Crossroads Receives $50,000 Grant

Engaging volunteers and hiring contractors is funded through a grant Crossroads received from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Crossroads at Big Creek has received a two-year, $50,000 Coastal Program Grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) that will allow the organization to expand work begun in 2020 to restore the ecological health of Big Creek.

In 2020, Crossroads received a $45,000 grant from the USFWS, a $189,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and a $42,000 from the Fund for Lake Michigan. This money allowed the nonprofit to hire contractors to remove invasive species such as reed canary grass, glossy buckthorn and other nonnative plants, and to replace them with native shrubs, saplings and seed cover that provide nourishment to wildlife.

The grants awarded in 2020 focused on 25 acres along the riparian corridor. The USFWS grant awarded this year allows Crossroads to expand its restoration work into an additional 30 acres, including a piece of remnant boreal forest, a section of spring-fed tributary and larger sections of the Cove Estuary Preserve where Big Creek enters Sturgeon Bay.