Milwaukee River Corridor Project

In its 1997 Natural Areas Plan, the Southeast Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC) identified 447 key remaining natural areas in southeastern Wisconsin.  More than 25 percent of these natural areas are in the Milwaukee River Watershed.  The SEWRPC Plan also identified environmental corridors, and highlighted their importance in maintaining watershed health and wildlife habitat.  Milwaukee Riverkeeper embraces the SEWRPC Plan because it speaks to our overall goals to restore, protect, and conserve the Milwaukee River Basin.

 

Milwaukee Riverkeeper initiated our Milwaukee River Corridor Project (Corridor Project) in 2002, with support from the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program and the Wisconsin DNR, to address the protection needs raised in the SEWRPC Plan.  The Corridor Project is a comprehensive watershed outreach effort to promote the importance of natural areas and river corridors in protecting water quality and wildlife habitat.   

 

The Corridor Project has four educational components for outreach into the Milwaukee River Basin: meetings with watershed communities to discuss corridor protection and sound land use planning; a corridor biology curriculum for high school students; an educational brochure on corridor biology and the SEWRPC Natural Areas Plan; and an interactive website with links to watershed organizations, corridor biology information, and data collected by high school students participating in the corridor biology curriculum. 

 

The overall goals of the Corridor Project are:  to generate interest and action to better protect river corridors and natural areas; to conserve wildlife habitat and movement pathways; and to improve water quality within the Milwaukee River Basin.  FMR also hopes that this project will help connect local residents to our rivers and river corridors, and provide them with a greater sense of place within their watershed.  By involving government agencies, municipalities, students, organizations, and citizens, the Milwaukee River Corridor Project creates a model approach for cooperative watershed management that can be replicated in other watersheds.