Grant Recipient:  River Alliance of Wisconsin

 

Grant Award:  $1,500,000

 

Lake Basin:  Michigan

 

Project Location:  Menominee River, along the Wisconsin-Michigan Border

 

Project Description:  The River Alliance of Wisconsin, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and partners will implement the first phase of a multi-phase project to help restore lake sturgeon in the Lake Michigan basin. The project will allow fish passage between historic spawning and rearing habitat in the Menominee River and Lake Michigan. Reconnection will occur by providing fish passage upstream and downstream around two dams, less than a mile apart, near the Menominee River’s mouth. For the first phase of the project, partners will install a fish guidance rack at the upper dam’s powerhouse to protect fish from entrainment and direct them to a bypass structure where they will be safely directed to a downstream conveyance and then passed around the lower dam. Upstream passage will be facilitated in subsequent phases. The long-term outcomes of this project, when all phases are complete, will include restored native fish passage between Lake Michigan and 21 river miles and a potential increase in the lake sturgeon population by as much as 20,000 adults within 50 to 100 years.