account more variability in ice cover, water temperatures, and water levels, making the restoration project more effective. Restoring the Little Rapids will create more habitat and spawning areas for Great Lakes fish and invertebrates, improve fishing conditions throughout the Lakes, and might even boost recreational boating in the St. Marys River.

As there is less and less untouched, remote wildlife habitat, it is becoming ever more important to find the balance between our homes, roads and cities and natural spaces. When we find places where we can restore wildlife habitat while preserving important infrastructure, we enhance our own lives as well. Climate change will only make projects like these more complicated, but when we look to the future while preserving past natural spaces we can benefit ourselves as well as wildlife.

Check out our other climate-smart work in the Great Lakes on our website!

Healing Our Waters Program moves Great Lakes Restoration Forward

Celia Haven — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:53:10 +0000

Photo/Shutterstock

The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) has been a critical boost to restoring the Great Lakes. It has already led to significant results – restoring wetland habitats and removing contaminated sediments, and keeping beaches open for recreation. There are organizations across the region who have excellent ideas for much-needed projects that accomplish important goals like cleaning up AOCs, eradicating invasive species, and addressing nonpoint source pollution. But there’s a lot more that goes into creating and submitting a grant proposal to receive funding for these projects than just an idea, and in a region where funding is limited, sometimes it’s difficult to find the resources to get an idea off the ground.

That’s where the Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition (HOW) steps in. Co-chaired by NWF, HOW has a small grant program that awards organizations grants to jump-start their projects in order to prepare for a larger proposal under the GLRI. These grants give groups the resources they need to do research and establish partnerships that are necessary to build robust grant proposals. The grant program began in 2010, and it’s already producing dramatic results: fifteen awards of $15,000 or less went out to groups who were then able to apply for 12 GLRI grants, and of these, 6 were awarded – resulting in almost $1.7 million in GLRI grants. Adding to their successes, these groups also received over $4 million in other funding – meaning that those original 15 grants led to nearly $6 million towards much-needed projects. That’s a lot of restoration for the Great Lakes!

Those are pretty big numbers, but what does this mean, in the grand scheme of things? To name just a few, it means that the Western Lake Erie Waterkeeper Association can continue their work to set up an invasive species early detection system for Western Lake Erie, and the St. Louis River Alliance is able to restore habitat for endangered piping plovers. It means that the Alliance for the Great Lakes can build a program that allows landowners to prioritize and protect glacial ravines around Lake Michigan. Projects like these are critical to restoring the Great Lakes, and collectively they will make a significant improvement in the state of the Great Lakes.

What can you do to help the Great Lakes?

The GLRI is a sound investment in the Great Lakes that’s producing results, but it’s a federal program and therefore dependent on congressional funding. Let your Member of Congress know that restoration projects are necessary for the future of the Great Lakes and important to the people whose lives depend on them. Tell them to support the GLRI and continue to deliver needed economic and environmental benefits to the Great Lakes region.

Support NWF’s efforts to keep Asian Carp out of the Great Lakes

From the Great Lakes to Coastal Louisiana: Climate Change Will Affect Everyone

Celia Haven — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:55:32 +0000

A freighter passing through New Orleans on the Mississippi River. Photo/Celia Haven

I spent last week in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the American Meteorological Society’s Annual Meeting. The Great Lakes Regional Center‘s Adaptation Program Manager Melinda Koslow and I traveled to the Big Easy to learn about climate change programs around the country and share our progress in the Great Lakes.

I attended a panel on adaptation policies and technologies in the Southeast, in which NWF’s Alisha Renfro and Derek Brockbank talked about the efforts that NWF is leading to restore the Mississippi River Delta in Louisiana. Alisha and Derek talked about some of the challenges facing the Delta, and I was struck by some of the parallels between the Great Lakes and Coastal Louisiana and the similarities in the issues that both are facing.

Shipping: The Mississippi River provides shipping access to the Gulf of Mexico for much of the midwest, allowing grain and other commodities to travel in and out of the region. The Great Lakes serve the same function – iron ore mined in Great Lakes states can go out the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Atlantic Ocean, and coal can be delivered to power plants on the lakes. Both the Coastal Louisiana and Great Lakes economies depend on shipping and the associated ports.

Fishing: Sport and commercial fishing are a significant part of the Great Lakes – recreational fishing alone is valued at $7 billion in the region. People across the Gulf Coast depend on fishing – it’s a considerable part of their culture and how many people make a living.

Asian Carp: Asian Carp have already reached the Mississippi River and have been wreaking havoc on its ecosystem for years throughout the midwest. The carp are not present in all lakes and rivers along the gulf coast, however, and so the threat of spreading Asian Carp to untainted waters during flooding is serious. Similarly, the Great Lakes are facing a possible inundation from Asian Carp – if the carp make it through the waterways that connect the Mississippi River to Lake Michigan, the effects could be devastating for the Great Lakes.

Oil Spills: 2010 brought oil spills to both Louisiana and Michigan. The entire country watched in horror as millions and millions of gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf, destroying ecosystems and devastating people’s way of life. The Enbridge oil spill in Michigan that summer was a fraction of the size – nearly one million gallons, but it happened right in residents’ back yards and there were immediate effects on public health – especially for children. Both areas are still feeling the effects of the spilled oil and learning what the consequences will be in the long term.

Feeling the effects of climate change

Phragmites along the Clinton River Spillway, site of a future restoration project that NWF is partnering with to make climate-smart. Photo/Celia Haven

These two areas in opposite parts of our country have so much in common and face many similar challenges – including climate change. But climate change is affecting the regions in different ways. In Louisiana, sea level rise is causing problems for everyone – much of the southern portion of the state is barely above sea level, and cities like New Orleans are in constant danger from sea level rise. The Great Lakes, on the other hand, are facing a more uncertain future. While changes like warming temperatures and increased rainfall are already apparent, the effects on lake levels are still unknown – climate models predict drops in lake levels under some scenarios, and rises in others.

These changes can have dramatic and damaging effects for those who depend on these waters. As sea levels rise along the Gulf Coast, more of the coastal wetlands will erode, eliminating the natural buffer that protects cities along the delta from extreme weather. On the other hand, if Great Lakes water levels drop, it could have implications for the shipping industry as rivers and ports become too shallow. In both places, invasive species can destroy the fishing industries and cause more stress on tourism. And ecosystems that are already feeling multiple stressors are less likely to be able to cope with unpredictable man-made disasters, like oil spills.

No matter how you look at it, the effects of climate change on either of these ecosystems could be devastating. That’s why NWF’s work to restore the Mississippi River Delta and to restore the Great Lakes is so important. We’re working to safeguard and these ecosystems so that the way of life for those in these two regions is preserved.

Support NWF’s efforts to keep Asian Carp out of the Great Lakes

First Completed Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Project Means New Habitat for Wildlife, Fresh Hope for People

Celia Haven — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:54:20 +0000

Shiawassee Wetland Restoration Project during the beginning phases of restoration. Photo/Sarah Barmeyer

Last month, on a cold and windy fall afternoon in Michigan, people from across the Great Lakes region gathered for an exciting and unprecedented event: the dedication of the very first completed Great Lakes Restoration Initiative project. The Shiawassee Flats Wetland Restoration Project, in Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge near Saginaw Bay, restored a 141-acre agricultural field to its historical wetland habitat. The new wetland is adjacent to the Flint River and will significantly add to the available habitat for migratory birds while improving water quality and decreasing the risk of flooding downstream.

I wasn’t able to attend the project’s groundbreaking ceremony a year and a half before, so I couldn’t feel the dramatic change from farm field to wetland, but my visit was still a wonderful way to spend a Friday afternoon. The new wetland was full of noisy birds, and flocks of ducks and geese frequently flew overhead. We learned that the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge is considered a globally Important Bird Area – and that at times, over 60,000 ducks and geese are on-site. The project was carried out through an outstanding partnership among Ducks Unlimited, the Saginaw Bay Watershed Initiative Network, the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge, the U.S. EPA, and the Upper Mississippi River & Great Lakes Region Joint Venture.

Birds over the Shiawassee Flats Wetland Restoration Project. Photo/Celia Haven

This new wetland was the very first GLRI project to be completed – and as the EPA’s Cameron Davis, explained it, it’s one small step in the long journey towards restoring the Great Lakes. It’s also a happy reminder that there are successes happening across the region that will improve conditions for people and wildlife. To me, these successes, no matter how big, are key – they remind me that despite the long legacy of environmental degradation we feel across the Great Lakes Region, we have the ability to reverse the damage – and that our work to restore the Great Lakes is as important as ever.

The National Wildlife Federation works hard to support federal funding for restoring the Great Lakes - and subsequently, projects like this. As a co-founder and co-chair of the Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition, we work hard alongside the rest of the Great Lakes community to secure robust federal funding and support for Great Lakes restoration and to provide a strong, unified voice for restoration across the region. NWF also provides resources to groups who are undertaking on-the-ground restoration projects, like our Technical Guidance for Climate-Smart Restoration, a report on implementing the Great Lakes Compact, and a new report on the effects of invasive species and nutrient loading in the Great Lakes.

Want to help NWF protect the Great Lakes? Check out our new Choose Your Cause feature, where you can support our efforts to keep Asian Carp out of the Great Lakes!

The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative – or GLRI – is the program to implement the comprehensive restoration plan for the Great Lakes, the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Strategy. The GLRI was launched in 2010, and to date has received over $700 million in federal funding. Under the GLRI, groups across the Great Lakes Basin can apply for funding for projects that benefit the region – including combating invasive species, cleaning up toxic pollution, restoring nearshore health, and restoring valuable wildlife habitat. The GLRI represents unprecedented support in Great Lakes restoration from leaders in Washington on both sides of the aisle – so far, over 500 projects have been granted funding under the program. Our work is not done, however – the GLRI, along with many other important environmental programs, faces steep cuts as congress grapples with how to get the nation’s spending under control. In 2012, NWF will work with its partners in the region to make sure the GLRI continues to receive the funding it needs to do the important work of restoring the Great Lakes.

Jump-starting Restoration: Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition Announces Grants to Help Great Lakes

Celia Haven — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:47:05 +0000

Canoeing in the Great Lakes. Image: Shutterstock

Growing up swimming in the clear, cool water of Lake Superior I was blissfully unaware that the Great Lakes were under attack. I had a pretty good grasp of environmental issues in my hometown – I knew why we didn’t eat the fish I caught with my dad near our house, and I knew which plants in our yard weren’t welcome, but my exposure to the Great Lakes was limited to the remote (and seemingly pristine) areas my family visited on vacation.

It wasn’t until I was in college that I learned about things like toxic algal blooms, aquatic invasive species, and the dramatic effects of climate change.

My work at NWF’s Great Lakes Regional Center has taught me so much more about current threats to the Great Lakes, but more importantly, about what groups across the region are doing to protect a resource that 30 million people depend on for their drinking water. Programs like the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative are making sure that restoration projects are happening in the areas where they are most needed.

Great Lakes projects are producing results in communities around the region. But there is more to do. This is where the Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition (HOW) steps in. Co-chaired by NWF, the HOW Coalition brings together more than 115 organizations across the region that share the common goal of restoring and protecting the Great Lakes. The Coalition is working to insure that the nation robustly funds Great Lakes programs – and that local groups can successfully participate in restoration efforts. Recently the HOW Coalition announced $115,000 in grants among nine organizations to help them prepare and apply for larger GLRI grants.

These grants, of up to $15,000 each, are given to groups in five geographic priority areas: The St. Louis River and St. Louis Bay in Lake Superior; the waters of Lake Michigan in the Chicagoland area; Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay; western Lake Erie and eastern Lake Ontario. These areas suffer from some of the most severe problems plaguing the Great Lakes, but also show great potential to be restored. The grants will help to jumpstart projects that are key to improving conditions for both wildlife and people who depend on the Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes face many threats: sewage contamination fouls beaches, habitat destruction erodes water quality, Asian carp threaten to devastate the ecosystem, waters warm due to climate change, and toxic pollution persists across the region. Yet we know that we have solutions — projects like those funded by the HOW Coalition are significant victories in a larger struggle. They are important steps towards accomplishing an enormous and necessary goal. Projects like these that remind me that we are making progress in protecting and restoring the Great Lakes for future generations.

Read the list of 2011 HOW Implementation Grants

Join us in October for the 7^th Annual Great Lakes Restoration Conference hosted by the Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition in Detroit, Michigan!