Conservation / Stewardship

Conservation through preservation and stewardship of the lands and waters in the watersheds are critical for overall water quality and quality of life. Two Rivers Coalition supports conservation groups like Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy and Sarett Nature Center as well as local government organizations to promote land conservation and stewardship efforts. The undeveloped main river corridors, floodplain forest and headwater regions have ranked among top targets for conservation. The maps below show priority conservation areas for both watersheds based on GIS studies conducted by SWMLC.

In addition to land stewardship, we want to encourage good stewardship of our waters. This stewardship can entail collecting data to understand causes that are impacting water quality. Stewardship is simply defined as taking care of something and sometimes the first step in care is to understand the causes. Several of our projects are aimed at collecting direct or indirect water quality data to understand current conditions. These data can then be used to establish a baseline for and to indicate areas that need improvement.

Black River Conservation Priority Map: more details are in the Black River Watershed Management Plan Appendix G 

Paw Paw River Conservation Priority Map: more details are in the SWMLC Paw Paw River Study