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Mining Ideas
Turning a Grant Assistance
Program into a Knowledge Base
![Undisplayed Graphic](images/mg1.gif)
A Report on the Ecological Protection and Restoration Program in the
Great Lakes Basin - April 1996
From
1992 through 1995, the Great Lakes National Program Office (GLNPO) of
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) awarded $8,519,219 in
grants for 87 projects to 36 local, Tribal, State, and Federal agencies
and non-governmental organizations who collaborated with some 240
partners to protect and restore the Great Lakes ecosystem. More than 240
partners are collaborating with grantees to increase the quality and
extent of native ecosystems and teach the public about the special and
valuable nature of the natural resources of the Great Lakes.
In addition to GLNPO grant dollars, grantees have told us they
leveraged $9,018,867 in actual dollars and in kind services. Twenty-one
full time and 38 part time jobs were created. The dollars and resulting
intensive activities have beneficially impacted the natural resources of
more that 18.5 million acres, or approximately 15% of the total land
acreage of the basin.
Because of the 87 projects the following can be said about the
natural resources of the Great Lakes ecosystem:
- We know more about what ecological communities and species exist
here and the processes and functions of the Great Lakes ecosystem than
five years ago,
- Vast acreages are being impacted by project activities,
- New protection and restoration tools are being invented and
knowledge accumulated and passed on to others,
- We now have a better idea of what we don't know - areas begging
inventory, problems that need solving, technologies awaiting
development,
- Partnerships are integral to the implementation of the 87
projects,
- With GLNPO dollars and as dollars are leveraged, projects are
having an impact, directly and indirectly, on the economies of local
communities,
- Communities formerly unaware of the natural resources surrounding
them are now participating actively in protection and restoration
activities.
The 87 projects are generating a wealth of information. GLNPO
summarized the most recent information about each project in a
descriptive narrative and compiled the descriptions into a "catalog". We
and our partners will mine this catalog for ideas and build a network of
protection and restoration experts with whom to fill in knowledge gaps
and generate creative solutions to ecosystem problems. The health of the
Great Lakes ecosystem, as well as the humans who live here, depends on
its integrity.
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