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This is a review of Great Lakes coastal wetland protection measures for both the United States andCanada, including regulatory mechanisms, tax incentives, securement stewardship initiatives and special programs/partnerships. International, federal, provincial, state, and local government and nongovernment programs are reviewed with commentary on effectiveness of such programs. Programs vary in scope and comprehensiveness at all levels. Major recent initiatives focus on water quality improvement from federal/state government and waterfowl habitat restoration from government/nongovernment partnerships.

Effective conservation requires that species recovery measures are informed by rigorous scientific research. For imperilled freshwater fishes and mussels in Canada, numerous research gaps exist, in part owing to the need for specialized research methods. The Canadian Freshwater Species at Risk Research Network (SARNET) was formed and identified or implemented approaches to address current research gaps, including (1) captive experimental research populations, (2) nonlethal methods for estimating abundance and distribution, (3) nonlethal field methods to measure life-history parameters, (4) species distribution models informed by co-occurring species, (5) conservation physiology to inform habitat and threat science, (6) evidence syntheses to evaluate threats and recovery measures, (7) disease-transmission models to understand mussel–host relationships, (8) experimental mesocosms and manipulative experiments to evaluate key habitat stressors, (9) threat and hazard models for predictive applications, and (10) rigorous evaluation of surrogate species. Over a dozen threat- and recovery-focused SARNET research applications are summarized, demonstrating the value of a coordinated research program between academics and government to advance scientific research on, and to support the recovery of, imperilled freshwater species.

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