Strategic Plan
In 2024, after 25 years of innovative work in and with our communities to restore and protect the Ausable River and its fresh water, the Ausable River Association became the Ausable Freshwater Center. This change recognizes our growing capacity to provide communities within and outside the Ausable watershed with solutions that restore streams, protect riparian habitat, sustain water quality, and build climate resilience.
Our programs and projects will continue to focus on the Ausable watershed—our home and our laboratory for innovation, where we can monitor our success. Moving forward, we will bring our expertise in stream restoration, habitat management, watershed assessment, and science-based problem solving to other river systems in the Adirondack Park: the Boquet, Saranac, Schroon, Raquette, Upper Hudson, and more. We'll partner with local communities, watershed groups, government agencies, funders, other regional nonprofits, and landowners for the benefit of streams, lakes, wetlands, and people.
Why we do what we do
Fresh water is essential. Together, fresh surface and groundwater make up less than one percent of all water on earth, yet it supports all life.
On every continent, in every time, humans have cherished and used streams, lakes, and wetlands—harnessing their power, relying on their sustenance, and finding inspiration in their beauty. But in living alongside and using these freshwater resources to support our needs, we have compromised their health and viability. Their apparent resilience—water continues to flow—is deceptive. Healthy, self-sustaining streams are essential to life, and people are essential to protecting and restoring them.
Communities large and small can change their relationships to streams, lakes, and wetlands. Careful, scientific study of these systems can help us document and understand their current condition, identify threats to their health, and pinpoint the root causes of these problems. Guided by science and working in partnership with communities, together we can repair, restore, protect, and live sustainably with the freshwater systems on which we all rely.
This is the work of the Ausable Freshwater Center.
You can download or read our strategic plan by clicking the link in the left column.
