Great Lakes Fishery Commission

Updated 2026-07-28 15:28:37

Lake Erie-2021-2025 -> 5.0 Environmental Objectives -> Habitat

Lake Erie environmental priorities

One of the Lake Erie Committee’s (LEC) Guiding Principles is that protection, enhancement, and rehabilitation of critical fish habitat, including tributary and nearshore spawning and nursery habitats, are required to sustain productive fisheries over the long term. Similarly, the Council of Lake Committees Environmental Principles aims to facilitate and promote the protection, restoration or enhancement of functional habitats that support fish stocks across the Great Lakes. In support of these environmental principles, the LEC Habitat Task Group completed an exercise in 2018 to identify and define Priority Management Areas in the Lake Erie basin.

The Habitat Task Group’s Priority Management Area exercise identified 116 functional habitats used by 139 distinct fish stocks along with potential habitat actions including site-specific actions (e.g., dam removal, fish passage, shoreline softening and naturalization) and regional actions (e.g., watershed nutrient and sedimentation reduction initiatives, conservation of local fish stocks). From 2021 through 2023, the LEC Habitat Task Group worked to create functional Geographic Information System (GIS) layers and a geospatial data viewer to visualize Priority Management Areas identified in the 2018 exercise. Visualizing the initial Priority Management Area dataset made it evident that more research was needed to address gaps and data needs, driving research directions for the Lake Erie Environmental Priorities. The Habitat Task Group is currently working collaboratively with the Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat Framework to transition the Priority Management Area dataset into a functional GIS-based framework that would increase the usefulness and accessibility of these data for fisheries biologists, managers, and other governance groups.

The LEC used the Priority Management Area exercise to guide the development of the Lake Erie Environmental Priorities, which is designed to communicate and align complex fisheries management priorities among governance groups in the Lake Erie community. The Lake Erie Environmental Priorities have been incorporated into a number of initiatives across the basin, including the Lake Erie Lakewide Action and Management Plan 2019-2023, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Great Lakes Fishery and Ecosystem Restoration program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Regional Habitat Partnerships, and the allocation of funding through the NOAA and the Coastal States Organization.