Sustain Our Great Lakes, a public-private partnership that supports habitat restoration throughout the Great Lakes basin, has announced grants totaling $6.6 million in support of twenty-five ecological restoration projects.

Leveraging an additional $8.2 million in matching public and private funds, the grants will support efforts in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Canadian province of Ontario to restore coastal wetland habitat, enhance the quality and connectivity of streams and riparian habitats, control invasive species, restore wetland hydrology, improve nearshore health and water quality through green stormwater infrastructure, and reduce sedimentation and nutrient runoff. Collectively, the projects will restore seventy-two miles of stream and riparian habitat; reopen more than a hundred miles of river for fish passage; remove or rectify twelve barriers to aquatic organism passage; control invasive species on more than fourteen hundred acres of wetland, upland, and riparian habitat; restore fourteen hundred acres of wetland habitat; prevent more than twenty-five hundred tons of sediment from entering waterways annually; add a hundred and sixty million gallons of stormwater storage capacity; create more than a hundred and eighty thousand square feet of green stormwater infrastructure; and prevent more than thirty thousand pounds of nitrogen and eight thousand pounds of phosphorus from entering waterways annually.

Sustain Our Great Lakes works to advance the objectives of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a federal program designed to protect, restore, and enhance the Great Lakes ecosystem. Administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, SOGL receives funding and other support from ArcelorMittal, USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"Sustain Our Great Lakes continues to be a leader in binational ecological restoration and water quality improvements within the Great Lakes region," said NFWF executive director Jeff Trandahl. "The twenty-five grants announced today supply critical funding for projects within each Great Lakes state and the province of Ontario to help preserve and protect the region's globally unique habitats and natural resources."

For a complete list of grant recipients, see the Sustain Our Great Lakes website.