Stewardship from Scratch

Learn how Friends of the St. Clair River is getting creative and adapting our recipe for success when Mother Nature has other plans. We began the story of our stewardship program with one habitat restoration project, a dozen volunteers, and a caring, connected community. Over a five-year period, we added more than 100 volunteers, additional staff, a dedicated board of directors, increased organizational capacity and several projects. We continued to stir vigorously and added record high water levels, a couple of funding freezes and one pandemic. While there is no cookbook for starting or sustaining a stewardship program, there are things we can do to remain flexible, relevant, safe, hopeful and fun. Friends of the St. Clair River is committed to inspiring citizen action to restore, protect and enhance the St. Clair River and its watersheds around the Thumb Coast of Michigan through stewardship, monitoring and education.