Great Lakes Fishery Commission

Updated 2023-11-09 16:22:13

Lake Michigan -> 7.0 Habitat -> Physical Habitat

7.1.1 Lake Michigan Environmental Priorities

One of the Lake Michigan Committee’s (LMC) Guiding Principles under the Lake Michigan Fish Community Objectives is to preserve and restore fish habitat (Eshenroder et al. 1995). Likewise, the Council of Lake Committees recently developed Environmental Principles which aim to facilitate and promote the protection, restoration or enhancement of functional habitats across the Great Lakes that support fish stocks. With the development of the Environmental Principles, the LMC (in 2017) charged the Lake Michigan Technical Committee’s Habitat Working Group (HWG) to develop a short list of priority actions to protect or improve functional habitats for sustainable fisheries on Lake Michigan. The HWG addressed this charge by developing and refining an Environmental Priorities workbook tool. This tool identifies important functional habitats, priority management areas, and potential impediments to sustainability for all species and life stages identified in the Lake Michigan Fish Community Objectives.

In 2020, the Environmental Priorities workbook tool was used to develop a list of regional and site-specific priority actions that, if accomplished, would help reach Lake Michigan Fish Community Objectives. High priority actions which were identified included protection of coastal wetlands, coastal shoreline restoration, improvement of tributary connectivity and fish passage, expanded in-stream habitat restoration work, and reef restoration. Furthermore, development and advertisement of priority actions have helped align diverse fisheries management priorities among Lake Michigan’s governance groups, resulting in more coordinated efforts to reach shared objectives.

Environmental priorities have already been incorporated into numerous initiatives across the basin and the workbook tool continues to be refined. Initiatives which currently rely on environmental priority actions include the Lake Michigan Lakewide Action and Management Plan 2020-2024, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Great Lakes Fishery and Ecosystem Restoration program (GLFER), the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Regional Habitat Partnerships, the allocation of funding through the NOAA/Coastal States Organization, and others. Specific examples of immediate benefits include expanded funding for road/stream crossing and fish passage work, plans for shoreline restoration in northern Lake Michigan, and expanded efforts to evaluate Great Lakes reef habitat quality throughout the basin. Refinement of the Environmental Priorities workbook tool into an improved GIS-based framework is currently underway. Additional refinement aims include more habitats, species, and life stages as well as improving the documentation of the prioritization process.