Glynnis Collins
About Glynnis's Work
Glynnis is the Executive Director of Prairie Rivers Network (www.prairierivers.org), Illinois only statewide river conservation organization and the Illinois affiliate of the National Wildlife Federation. Our mission is to protect the rivers of Illinois for the people, fish, and wildlife that depend on them. We work to make sure that state and federal agencies are fully implementing laws and policies designed to protect clean water and habitat. We also provide assistance on organizing and technical support to groups and individuals who are working to protect their local waters. We have had many successes in influencing Illinois's NPDES water pollution permitting program (NPDES) and water quality standards development. A current concern is a resurgence in coal mining in the state - in the past, state agencies have shown little concern for pollution control and safety issues surrounding coal waste storage, or for the habitat destruction that results from longwall mining that is carried out here. We also see an increasingly urgent need to step up habitat protection efforts as global warming modifies the ranges of plants, fish, and wildlife. In Illinois's intensively managed landscape, our river corridors (often with a north-south orientation) provide much needed corridors for migration. We see the state's recently-adopted Fish and Wildlife Action Plan as a vehicle for funding and implementing habitat protection projects; Prairie Rivers Network is partnering with Illinois Department of Natural Resources to implement projects in a river-based conservation opportunity area. Before joining Prairie Rivers Network, Glynnis was and Environmental Scientist for the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board in Oakland, CA. There her main duties were in regulatory review and permitting of dredging and dredged material disposal projects in the Bay Area. Glynnis's husband is a professor at the University of Illinois. They live in Champaign-Urbana with their three children, next door to 2005 Fellow Stephen Wald.