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The Nature Conservancy Applauds Commitment by States and Provinces to Protect and Improve Great Lakes Ecosystem

Agreements Include Key Elements Necessary for Ecologically Sustainable Water Management

Chicago—December 12, 2005—The Nature Conservancy announces today that it supports the efforts of governors and premiers to help protect, conserve, restore and improve the waters and water-dependent resources of the Great Lakes basin.

“The Nature Conservancy recognizes sound water management as a necessary component to the health of the Great Lakes. Our leaders have now laid the foundation for a water policy that could lead to real benefits for the region,” said John Andersen, director of the Conservancy’s Great Lakes program.

“We support development of consistent standards to guide management of withdrawal from all waters of the Great Lakes basin,” Andersen said. “Effective water management under the Annex 2001 provisions will require cooperation and action based on the best available science.”

Based on The Nature Conservancy’s broad experience in protecting aquatic biodiversity and developing ecologically sustainable water management principles and practices, the Conservancy applauds the inclusion of the following elements in the final Annex 2001 Implementing Agreements:

• Explicit recognition that the waters of the Great Lakes basin are an interconnected hydrologic system that require cooperative approaches to water management, and a commitment to promote science-based water management across the basin.
• Provisions encouraging the implementation of water management approaches designed to prevent significant adverse ecological impacts, both individually or cumulatively, including but not limited to returning water withdrawn from the basin to the source watershed after use to minimize the ecological impacts of water loss.
• Provisions providing for assessments of cumulative impacts of water withdrawals.
• Development of an enhanced water reporting mechanism for all sectors, including public and private sources.
• Regular review of the effectiveness of the water resources inventory program, jurisdictional water management programs and regional administrative processes.

The Nature Conservancy was an advisory member of the Governors and Premiers’ Water Management Working Group. The goal of the Conservancy’s work in the Great Lakes region is to preserve the range of natural systems from groundwater-fed streams to interdunal wetlands that support a tremendous variety of plants and animals such as the Pitcher’s thistle and the lake sturgeon, many of which occur nowhere else on earth. Our work in the eight Great Lakes states is supported by more than 235,000 individual members.

The Nature Conservancy is a leading international, nonprofit organization that preserves plants, animals and natural communities representing the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific.