The Great Lakes Protection Fund is excited to announce the investment of more than $1.7 million in two innovative regional projects that will launch and accelerate novel solutions to enhance the health of the Great Lakes and its ecosystems.

Improving Shoreline Resilience and Adaptation through Community Action ($150,000), led by Proof Projects

This design effort will leverage remote sensing technologies and data-collection to revolutionize coastal management across the Great Lakes region by introducing a new way of thinking about shoreline resilience. Great Lakes coastal communities now have an opportunity to reshape how their coastlines are built and managed for the future. Rather than the status quo “defend and control” approach, this team will help communities pursue a new adaptive system that works with natural coastal processes to more effectively handle the unpredictable impacts of climate change at a lower cost. Read more here. 

Improving the Health of the Great Lakes through Profitable Low Overhead Dairy Grazing ($1,560,000), led by The Wallace Center at Winrock International 

This team will demonstrate how low-overhead dairy grazing can revitalize the dairy sector by offering a scalable solution for farmers, the environment, and Great Lakes communities. This approach to dairy farming keeps perennial pasture on the landscape without tillage and with minimal synthetic inputs, reducing sediment and nutrient loss from land and improving water quality. Through this project, the team will design an innovative hub-based model that will more easily provide a scalable and competitive solution for dairy farms transitioning to regenerative low overhead dairy grazing.  Read more here.