Wildlife

Birds, turtles, fish and all our furry friends -- we care about the animals on our lands. Our professional resource managers watch over wildlife and keep a close eye on threatened and endangered species. Professional foresters, land managers and environmental planners are part of our wildlife management plans.

The wildlife and forestry management plans for our hydroelectric plants along the Au Sable, Manistee and Muskegon rivers in Northern Michigan are specific about protecting threatened and endangered species. The bald eagle, Karner blue butterfly, trumpeter swan and Indiana bat are among the animals we protect. Because our lands along the rivers are largely undeveloped, they provide excellent nesting habitats and a healthy diet. We’re also involved in wetlands protection and monitoring, with extensive nest box programs for wood duck, bluebirds, purple martins, tree swallows and kestrels. We collaborate with state and federal agencies and advocacy groups to integrate our efforts with wildlife officials working in the Huron-Manistee National Forest.

We’ve had some notable success. Over the last couple of decades, bald eagle breeding territories around our hydroelectric facilities have increased. Since 1994, more than 270 bald eagle chicks fledged on our hydroelectric lands. We also work with Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources to tag the peregrine falcon chicks that hatch every year at our Campbell Generating Complex in West Olive.

Bats find refuge at Tippy Dam on the Manistee River. More than 21,000 bats—including brown, eastern pipistrelle, threatened northern long-eared bats and endangered Indiana bats—spend winters hibernating in the dam spillway. In 2018, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service presented us with their Bats for Tomorrow award.

In addition, for more than 20 years we’ve been part of a national conservation effort to restore the trumpeter swan population. We’ve released 26 young adult trumpeter swans into wetlands behind several hydroelectric plants. Trumpeter swans raise their young on our lands along the lower Au Sable River and in lakes and beaver ponds in the adjacent Huron-Manistee National Forest. More than 200 of these birds winter here every year.