PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #49: Restoration of Public Lands.
Presiding: D. Gordon
Wednesday, August 7. 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM. Mohave Meeting Room, TCC.

Ecological restoration in Michigan State Parks.

Palmgren, Glenn^*,1, ¹ Michigan Natural Features Inventory, Lansing, MI

ABSTRACT- Michigan State Parks, with over 265,000 acres in 96 units including 87,000 acres of natural areas, contain some of the best remaining examples of the natural communities of Michigan. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR), Parks &Recreation Bureau is charged in its mission to "...protect and preserve the natural, historic, and cultural features of Michigan's unique resources..." The State Park Stewardship Program, since it's inception in 1995, is responsible for coordinating natural resource protection and restoration within state parks. The Stewardship Program has undertaken several large-scale ecological restoration projects in parks containing exemplary natural communities, rare plants, and rare wildlife. Current projects include restoration of globally imperiled lakeplain prairie and oak openings at Algonac State Park, oak-barrens (savanna) restoration at Highland, Fort Custer, and Island Lake Recreation Areas, and ecological reclamation of a sand mine at Grand Mere State Park. The Michigan Natural Features Inventory (MNFI) provides guidance for management and restoration through a full-time stewardship ecologist dedicated to state parks. The State Park Stewardship Program has also contracted with MNFI to comprehensively survey all state parks for rare plants, animals, and natural communities. State parks are now known to contain over 150 species of state endangered, threatened, and special concern plants and animals and exemplary examples of over half of the natural community types known from Michigan. "Stewardship management plans" are researched and written by MNFI's stewardship ecologist for parks with large-scale restoration projects. Specific restoration tasks are accomplished through multi-agency cooperative efforts and through contracts with local restoration companies. Typical ecological restoration goals include reintroducing fire into fire-adapted communities (through prescribed burning), controlling invasive non-native species, collecting seed and planting local-genotype native plants, and monitoring the effects of management on natural communities, rare plants, and rare animals.

KEY WORDS: Michigan State Parks