The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has announced grants totaling $1.6 million in support of projects aimed at improving community resilience and critical habitat in southeast Michigan.

Awarded through the Southeast Michigan Resilience Fund, the grants will support efforts to strengthen regional resilience through green infrastructure, enhancements to the urban tree canopy, and riverbank and floodplain habitat restoration. Many of the projects are designed to help restore critical habitat for wildlife, including monarch butterflies and migratory birds, while creating and enhancing public access to water resources in the region.

Recipients include the Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Authority, which will use its grant to improve eroded riverbank acreage along the Huron River at Willow Metropark in Wayne County, as well as in-stream, floodplain, and native prairie habitats; Chandler Park Conservancy, which will use the funds to install green stormwater infrastructure in Detroit's Chandler Park; Friends of the Rouge, which will plant trees, create rain gardens, and replace impervious surfaces to create seven thousand square feet of green stormwater infrastructure; and the City of Hamtramck, which will plant at least three hundred trees across the city and strengthen partnerships with local community stakeholders.

Resilience Fund partners include Cleveland-Cliffs; the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation; the Kresge Foundation; the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and the U.S. Forest Service.

"This public-private partnership is committed to investing in projects that deliver multiple benefits for the people and wildlife that call southeast Michigan home," said Jeff Trandahl, executive director and CEO of NFWF. "The grants awarded today represent the third year of investments made by the Southeast Michigan Resilience Fund and demonstrate the fund's ability to deliver ecological and community resilience benefits at a regional level."