2026 Great Lakes Coastal Symposium

Join us for a morning bird walk at Sheldon’s Marsh State Nature Preserve, a 472-acre preserve home to nearly 300 bird species and diverse wildflowers. Located adjacent to the conference resort, it is one of the last undeveloped shoreline sections in the Sandusky Bay region. The preserve contains a variety of habitats, including old fields, hardwood forests, woodland swamps, cattail marshes, barrier sand beaches, and open-water lakes — all remnants of the lake-marsh-forest ecosystem that once spanned thousands of acres along Lake Erie's western basin. The walk will be an easy, flat ~3-mile round trip from the resort.