FCA US Headquarters Honored with Seedling Award by Wildlife Habitat Council

The Wildlife Habitat Council’s Huron to Erie Waterways for Wildlife Project has announced this year’s winners of the project’s regional awards and the FCA US LLC Auburn Hills Complex was among the winners.

The awards were part of the Wildlife Habitat Council’s Huron to Erie Project, which unites about 40 corporate conservation programs in southeast Michigan and southwest Ontario. FCA US won the Seedling Corporate Habitat of the Year award.

The Wildlife Habitat Council met on June 16, 2016 at the automaker’s Auburn Hills Complex to present the award to FCA US officials.

The winners were chosen by a panel of independent judges from the conservation community. The judges’ selections were from among the 20 corporate conservation programs in the region that were certified by the Wildlife Habitat Council in 2015.

“We’re very proud of the conservation being accomplished on local and regional levels, which add up to a global impact by WHC member companies,” said Margaret O’Gorman, president of the Wildlife Habitat Council.

The “Seedling” award is new to the conservation program. FCA US headquarters and the Chrysler Technology Center’s program was first certified in 2015. The company’s office and research campus includes natural wetlands that host a Great Blue Heron rookery (nesting colony). The company enhances this habitat by managing the complex’s water levels and quality, and by ensuring the area around the rookery is undisturbed during the nesting season. They have monitored the heron colony since 2010.

In 2013 and 2014, officials at FCA’s Auburn Hills Complex installed a series of pollinator gardens using strictly native species. Some of these include a Monarch Butterfly Waystation, including the milkweed plants on which the monarch caterpillars depend. Eight bat houses (capacity 100 bats each) were also installed in 2015 to protect new born bats from birth to adulthood

FCA US officials say the Seedling Award confirmed that the Auburn Hill’s Complex Wildlife Team was on the right track. The award also provided additional motivation for the team to expand its efforts and for it to investigate additional initiatives to increase the scope of its conservation program.