The Nature Conservancy. Protecting nature. Preserving life.™

While nature.org focuses on marine conservation this spring, we talked to our director of coastal conservation, Rachael Franks Taylor, on her vision for protecting the health of coastal systems in the Great Lakes.

nature.org:

Rachael Franks Taylor:

Coastal areas, including shoreline, are the biological engines of the Great Lakes – they are the centers of diversity and productivity. Largely because of this, they are also important for people, who find beauty and enjoyment in visiting them, and many depend on coasts for their livelihoods. Fisheries, shipping, and tourism are all industries that rely on the coastal interface.

nature.org:

Rachael Franks Taylor:

The Nature Conservancy has been engaged in land protection and management, including invasive species control, on Michigan’s coasts for many years – these are still very important strategies. Yet with our improved understanding of threats that transcend these place-based approaches, we need to develop strategies that address issues like altered hydrology, which may mean doing “coastal conservation” farther inland and upland. 

Our strategies will include activities some distance from the shore, such as floodplain restoration and natural drain management in agricultural watersheds, which are not new for the Conservancy, but new in terms of setting priorities and tracking progress relative to our coastal and near-shore conservation goals. We’re also considering recommending more dam removals to provide access to critical habitats needed by river-spawning fishes, and building our scientific understanding of these highly dynamic systems.

At the same time, we are learning more about the anticipated impacts of climate change. While lake level fluctuation is a natural, cyclical process in the Great Lakes – and indeed some of our endemic species have specifically adapted to those fluctuations – climate change may take those cycles outside of their normal ranges, causing stress that could have long-term negative repercussions for some coastal systems.
Improving coastal and near-shore health will definitely still include activities right on the shoreline. Certainly land protection, where opportunities and resources exist will continue; invasive species management, both aquatic and terrestrial, will remain necessary; and coastal wetland restoration is needed to counteract grave historic losses. We also need better policies and practices in place with coastal landowners to adopt and maintain dynamic coastal processes that are so critical to the formation and persistence of coastal and near-shore habitats.

As always, a very important strategy is increasing awareness, both among decision-makers and people who depend on the Great Lakes, so that we can all understand better what our roles can be in protecting these habitats.

nature.org:

Rachael Franks Taylor:

The Great Lakes are the ultimate receiving body of everything we do on land in the basin, and activities in the greater watershed can have profound impacts on coastal systems. As naturally vegetated landscapes – forests and wetlands – are converted to other land uses, water moves through the system differently (i.e., our natural hydrology is altered).

Watershed activities can change the amount and timing of sediment and nutrient delivery, availability of oxygen in rivers and near-shore waters, and other factors that affect habitat quality. Once a landscape is changed, water can pulse through the system more rapidly than it normally would, with less time for the sediments, nutrients, and contaminants to sift out as it travels across impervious landscapes or other altered waterways. Formerly, that water would be slowed by vegetation and routed through riparian wetlands where the free services of nature take care of water quality needs.

The construction of dams and other barriers, like culverts under roads, also accelerate and increase sediment and nutrient loads in the bays. And, when poorly designed, they pose an obstacle for river-spawning fishes and other aquatic critters to access key upstream habitats. We need a stronger link between upstream decision-making to downstream implications.

nature.org:

Rachael Franks Taylor:

Certainly, we wish we knew more about off-shore and coastal terrestrial systems, but the most significant knowledge and data gaps are those that relate to near-shore habitats and physical processes. While these areas are regularly inventoried for fisheries management purposes, those reports tend to emphasize the status of game species rather than taking a holistic look at the health of the shoreline as it relates to the larger coastal system.

Unfortunately, studying shallow waters is more difficult logistically (you need smaller boats to access these areas, and therefore, more time and people-power). But, these systems are highly dynamic and complex, offering us a wealth of potential data and information. Many agencies and organizations recognize this, and are seeking to improve our understanding.

For example, the Army Corps of Engineers and the National Oceanicographic and Atmospheric Administration are developing high-resolution bathymetry data that shows the complexity of our coastlines. The Great Lakes National Program Office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has invested in side-scan sonar technology and intends to develop detailed mapping of the near-shore habitats.

The Nature Conservancy works with partners through the Great Lakes Fisheries Trust to help develop an agenda for near-shore science research and has sought funding to develop a comprehensive coastal classification framework, which would provide an architecture for many types of data and knowledge (new and existing) so that we can more completely assess current condition and track habitat changes and trends over time.

Of course, ultimately, we need to make sure that this information is made meaningful for decision-makers and conservation practitioners.

nature.org:

Rachael Franks Taylor:

The Nature Conservancy has actually been quite active in the watershed for almost a decade with our work in the Shiawassee River area. Saginaw Bay and its watershed is really an important place for its coastal wetlands, warm water rivers and streams, and the highly productive open waters in the bay itself. Our research on the Lake Huron Biodiversity Conservation Strategy confirms this again and again. Yet, it’s highly altered as well.

The watershed, which includes all or part of 22 counties as well as 15 percent of the state’s land base, is one of the largest in the Great Lakes region and has been converted from its historic wetlands and forests to a largely agricultural, industrial, and urban/suburban landscape. These land use changes have taken their toll on the bay. Altered hydrology is a primary threat here and is one of the key areas our conservation work will be addressing.

One thing we’ve heard repeatedly in Saginaw Bay is the need for a watershed-wide context for conservation – creating a more comprehensive vision and strategy that links the great work in the watershed, by all institutions, organizations and landowners, to the work happening on the coast and ultimately leads to systemic improvements in the bay itself.

After decades of successful work in other agricultural watersheds in the Midwest, the Conservancy believes that the science and tools developed in that work would bring value to the efforts underway in the Saginaw Bay watershed by agencies and other organizations.

nature.org:

Rachael Franks Taylor:

Western Lake Erie is a great demonstration of how federal investment through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is serving as an important catalyst throughout our region. A good example of this is at our Erie Marsh Preserve, which is managed in cooperation with the Erie Shooting and Fishing Club, Ducks Unlimited, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as part of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge. Ducks Unlimited had developed a plan to upgrade infrastructure on the preserve needed to control water levels, manage invasive Phragmites, and adaptively manage the coastal wetland units behind the dikes.

If our proposal for Erie Marsh gets funded, it will serve as a means for deeper and wider dialogue with partners from Michigan’s DNRE, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Windsor to broaden the restoration efforts across boundaries. All of these partners are helping us go beyond considering restoration at one place to working toward a holistic vision for a healthy North Maumee Bay and, ultimately, Western Lake Erie Basin.

The evolution of these conversations represents a paradigm shift that is welcome in coastal systems. Rather than implementing a single action in a single place for a single species, we’re wrestling with how to protect and restore a network of functional coastal habitats for the full suite of biodiversity. That’s the scale at which coastal conservation makes the most sense and will be most effective.