Announcement

On April 12, 2006, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers selected six regions in the country that would receive funding this year to conduct analyses to address complex water resources issues in large, multijurisdictional watersheds. The Great Lakes was the first, and largest of the proposals selected. The Corps’ District offices in Buffalo, Chicago and Detroit Districts will receive $1 million for a project that will integrate existing governmental and non-governmental programs to protect and restore wetlands and aquatic habitat in the Great Lakes region. This effort will help implement the recommendations of the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration, which includes the protection and restoration of 200,000 acres of wetlands in the Basin.

Objectives

The objective of this effort is to develop an implementation plan for site-specific actions to protect, restore and manage aquatic habitat in the Great Lakes Basin that builds upon the Strategy of the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration. These include projects that acquire lands to protect them from development and projects to construct measures to restore degraded conditions. There are several existing funding programs that conduct “on-the-ground” projects to protect and restore wetlands and aquatic habitats in the Great Lakes. These include Federal programs like the Corps’ Great Lakes Fishery & Ecosystem Restoration (GLFER), the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) of the Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Great Lakes Fish & Wildlife Restoration Act, and State Fish and Wildlife programs. Nongovernmental organizations like The Nature Conservancy and Duck Unlimited have important programs to protect and restore habitat.  

These funding programs all have their individual rules and criteria for selecting projects to fund. Most have long waiting lists of proposed habitat protection and restoration projects awaiting funding. The Corps will conduct this investigation in partnership with Federal, State, Tribal and Local governments and nongovernmental organizations in order to develop products that can be used by all funding programs and by agencies and groups that are advocates or sponsors for individual projects or actions. The specific products of this effort will include:

l Inventory of existing funding programs and their requirements to serve as a guide for project proponents;

l Compilation of proposed site-specific projects for protection and restoration of wetlands and coastal habitat that are awaiting funding;

l Greater definition of proposed projects, including comparable cost estimates and characterization of ecological benefits;

l Development of regional ecological performance measures for comparing and prioritizing projects and actions for use within and across funding programs, and;

l Prioritization of proposed actions utilizing adopted performance measures, integration of priority actions into a comprehensive implementation plan with cost and schedule information.

Coordination

The initial proposal for this effort was coordinated with other agencies and organizations, and letters of support for the proposal were provided by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, Great Lakes Commission, Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, The Nature Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited, and the co-chairs of the Habitat/Species Team of the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration.

A Steering Committee will be formed with interested agencies and organizations to guide the development of this investigation and assure that its products are useful to the funding programs and by project proponents. A notice to interested parties will be transmitted in early May, 2006.

This effort will also be coordinated with all Federal agencies through the Great Lakes Interagency Task Force, established under Executive Order 13340 which was signed by President Bush in May 2004.

Funding and Timetable

The Great Lakes Habitat Implementation Plan must be completed within two years with a budget of $1 million. There is no cost-sharing requirement for this effort, but agencies and organizations must participate at their own expense.

Point of Contact

Jan Miller
Great Lakes & Ohio River Division
111 North Canal Street
Chicago, IL 60606-7205
(312) 353-6354
jan.a.miller@usace.army.mil