Conserving National Park Resources on America's Freshwater Coast

The North American Great Lakes are a globally significant and extraordinary resource, containing nearly 20 percent of the world's and 85 percent of our nation's total supply of freshwater. The 10,900-mile coastline of the Great Lakes is the longest in the nation. The Great Lakes watershed drains 200,000 square miles in eight U.S. states - Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin - and two Canadian provinces - Ontario and Quebec, and is home to more than 34 million residents, or ten percent of U.S. and twenty-five percent of Canadian populations. The lakes are nationally and internationally important for drinking water, power production, industrial use, irrigation, commercial and recreational fisheries, navigation and commerce. Millions of people enjoy fishing, hunting, swimming, boating, diving, and the sheer beauty of the Lakes above and below the surface. The basin's bogs, sand dunes, coastal wetlands, 30,000 islands, rocky shorelines, prairies, savannas, forests, fens, and other landscape features are globally unique and support a wide variety of species.