The Minnesota Senate passed a bill including a requirement that state agencies identify the statutes and rules that should be changed to prevent fish kills in southeast Minnesota. This provision was rolled into the large Environment Omnibus bill HF2310. However, the House version of the bill does not contain this requirement. We need your...
Public Access – Permanent DNR easements along streams ensure fishing access, the ability to restore habitat, and protection of riparian corridors. Loss of “informal” access is accelerating. Substantially increased funding is needed now to seize generational opportunities before lands are sold and subdivided, or posted. Better signage and policy changes...
The Legislature now looks disturbingly close to ending its session without passing a Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR) appropriation bill. If it fails to act this year and respect the LCCMR vetting process, our outdoor education program will cease. The Senate passed its version of the LCCMR appropriation bill HF...
The Trout in the Classroom program - now in 60 schools around MN - will be forced to end on June 30 unless the Legislature passes an appropriations bill that respects the work of the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR). A phone call from you to your state senator...
While differences between the House, Senate, and Governor over the state budget have increased thelikelihood of a special session, the Legacy bill relies on dedicated revenues and can still be passed by theend of the regular session on May 17—with or without a budget agreement. Dedicated funding toprotect and restore...
For the past ten years the possibility of a new type of mining in northeast Minnesota has consumed the energies of environmentalists, conservationists, businesses, agencies, and politicians at all levels of government. The debate about whether, where and how to permit the mining of precious metals from sulfide ore deposits,...
Under the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) proposed “Sustainable Timber Harvest Analysis” plan, the DNR intends to harvest trees from 90% of the land the Fisheries Section owns along trout and steelhead rivers in Lake County. This includes riparian forests along premier rivers such as the Split Rock, Beaver,...
What do the Whitewater, Vermillion, Straight and Sucker rivers all have in common besides being popular trout streams? They all suffer from one or more impairments caused by pollution or degradation. This week the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency released its Draft 2020 Impaired Waters List identifying more than 500 additional stream...
The Environment & Natural Resources omnibus bill, SF2314, contains several provisions which, if adopted in the final bill version, would undermine basic groundwater protections and allow destruction of trout fisheries. The Senate version of SF 2314 has provisions (Sections 81, 82, 84 and 85) undermining intelligent groundwater management, which will lead...
A key meeting to consider nitrate-contaminated groundwater and trout streams in the karst region of southeast Minnesota (MN’s portion of the Driftless area) will be held Monday March 25, 2019 in Red Wing, MN beginning at 5:30 p.m. The Minnesota Environmental Quality Board (EQB) will hold a public meeting that...
