EUP Partners in Ecosystem Management

In 1992, eight of the largest land holding and land managing organizations in Michigan's Eastern Upper Peninsula formed the Eastern Upper Peninsula Partners in Ecosystem Management group (EUPPEM).

EUPPEM is composed of government agencies, forest product companies, and a private conservation organization. Together, these organizations manage about 66% of the 3.9 million acres in the Eastern Upper Peninsula Ecoregion.

EUPPEM's mission is to:
"Facilitate complementary management of public and private lands, for all appropriate land uses, using a landscape-ecological approach to sustain and enhance representative ecosystems in the Eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan".

The role of the group has been to provide a forum to review new management ideas informally and to share information. Partners work informally, stressing communication, understanding, and cooperation, rather than formal procedures and protocols. Actual management decisions are left to the individual organizations within the group and actual management is carried out on the holdings of each partner.

EUPPEM's accomplishments have been in:
(1) Development of Land Type Associations (LTAs) for the Eastern Upper Peninsula Eco-Region based on the National Hierarchical Framework of Ecological Units;
(2) Development of databases within the framework of a geographic information system.
(3) A field demo in the Two Hearted River basin to test whether the partnership could effectively assemble and interpret relevant information and ultimately coordinate activities in an area such that the integrity of the system would be sustained.

EUPPEM continues to gather, organize, and analyze information and develop stronger coordination strategies emphasizing linkages with other ecosystem planning efforts, small private landholders, and tribal interests.