Glacial Heritage Area (GHA)
Vision, Goals, and Objectives

Create a coordinated network of places and corridors that: enables and encourages a variety of compatible and sustainable outdoor recreation uses; preserves, restores, and protects significant habitats; benefits and integrates with local economic growth and farmland protection efforts; enhances the quality of life by maintaining and improving the land and water resources that underpin the economy; and helps residents and visitors maintain a strong connection to the natural world.

GOAL 1: Create exceptional outdoor recreation opportunities for residents and visitors — work with willing landowners to protect and link conservation lands in a network that collectively provides a wide variety of readily accessible, nature-based recreation opportunities that are compatible with and foster natural resource sustainability.

• OBJECTIVE 1A: Complete already approved conservation and recreation projects and establish new publicly-accessible areas to address outdoor, nature-based recreation needs in the region.
• OBJECTIVE 1B: Establish corridors and buffers that link public properties and increase recreation opportunities and maintain traditional uses.
• OBJECTIVE 1C: Establish connections between nearby cities and villages and the Glacial Heritage Area's network of properties.
• OBJECTIVE 1D: Provide facilities that encourage participation in a wide variety of compatible land-and water-based, non-motorized recreation activities.
• OBJECTIVE 1E: Incorporate educational opportunities, including environmental, cultural, and historical components, into outdoor recreational activities.
• OBJECTIVE 1F: Provide opportunities for people with diverse interests and abilities to engage in outdoor recreation activities that will facilitate their appreciation for, and connection to, the environment.

GOAL 2: Preserve wildlife and water resources — work with willing landowners to create a network of conservation lands and habitat corridors that help preserve and improve the quality and viability of wildlife and water resources.

• OBJECTIVE 2A: Protect, restore, and manage critical native prairie, savanna, woodland, and wetland habitats and other sensitive and unique areas and the wildlife that inhabit them.
• OBJECTIVE 2B: Help improve and preserve water quality and quantity in lakes, wetlands, rivers, and groundwater through various means, including protecting and restoring blocks of undeveloped shoreline habitat and groundwater recharge areas, and encouraging urban and rural landowners to utilize various conservation practices.

GOAL 3: Complement the voluntary protection of working farms — maintain the area's agricultural economy and rural character by coordinating with farmers, as well as local, state and federal initiatives that seek to voluntarily preserve working lands.

• OBJECTIVE 3A: Encourage and help facilitate the protection of farms throughout the Glacial Heritage Area to maintain the area's open and rural landscape.
• OBJECTIVE 3B: Emphasize through educational materials the importance of farming to the quality of life in the Glacial Heritage Area and as an integral component of the "strings and pearls" network.
• OBJECTIVE 3C: Minimize conflicts to farm operations from adjacent land uses by helping to protect lands that buffer key farmland.

GOAL 4: Combine ecology and economics to improve resident's quality of life — using existing protected lands as its foundation, create and integrate the Glacial Heritage Area with growth planning of local communities to maximize land use efficiency as well as provide financial, recreation, and conservation "returns."

• OBJECTIVE 4A: Coordinate and integrate the network of conservation and recreation lands with growth planning in the area, including local parks planning, to maintain and enhance the quality of life for future generations.
• OBJECTIVE 4B: Leverage the Glacial Heritage Area to help promote, expand, and diversify local economic development goals.

GOAL 5: Work collaboratively across jurisdictions — with input from a broad range of interests, create a coordinated project across political boundaries that turns the vision of the future of the Glacial Heritage Area into reality for future generations.

• OBJECTIVE 5A: Bring together rural and urban residents, landowners, local units of government, conservation groups, recreation users, businesses, elected officials, agencies, and others to develop and implement the Glacial Heritage Area project.
• OBJECTIVE 5B: Encourage and support local communities and organizations to collaboratively and collectively embrace a significant role in planning and implementing the Glacial Heritage Area.
• OBJECTIVE 5C: Develop one recognizable identity where the entire network of areas and corridors, regardless of ownership, is viewed by the public as one unified, seamless project.