Congressman John D. Dingell speaks at Monroe Community College for the sighing of Plum Creek form the County of Monroe to the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge.

Plum Creek Bay was added to the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge (Refuge) on Saturday, July 26, 2008.  In a signing ceremony at Monroe County Community College with Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorn, Congressman John D. Dingell (D-MI15), Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH09), and Michigan Lt. Governor John D. Cherry, Jr. (D), Plum Creek was transferred from Monroe County to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Plum Creek Bay is comprised of 126 acres of unique coastal wetland habitat that serves migratory birds as they migrate each year through the Great Lakes Flyway and fish that use the wetland as spawning and nursery habitat.  With over 90 percent of coastal wetlands either lost or destroyed in the region, saving places like Plum Creek is critical to the health of fish and wildlife species that depend on coastal wetland areas.

The importance of Plum Creek Bay was identified in 2005 when biologists from the Alpena National Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office met with partners from the Refuge, the East Lansing Ecological Services Office, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and the USGS Great Lakes Science Center to identify the best remaining wetlands in Michigan waters of western Lake Erie.  With monies secured through the Service’s Challenge Cost Share Grant Program, a near-shore fishery survey was conducted in the fall of 2005 and again in the summer of 2007.  Prior to that survey, Plum Creek had last been surveyed in the 1980’s.

Our goal in 2005 and 2007 was to provide baseline information for the Refuge about what species, both native and exotic, were found in places like Plum Creek.  The Refuge provides some of the last remaining natural wetland areas available in the Detroit River and western Lake Erie.  Those nursery areas are critical to the early life stages of many species of sport fish, as well as for some state listed species.  Historical records from past surveys identified over thirty species of fish using those wetland habitats for either spawning or nursery areas.  Results from the 2005 and 2007 survey work determined that a total of 46 different fish species were collected in the near-shore habitats of Lake Erie.  More importantly, young-of-the-year age groups of major sport fish species like walleye, large mouth bass, small mouth bass, northern pike, and other sunfishes were collected along with one state listed species