GLFT Grant Library

The purpose of the Fish Manistique project is to provide access to the Lake Michigan fishery at the mouth of the Manistique River.  An accessible parking lot with restrooms will be connected to an existing break wall by the boardwalk.  The break wall will be furnished with railings on both sides to make fishing safe for all users.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Division and Parks and Recreation Division together will design and construct shoreline fishing access improvements in two areas at Belle Isle Park for the purposes of improving safety and accessibility for anglers. Improvements will include barrier free parking and pathways, new railings along the Detroit River for fishing access, and a site amenities such as interpretive signs, tackle tables and benches.

In 2007 a boardwalk was built along the Muskegon River on the south side of our Muskegon Lake Nature Preserve. The land was stable for many years, however recent storm evens and low lake levels have resulted in excessive erosion. The result is a portion of the boardwalk has been closed due to erosion under the pilings on the river side. This grant will pay for part of the restoration of The Wilder River Walk.

This project will expand our existing online decision-support tool to enable managers and agencies to assess trade-offs of barrier removals throughout the Great Lakes basin. We will inventory road crossings in the Paint River watershed, and create an index of habitat quality for priority fish species. Our website will enable integration of new barrier data, flexible visualization of species-specific habitat loss due to barriers, and customized analysis of optimal barrier removals for a given budget.

Great Lakes Fishery Trust provided funding for on-the-ground/ in-the-water costs related to the removal of the Song of the Morning Dam. This project restored natural river processes including hydrology, geomorphology and flow of sediment and woody debris through the system for the first time in over 100 years. Trout and other aquatic organisms gained access to 15 miles of critical spawning and refuge habitat in the upper Pigeon River and its tributaries. 

Huron Pines completed a comprehensive inventory of all road/stream crossings in fourteen small coastal watersheds draining to Lake Huron. A total of 253 sites were inventoried using the Great Lakes Road/Stream Crossing Inventory Protocol and added to the northernmichiganstreams.org website to enable conservation partners to more efficiently evaluate priority restoration sites.

The Chestonia Bridge state access site on the Jordan River is actually comprised of twin 14 foot wide culverts that cause stream velocities to increase five-fold, and contribute to pool formation, streambank erosion, sediment accumulation, and over widening of the river. Jordan River partners have completed design, and are going to build a 90 foot long single span bridge that will accomodate natural channel conditinos, and provide passage for all aquatic species at all life stages.

The purpose of this project was to develop engineering plans and a cost estimate for the renovation/rehabilitation of the Boat Club Pier to improve fishing access at Belle Isle Park in Detroit, Michigan.  The scope for design of the project also included parking lot improvements, bridge replacement, lighting, walkway construction and the filling of dilapidated swimming pools to ensure safe access to the pier.  The project officially kicked off in 2015.  The final engineering documents for the pier were developed and delivered to the DNR in December, 2016.  A final cost estimate was also developed to guide future fundraising efforts for implementation of the construction phase of the project.

The project removed the final (culvert) barrier in the North Branch of the White River. Fifteen river miles were opened, making the North Branch navigable for the first time since the logging era. A timber bridge spanning the bankfull width was installed and the river has returned to its natural channel.

The Barrier Removal Collaborative Suite will allow stakeholders to work in a cooperative online environmnt and provide decision support based on best available GIS data and other data sets. A weighted overlay analysis tool built upon user defined criteria will be incorporated into the suite. The results from this analysis aling with user generated content will be shared with other who will provide feedbacck or explore additional environmental and economic alternatives.

Natural reproduction of salmonids in Lake Michigan tributaries is substantial and otolith microchemistry is likely to allow for the identification of their natal origin. Interannual variation necessitates yearly derivation of tributary-specific chemical signatures in order to reliably assign origin. Inference of otolith chemistry to salmonid species from cosmopolitan resident species could substantially reduce sampling efforts and costs. Central Michigan University' Department of Biology and Institute for Great Lakes Research will assess whether otolith chemistry signatures of juvenile salmonids differ substantially from other common, river-resident species.

The University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee - Great Lakes WATER Institute seeks to improve our current understanding of fish feeding relationships in Lake Michigan following the recent decrease of food availability in the pelagic zone and increased nearshore benthic primary and secondary productivity. The specific objectives are to a) determine the extent to which various piscivorous and large-bodied fish species are able to take advantage of new nearshore energy sources and b) determine if these nearshore-offshore connections vary with location around the lake.

University of Wyoming - Economics and Finance will use dynamically linked ecosystem and economic models to forecast both the bioeconomic impacts of future invasive species on Lake Michigan’s food web and fisheries, and the impacts of potential invasive species management strategies. They will predict changes in fishery effort, harvests and regional economic well-being resulting from changes in fish biomass caused by invasive species and management strategies.

Lake sturgeon management units have been delineated based on neutral genetic markers; however, these markers may not represent adaptive differences that may indicate different evolutionary pathways for these populations. In this project, lake sturgeon populations throughout the Great Lakes will be analyzed at genes that are under natural selection. Populations will then be grouped based on adaptive similarity, resulting in management units that will help conserve the adaptive potential of our remaining lake sturgeon populations.

Michigan Department of Natural Resources' Marquette Fisheries Research Station will make fish and habitat data from several hundred standardized surveys of Michigan streams available online. They will use these surveys to compute benchmark values of fish and habitat parameters for each stream type in Michigan, with summaries at local, regional, and statewide scales. They will develop an online tool so users can compare data from individual surveys with benchmarks values computed at these scales. The benchmarks and tool will be updated annually.

The Grand Rapids Public Museum "Classroom with a Current" program provided an opportunity for thousands of students to experience inquiry-based learning with a focus on the Great Lakes. Programs were designed to provide information that assisted students in becoming (1) active and effective stewards of the Great Lakes and (2) advocates for strategies that support the long-term sustainability of the Great Lakes fisheries. Programming included new museum-based field trip programs, summer camp experiences, an after-school program, and a youth watershed team. The highest level of engagement was through the summer camp experiences and field trip-based programs.

The project is complete. During the grant period, the Vernal Pool Patrol, a statewide citizen science- and place-based vernal pool mapping and monitoring program, was adapted for K-12 educators and students, primarily at the upper elementary, middle and high school levels, to get involved with the program. A total of 18 teachers/educators and over 740 upper elementary, middle, and high school students from 13 different schools across northern Michigan were trained and participated in the Vernal Pool Patrol pilot program between 2015 and 2017. Over 25 community partners also assisted the teachers and students and participated in the pilot program. All the teachers who participated in the program and the evaluation said that they would recommend the program to other teachers. The teachers also said that the students enjoyed and were highly engaged in the program. A web-based platform (i.e., Google form) was developed for students to enter, view, and download their vernal pool monitoring data as well as data collected by students monitoring other vernal pools in the project area. The Vernal Pool Patrol pilot program provided additional information on vernal pools and increased our knowledge and understanding of their status, distribution, and ecology in Michigan. At least 20 new vernal pools were identified, mapped, and monitored by the educators and students. Fairy shrimp, which only live in vernal pools, was found by the students in at least eight of the vernal pools that were monitored, including perhaps the first documentation of fairy shrimp in a wooded dune and swale natural community. The program resulted in significant increases in awareness and understanding of vernal pools and an increase in attitudes towards stewardship. It resulted in new collaborations with a number of teachers, students, and community partners, including the GLSI, and stronger and expanded existing partnerships for MNFI in the project area.