Detroit River and Western Lake Erie Restoring to

Detroit River and Western Lake Erie: Restoring to the Future Karen Rodriguez U. S. Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes National Program Office 312 -353 -2690 rodriguez. karen@epa. gov

This country is so temperate, so fertile, so beautiful, that it may be called the earthly paradise of North America. Antoine de Cadillac 1702

Swans Ojibway Prairie

We—human beings—are part of 'biodiversity. ' We are dependent on the whole food chain down below us Darrell Merrell, heirloom vegetable farmer

The Great Lakes contain 6 Quadrillion gallons of water

18% of world’s and 95% of North America’s fresh surface water

Daily, 56 billion gallons of water are used by municipalities, agriculture, and industry

42 million people depend on the Great Lakes for their drinking water

17, 000 kilometers of coastline

600 sand beaches in the U. S.

World’s largest collection of freshwater sand dunes

31, 000 islands

217, 000 hectares of coastal wetlands

$1 billion/year recreational fishing industry

70 million people visit parks annually

$100 billion in world trade

Persistent harmful chemicals have been an enduring legacy for at least a hundred years, posing a threat to human and wildlife health

Invasive nuisance species are disrupting the food web and causing billions of dollars in damage to infrastructures such as water intakes. It appears the fishery is being affected

Destruction of habitats such as wetlands and river corridors, is resulting in diminished ecosystem services

Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement

Great Lakes Regional Collaboration

Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Great Lakes Restoration Initiative

Bass Great blue heron Whitefish Lake sturgeon Walleye Bald eagle Peregrine falcon

Canvasback Wild celery Diving Duck

Belle Isle Ojibway Prairie

Ecosystem services are the conditions and processes through which natural ecosystems, and the species that are part of them, help sustain and fulfill human life.

State-of-the-Art Approaches for Assessment of Great Lakes Nearshore and Large River Fish Habitat • Rivers—lack of real time monitoring; channel habitat data; large river floodplains • Nearshore—no comprehensive survey of bathymetry, substrate and vegetation; no uniform classification system across the basin

Habitat Modification • Rehabilitation emphasizes the reparation of ecosystem processes, productivity and services, not pre-existing integrity • Reclamation, usually applied to mining, is the stabilization of the terrain, assurance of public safety, aesthetic improvement, and usually a return of the land to what, within the regional context, is considered to be a useful purpose • Mitigation is an action that is intended to compensate environmental damage • Creation is conducted as mitigation on terrain that is entirely devoid of vegetation • Ecological engineering involves manipulation of natural materials, living organisms and the physical-chemical environment to achieve specific human goals and solve technical problems

What is ecological restoration? • Ecological restoration is the process of assisting with the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged or destroyed

Habitat restoration timeline • Sources controlled • Sites restored • On a trajectory to full recovery Full recovery Trajectory On the road to recovery Restoration activities Long term monitoring

What interventions are employed in ecological restoration? • Interventions employed in ecological restoration vary widely among projects and programs – Removal or modification of a specific disturbance – Deliberate reintroduction of native species – Facilitate the resumption of those processes which will return the ecosystem to its intended trajectory

Eastern Lake Ontario

Ashland, Wisconsin

Miller Woods, IN

Indigenous ecological management • Ecological restoration may include the recovery of indigenous ecological management practices, including support for the cultural survival of indigenous people and their languages as living libraries of ecological knowledge • What makes ecological restoration especially inspiring is that cultural practices and ecological processes can be mutually reinforcing

What is meant by “recovery” in ecological restoration? • An ecosystem has recovered - and is restored when it contains sufficient biotic and abiotic resources to continue its development without further assistance or subsidy Before After Ft. Erie, Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority

Regenerating System Living Systems Understanding Regenerative Humans participating as nature – Co-evolution of the Whole Systems Relationships Understanding Restorative Humans doing things to nature – assisting the evolution of subsystems More energy required Less stable Technologies Diversity Less energy required More stable Reciprocity Sustainable Natural – 100% less bad’ (Mc. Donough) Techniques Fragmented Monoculture Green LEED, Green Globe, GB tool, etc. Conventional Practice ‘One step better than breaking the law’ (Croxton) Trajectory of Environmental Design (Reed, 2006; Modified by Bowers, 2007) Degenerating System

Belanger Park Woodland, Belle Isle

Restoring to the future requires: • Understanding ecosystems • Development and use of appropriate tools • Linking ecological restoration and economic development • Sharing information • Partnerships The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river Ross Perot

Mud Island Humbug Marsh Lake sturgeon Chorus frog Belle Isle

Oak Savanna, Ojibway

Black Lagoon

Elias Cove

Langlois St. to Moy Ave.

A river is the report card for its watershed Alan Levere, Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection

Canada Ontario Agreement

Fox snake Blandings turtle

RV Lake Guardian

Humbug Island Spiderwort, Humbug Island

Cleaning up the river

When we save a river, we save a major part of an ecosystem, and we save ourselves as well because of our dependence— physical, economic, spiritual—on the water and its community of life Tim Palmer, The Wild and Scenic Rivers of America

Karner blue butterfly Yellow lady’s slipper orchid

Trout Lilies at Belle Isle

Thank you to the following for use of their photographs: Suzan Cambell Mary Bohling David Howell Brenda Jones Molly Thompson Paul Labus Ben Legler Karen Rodriguez U. S. Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes National Program Office 312 -353 -2690; rodriguez. karen@epa. gov