2017 Wetlands Conference Workshops

Protection and Restoration of Wild Rice

This workshop will focus on the protection and restoration of Wild Rice in Michigan. We will spend the afternoon learning about the different varieties of wild rice, or “Manoomin,” found in Michigan, habitat and growing conditions, range, Tribal significance, and restoration efforts. After these presentations we will head outside for “Wild Rice Camp” where we will participate in a live demonstration of processing harvested wild rice in the traditional tribal methods. It will be interactive, engaging, and outside!

Siting Wetland Mitigation and Restoration in a Watershed Context

This workshop will focus on assessing the functions and values of impacted wetlands using the Landscape Level Wetland Functional Assessment (LLWFA) approach and determining which restoration and mitigation sites will likely replace those functions. Participants will work in a small group setting to analyze impacts to wetlands, screen potential mitigation sites, and make decisions on likely outcomes of restoration projects. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) has been working since 2006 on refining and expanding the use of the LLWFA across much of the state. This approach addresses both a current (2005) wetland inventory and a Pre-European Settlement inventory, to approximate change over time. Twenty watersheds have been thru the complete LLWFA process, and another ten watersheds are in some phase of completion. In, 2008 the U.S. Environmental Project Agency (EPA) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) adopted the Federal Mitigation Rule which placed an emphasis on planning wetland mitigation and restoration projects using the watershed approach. This workshop will cover using MDEQ’s LLWFA, watershed plans and other information to plan wetland restoration and mitigation projects in the watershed context.

Management of Invasive Wetland Species

When invasive species take hold, they can cause serious environmental damage to wetland ecosystems and can be very difficult to manage. This workshop will focus on management of invasive wetland species and will include case studies on early detection and rapid response, monitoring and surveying for invasive species, cooperative invasive species management, and more.