Our First Conservation Project

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Beaver Island Conservancy worked with community partners to ensure the conservation and permanent protection of 1631 feet of Lake Michigan shoreline! 

Earlier this year, we began our mission to protect land, air, and water, by identifying an opportunity to preserve a stretch of majestic Lake Michigan shoreline which contains delicate natural features and provide important habitat for migratory birds and endangered species. 

The regional land trust, Little Traverse Conservancy, saw the conservation merits of the property and was willing to help. They also saw the benefit of partnership and felt that Beaver Island Conservancy would be an appropriate landowner. 

"Regional land trusts cannot always spare the resources necessary to tackle every project," says Beaver island Conservancy founder, Heather Johnson, "so we brought together global, regional, and local organizations, as well as island landowners, to connect and permanently protect this wild sweep of beach adjoining 21 acres of hemlock-hardwood forest and forest wetlands. The project to protect the island we love took a community effort."

A range of organizations assisted with the project. The nation’s top environmental nonprofit, The Conservation Fund, provided a $240,000 loan to secure the land until funds can be raised. Local island business, Ed Wojan Realty, was a contributor to the project. Little Traverse Conservancy will manage approved conservation easements for permanent protection of the project area. Until the loan is satisfied, Michigan Environmental Council will hold title to the newly acquired land and is assuming fiduciary responsibilities such as overseeing use of funds and ensuring donors' contributions to Beaver Island Conservancy are tax-deductible.

The Project Area is more than a sweep of wild beach. It sits near the border of the newly designated Beaver Island Dark Sky Sanctuary -- darker than a Dark Sky Park, it one of only 15 DSSanctuaries in the world! A recent study of the area discovered the potential for archaeological features. A summer Plant Inventory found that the area provides habitat for the Lake Huron Tansy, a threatened and protected species. Providing Critical Stopover Habitat for migratory birds, the area sits between the Beaver Island Birding Trail and the Water Trail. Beaver Island was recently designated a Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary. 

Before the land at the center was saved, the eastern end of the Project Area was approved for a strict conservation easement (a legal instrument that can be tailored to ensure permanent protection of land). On the western end, a strip of state-owned beach and forest waited, unconnected to any other preserved land. In the center of the Project Area was a section of pristine land that could link both ends...but it was at risk of being developed.  "We are extremely grateful to The Conservation Fund for providing the loan," says Johnson. We needed to act quickly to preserve this pristine area for future generations of wildlife."

Now that a loan has been secured, Beaver Island Conservancy is seeking donations from individual and corporate supporters in order to pay it back, and to fund Next Projects. Future plans for the Project Area include honoring a request by the resident Island botanist to harbor threatened plant species requiring relocation due to Development, performing additional Plant Inventories in spring and fall seasons, and inviting further site exploration by archaeology field-school students from Northern Michigan University. Invasive plants control and management will continue in partnership with Beaver Island Terrestrial Invasive Species Program staff. 

The mission of the Beaver Island Conservancy is to continue to work with community partners to protect land and other natural resources on the 14 islands that make up the Beaver Island archipelago. “I look forward to working with the community to preserve our islands. Development has threatened the area,” says Johnson, “but if we act now, the innocence of the land as it is at this moment, untouched and unspoiled, is the way we can keep it forever.”

See pictures of the land that we saved! A photo gallery is below.