Habitat Protection and Restoration Grants

The Habitat Protection and Restoration grant by the Great Lakes Fisheries Trust aims to fund projects that protect and restore vital fish habitats in the Great Lakes region. Priorities include enhancing fish passage, supporting sustainable reproduction, and utilizing decision-support tools for project identification. Eligible applicants include non-profits and governmental organizations, focusing on projects within the Lake Michigan basin. This grant emphasizes community support and long-term management, ensuring impactful conservation efforts.

Program Goal and Objective
The goal of the GLFT’s Habitat Protection and Restoration grant category is to preserve essential habitat; protect, restore, and stabilize important fish habitats; and increase habitat availability.
The GLFT pursues these efforts through direct investment in specific places with degraded or vulnerable habitat through connectivity enhancements. Funding is distributed through a combination of funder-directed and competitive grants.
Land acquisition, dam removal, fish passage, and other capital projects are highly resource intensive and, as a leading strategy, would quickly exhaust the resources of the GLFT. Therefore, the GLFT limits its direct investment in these projects to situations where the habitat opportunity is prime, other funders are contributing, long-term management is assured, and the proposed acquisition or restoration project has the strongest community support and interest.