Put a plan in place — A sustainability plan for the Rainy-Lake of the Woods Basin.  A plan with internationally-agreed objectives, targets and actions needed.  An international framework to oversee the plan. 

Sounds reasonable, right?  We been working towards this goal and many of the pieces are now in place.

Read more: A Sustainability Plan

We're working to ensure that there is enough science and management expertise and resources focused on the Rainy-Lake of the Woods Basin, now and for the future.

We need to continue to stimulate research and management program building and capacity internationally.  We build and support strategic research and management partnerships among governments and indigenous peoples, non-govermental organizations, private sector entities and individuals.

Examples of these partnership include:

• The establishment of the International Multi-Agency Arrangement (ongoing)
• The Historical Nutrient Budget and Lake Thermal Modeling Study (ongoing)
• The Lake trout Strategic Project — Predicting dissolved oxygen concentrations in Lake Trout lakes: Developing new tools for a multiple-stressor world (ongoing)
• The 2014 Rainy-Lake of the Woods State of the Basin Report ( pdf Full version (11.32 MB) )  ( pdf Overview version (1.92 MB) )
• The 2010 Preliminary Phosphorus Budgets and Water Quality Models for the Lake of the Woods and Rainy River ( pdf Overview version (3.38 MB) )
• The 2009 Rainy-Lake of the Woods State of the Basin Report ( pdf Standard resolution (8.94 MB) )

Since 2004, the annual International Rainy-Lake of the Woods Watershed Forum has been a strategic incubator for cross-border research, management collaboration, networking and communication. 

The 2018 Forum will take place March 7-, 2018 at the Rainy River Community College in International Falls, Minnesota

The Foundation leads a partnership of agencies to organize the Forum each year.  Attended each year by upwards of 160 research and resource managers, the Forum is the "hub" for all groups working to ensure the future ecological integrity of the waters of the Rainy-Lake of the Woods Basin.

  folder Forum Proceedings Archives

2017 Forum Announcement

Thanks to our 2017 Forum Sponsors

Unite and coordinate actions binationally — Imagine there are no borders. Erase the borders and have one lake, one watershed, shared management.

This is what the Foundation and its international partners have achieved on Lake of the Woods. We have built a platform for the future, to work together on joint research, management and protection of Lake of the Woods throught the International Joint Commission, the International Multi-Agency Arrangement and our International Watershed Coordinator.

Read more: International Coordination