Welcome to the Great Lakes Commission’s new e-newsletter, The Advisor! The Advisor has long served as the GLC’s voice in the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence region. We are thrilled to launch this electronic version to keep our partners up to date on our work on behalf of our member states and provinces, and the 48 million people in the Great Lakes region. You can expect to receive The Advisor in your inbox monthly.
 
We welcome feedback on this publication and any of our programs – please contact us at advisor@glc.org with any questions or comments. Thank you for your continued support of the Great Lakes Commission.

Tim Eder, Executive Director, Great Lakes Commission

Now available: resources for municipalities on integrated water management and green infrastructure

We are proud to launch our Greater Lakes page to help municipalities improve their water infrastructure by providing resources for decision-makers on how a more integrated approach can benefit their bottom line – ecologically, socially, and financially.

These resources were completed as part of a 3-year initiative supported by the Great Lakes Protection Fund to examine the ecological and financial costs and benefits for pursuing water conservation and green infrastructure practices.

House passes Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Act, legislation heads to Senate

On April 16, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed the bipartisan Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Act. The GLRI is a successful and popular program that is helping states and local communities clean up degraded toxic hotspots, restore habitat for fish and wildlife, thwart Asian carp and other invasive species, and prevent polluted runoff that closes beaches and causes harmful algal blooms in the eight-state Great Lakes region. In January, similar legislation passed out of committee in the Senate.

We are working to ensure the Senate passes this vital legislation as soon as possible.

GLC’s Great Lakes Phragmites Collaborative releases case studies to aid management

Non-native Phragmites is managed throughout the Great Lakes region by organizations and individuals working under varying circumstances toward diverse goals.  As a result, managers develop different strategies to address their specific needs, and the opportunity to learn from their successes and challenges is huge. That’s why we’ve established the Great Lakes Phragmites Collaborative (GLPC), a regional partnership, to improve communication and collaboration and lead to more coordinated, efficient and strategic approaches to Phragmites management, restoration and research across the basin.
 
The GLPC recently released a collection of unique case studies that provide management guidance for any scale and showcase representative successes and challenges.

GLC convenes national bird experts to collaborate on open water bird conservation and planning

National and regional bird experts gathered recently for our Informing Great Lakes Pelagic Bird Management Workshop. The workshop brought planners, managers, and bird experts from across the U.S. and Canada to explore ways to convert pelagic bird data collected over the past three-plus years into a format that can support wildlife and natural resource management decisions across the Great Lakes region. Over 30 participants attended the workshop, representing federal and state agencies, local government, research entities, non-governmental organizations and tribal government.
 
The workshop was an important step in what is now in the third phase of a multi-year effort let by the GLC:  the Monitoring and Mapping of Avian Resources project.

Local news releases series highlighting GLC’s work on Michigan Areas of Concern

Issue Media Group and its family of online publications recently published an outstanding series of articles on Michigan’s Great Lakes Areas of Concern (AOCs).  In addition to showcasing work in individual AOCs, this great series also profiled key leaders who have fueled the restoration process in their communities. 
 
Don’t miss the interview with our very own advocacy director and AOC lead Matt Doss!

Great Lakes Panel on Aquatic Nuisance Species holds meeting, hosts federal ANS Task Force

The GLC serves as convener for the Great Lakes Panel on Aquatic Nuisance Species, which works to prevent and control aquatic invasive species in the‪ Great Lakes. Recently they met in Traverse City, where we also hosted the federal Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force. Materials from the meetings will be available on our website shortly.

We particularly enjoyed taking everyone on a (cold and rainy, but beautiful!) field trip to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore to see how the Lakeshore is managing aquatic invaders!

New staff and changes at the GLC

2016 is off to an exciting start at the GLC. We are completing work on an updated five-year strategic plan to guide our work from 2016 through 2020. We are also growing, with three new strategic hires in the past year and more to come in 2016.

Steve Cole, our Chief Information Officer, is leading our information management and delivery services - this includes leadership of our transformative Blue Accounting initiative, which will bring together the right people to set region-wide goals, determine how best to track progress against those goals, and deliver the right information to help leaders better set priorities and allocate resources in the Great Lakes region.


As communications manager, Beth Wanamaker is supporting individual projects, advocacy and outreach, and our overall regional mission and mandate. Beth is also the voice behind all of our social media accounts – say hi on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram!




Our new program manager Nicole Zacharda coordinates our nonpoint source pollutant reduction project portfolio, including our exciting new ErieStat project — an information platform that will track progress toward meeting the shared goal of a 40% reduction in phosphorus loads to the Western Lake Erie Basin.

 

Upcoming events

June 2: HABs Collaboratory State of Science Webinar Series Launches
The Great Lakes HABs Collaboratory is launching a webinar series focused on the latest research related to Harmful Algal Blooms in the Great Lakes.

June 15: Lower Fox Demonstration Farms Network Open House and Field Day
Join the Lower Fox Demonstration Farms Network to learn about the great conservation practices being used to improve both soil health and water quality in northwest Wisconsin.‬

June 15: Crude Move Webinar Series: Spill Response Requirements and Regional Capacity
Join the Great Lakes Sea Grant Network and the Great Lakes Commission for the Crude Move webinar series. Participants will explore the transport of crude oil across the Great Lakes Basin.

October 6-7: Great Lakes Commission Annual Meeting
Save the date for the 2016 Great Lakes Commission Annual Meeting at the Fairmont Royal York in beautiful Toronto. Additional details will be published as the meeting date approaches.