Minnesota Land Trust

In 2021, we are celebrating 30 years of permanent land protection and restoration, with 629 conservation projects that protect over 2 million feet of sensitive shoreline and 70,788 acres of Minnesota’s critical and beautiful wildlife habitat. As a 501(c)(3), the Land Trust is governed by a volunteer board of directors and has 31 professional staff members with offices located in Saint Paul and Duluth.

Protecting what we have: Our permanent protection priorities include the state’s rich forests, threatened prairies and most fragile lakes and rivers. It’s guided by both state-wide science and on-the-ground, local knowledge. The primary protection tool is a conservation easement, where landowners voluntarily give up development rights on their land in perpetuity, keeping it in its natural state.

Restoring what we have lost: The Land Trust helps landowners restore their protected lands into natural habitat for birds, wildlife, and human recreation. The restoration may be part of a long-term habitat management plan for the property that guides restoration and management of the land, or as part of a program that focuses on specific habitats like prairie, wetlands, or stream restoration. The Land Trust’s role is to coordinate projects and funding and bring the best available science and the best quality outcomes to each property.

In addition to helping private landowners restore their land, the Land Trust is also partnering with the Department of Natural Resources to recover aquatic habitat within the St. Louis River Estuary – the largest aquatic restoration project in Minnesota’s history. One piece of this project also includes a partnership with the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa to reestablish one of the country’s largest wild rice beds.

Engaging the conservation leaders of tomorrow: With the continuing trend of decreased interaction with our natural world – among both children and adults – the Land Trust is committed to investing in efforts designed to engage current and future generations of Minnesotans in the great outdoors. This includes working with outdoor user groups and youth service agencies to bridge the equity and adventure gap that is widespread in Minnesota communities.

A) Accelerate land protection and improve key habitats as directed by our strategic plan. During 2022, we will seek to protect an additional 5,500 acres though conservation easements;

B) We will continue aquatic restoration efforts in the St. Louis River and expand our restoration efforts to reach approximately 2,000 acres of critical habitat in the state;

C) We will advance our efforts to bridge the equity and adventure gap through work with outdoor user groups and explore opportunities for deeper engagement in Minnesota communities. We are initiating a pilot program named Ambassador Lands that is focused on this work;

The Minnesota Land Trust has an on-going portfolio of projects in various stages of completion. The current pace suggests that we will complete 35-45 protection projects and continue work on 30 restoration projects over a 12-month period. The Ambassador Lands program is in a pilot phase, which means the Land Trust is developing and refining the program to learn the most effective way to deliver the program. We plan to have one to four Ambassador Land events completed in 2022.

The Minnesota Land Trust has a professional staff of 37 people (and growing), including many with advanced degrees and extensive practical experience in land conservation, restoration, real estate law and management. The staff is experienced, knowledgeable, and very approachable.

We utilize a proven model for permanent land protection and are attentive to to getting the most value for our budget. We are an expert in acquiring conservation easements on privately-owned lands. The Land Trust holds more than 95% of all easements in Minnesota held by non-profit organizations, making us the state leader in private land protection.

We also engage a unique but effective volunteer workforce. Each year, we train and certify approximately 100 volunteer monitors who visit each of our conservation easements. Many of these volunteers are retired from natural resource management backgrounds and act as an extremely efficient extension of our staff resources.

The Minnesota Land Trust is recognized as a national leader in the conservation field and was one of the first to receive accreditation from the Land Trust Alliance, which sets stringent standards of excellence.

As we noted above, over the past thirty years we have permanently protected more than 600 projects totaling over 70,000 acres of land and over 2 million feet of shoreline.

In 2017, we launched a plan to double our pace and complete as much conservation in the subsequent 10 years (by 2027) as we did in our first 25 years. At that time we had protected 1 million feet of shoreline and set a goal to protect 2 million feet of shoreline by 2027. In 2021, we successfully reached that goal, way ahead of schedule!

In 2019, we added private lands restoration component to our overall restoration program which repairs lands that have been lost due to pollution, neglect or invasive or non-native species. We have formed a strong partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and local landowners to restore the prairie pothole region of Minnesota.

In addition we have done transformational restoration work in the St. Louis River Estuary and Lake Superior Basin. Some significant accomplishments that were completed in partnership with local, state and federal officials
include:
*Restored Interstate Island for the Common Tern, a Threatened Species in Minnesota.
*Helped get the St. Louis River Estuary officially designated as a National Water Trail by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior in 2020.
*Removed 115,000 tons of wood debris, making way for natural re-vegetation that benefit fish, amphibians and invertebrate populations at Radio Tower Bay.
*Replaced a damaged and unattractive retaining wall that severely restricted access to the river and at the same time, created walleye and sturgeon spawning beds that help maintain a healthy fish population in the river at Chambers Grove.
*Partnered with the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa to reestablish one of the country’s largest wild rice beds.