Our Work

Beginning in 1982, NWF’s Great Lakes Regional Center has built an exceptional team with deep knowledge of our region’s conservation challenges. We firmly believe that when communities are healthy, wildlife will flourish too. We recognize that Equity and Justice are essential to creating healthy habitats for all.

With our main office in Ann Arbor, Michigan, we want to offer a land acknowledgment to honor the Indigenous Peoples upon whose territory we reside and with whom we proudly partner on many issues.

Ann Arbor Land Acknowledgment

The land the City of Ann Arbor occupies is the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary lands of the Anishinaabeg – (including Odawa, Ojibwe and Boodewadomi) and Wyandot peoples. We further acknowledge that our City stands, like almost all property in the United States, on lands obtained, generally in unconscionable ways, from Indigenous Peoples. The taking of this land was formalized by the Treaty of Detroit in 1807. Knowing where we live, work, study, and recreate does not change the past, but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals

Learn more about the land you inhabit and existing land treaties here.

Here are our important programs that showcase the unique way we work. Take a look around, and visit our program pages for more information!

Water Policy Programs

The NWF-Great Lakes Regional Center works in many different ways to sustain healthy water from the Mississippi to the Ohio and across all of the Great Lakes.

• Line 5: NWF is working to stop the illegal operation of a dangerous, outdated pipeline running through the Great Lakes
• Lake Erie: Working to reduce pollution in Lake Erie that cause harmful algal blooms.
• Great Lakes Compact: Sustaining healthy levels of and flows of water across all the Great Lakes.
• Chemicals of Emerging Concern: The National Wildlife Federation is working to better understand how PFASs are impacting water resources and wildlife here in the Great Lakes region. We are leaders in creating and advocating for policies to reach solutions.

Education and Engagement Program

Cultivating the next generation of conservation leaders. Working with houses of worship to install native plant habitats.

Equity and Justice Program

We are working to infuse Equity and Justice into every aspect of our work at NWF. 

Restoration Program

Protecting the Great Lakes by ensuring there are federal funds and strategies in place to prepare for the greatest threats facing them today.

Wildlife Program

The Great Lakes is home to a variety of wildlife, and our programs work to ensure all wildlife thrive.

Climate Resiliency Program

Doing the work to prepare our homes, communities, public lands, and wildlife habitats for the effects of climate change.

Our Policy Work

We advocate for policy change that will improve the health and quality of the water, land, wildlife, and human communities that depend upon them.