Detroit’s innovative bioretention gardens were featured in “Secret Gardens,” produced by Detroit Public Television’s Great Lakes Bureau and aired February 28, 2018 through the PBS Sci Tech Now program. A 2015 Erb grant helped create The Great Lakes Bureau to create, curate and distribute timely, topical stories about the Great Lakes ecology, economy and cultural history, building...
Certain bugs (stoneflies and other benthic-macroinvertebrates) and other wildlife indicate the health of our rivers. Identifying these insects is a perfect job for volunteers; it’s fun and builds environmental stewardship, while providing a cost-effective data set. Annual bug hunts and frog and toad surveys organized by watershed organizations engage more than 600 volunteers each year. Some...
After participating in a series of peer-led workshops, 68 farmers across Southeast Michigan, representing 15% of the farmland in the Western Lake Erie watershed, committed to practices that would prevent pollutants such as phosphorous and nitrogen from running off into the lake. Each farmer learned how to improve crop yields and soil health while reducing...
This image was taken on a recent boat tour where the Foundation joined farmers and public officials to see Lake Erie’s infamous algae bloom up close and better understand what causes it. Toxic algae continues to harm Lake Erie, impeding fishing, diminishing property values, and threatening Lake Erie’s multi-billion dollar tourism industries. Water treatment plants are...
We are pleased to share our 2014-2016 Foundation Report. The past three years were a time of incredible growth for the Foundation. Our assets more than doubled, we undertook our first five-year strategic review resulting in revised grant guidelines, we added two new board members and four new staff members, and we paid $25 million in...
Thanks to the Sierra Club, residents throughout the city of Detroit are beginning to embrace green infrastructure. For example, members of the Stahelin Street Tigers Block Club have installed seven rain gardens and rain barrels. Wayne State University has donated flow meters to measure the amount of water diverted from the sewer system, but residents...
Urban waterways like the Detroit River contain legacy toxins that are stored in the fat of fish feeding there years after the polluting source has been eliminated. Fish consumption advisories have proven largely ineffective with low-income people of color who are more likely to fish for consumption than for sport. Specially trained “river walkers,” anglers...