Steel bulkheads that prevented fish from finding food or shelter have now been replaced with natural shore habitat and a park for the community.

Restoration efforts are helping control the invasive weed Phragmites, and allowing native plants and wildlife to return, including bald eagles.

Federal Great Lakes restoration funds restored two miles of shoreline and habitat along Muskegon Lakes, allowing fish, turtles, shorebirds and waterfowl to return.

Funding from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is restoring a native prairie and marsh ecosystem to Chicago’s Northerly Island in Lake Michigan to provide habitat to native fish and wildlife, and an outdoor recreation space in the city for people.

What was once a heavily commercialized site has now been restored to a natural state, with the entrenched creek liberated, native trees and shrubs planted, and a six-acre wetland created.

A coalition of more than 20 government agencies, business and community groups developed and implemented a $705,500 plan for reducing bacterial pollution at Bradford Beach, a Lake Michigan beach on Milwaukee’s north side.

In 2003, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources declared war on an invasive strain of common reed, known as Phragmites, which had taken over large areas of William C. Sterling State Park.

Restoring Tobico Marsh was part of a larger effort to heal damaged wetlands and remove contaminated sediments from the Saginaw River and Saginaw Bay. The bay is one of the prime walleye fishing and waterfowl-hunting areas in the Great Lakes, despite serious environmental problems.