Dec 21, 2020 MARQUETTE — The Upper Peninsula Environmental Coalition is now accepting applications for the 2021 round of its Community Conservation Grant and Environmental Education Grant Programs. UPEC’s Community Conservation Grant Program is designed to challenge U.P. communities to promote conservation values within their watershed or local area. In the past, short-sighted actions by corporate or individual landowners often degraded the U.P. landscape. UPEC’s Community Conservation Grants initiative focuses on communities that want to step up the protection of conservation values in their locality. The grants, up to $10,000 each, are for planning or implementing local conservation projects that engage a variety of stakeholders within a community. Grants could be awarded for finding ways to enhance native plant and animal life and the systems that support them. They can be for starting a community forest or preserve, or restoring a stream or wetland, or putting on a program about local medicinal plants, rare frogs, or top predators. These are only examples; local communities can come up with their own ideas.