Voyageurs Conservancy will connect 17,000 Minnesotans to the state's only national park through standards-aligned K-12 education, career-building fellowships, and enhanced programs that engage diverse audiences in the park's conservation.
Wilderness Inquiry will expand its work to provide a continuum of outdoor experiences for youth, adults, and families in communities across Minnesota by:
The Minnesota Zoo will improve the long-term viability of Minnesotas imperiled turtle populations by researching threats, implementing mechanisms to reduce mortality, and creating educational materials for use throughout the state.
The Conservation Partners Legacy Grant Program will be managed by the Department of Natural Resources to provide competitive matching grants of up to $400,000 to local, regional, state, and national non-profit organizations and government entities. In it's first 7 years of funding, the CPL program has provided 410 grants totaling $37 million to 133 different grantee organizations, positively affecting over 220,000 acres of habitat. Demand for CPL grants has continued to grow each year as new grantees hear about the program and successful grantees return.
A general Conservation Assessment of and Long Range Plan for the preservation of the library's local history collections was prepared by Wabasha Public Library. The Library contracted with the Midwest Art Conservation Center to complete the project. The Plan will be used to set preservation policies, to identify storage and environmental needs, to make recommendations for disaster preparedness and to develop policy and procedures for the collections
The Historical society hired a qualified professional conservator to conduct a general conservation assessment of its collections and provide a long range plan for preservation. The final report summarizes the condition of the collections environment at the Reads Landing School site. Recommendations include a collection review and inventory to be conducted. A comprehensive list of resources and suppliers was also included in the final report.
The Conservation Partners Legacy Grant Program, managed by the Department of Natural Resources, provided 56 competitive matching grants to non-profit organizations and governments, appropriating all the available ML12 funds.
Terrestrial invasive plants such as buckthorn, wild parsnip, garlic mustard, and others are becoming widespread threats throughout many sites in Minnesota. Present chemical and mechanical control methods tend to be costly, effective only in the short-term, or have other negative environmental impacts. However, an alternative practice of using grazing animals for invasive species management is used successfully in many parts of the western United States.
To upgrade a portable stage. The Cottonwood County Agricultural Society has purchased a new portable stage that is larger in size and accommodates a greater variety of performers. With this upgrade, the Agricultural Society will be able to accommodate 50-60 uses throughout the year at different venues and help to bring a larger, culturally diverse group to performances.
To offer multi-cultural and multi-generational history and music exhibitions. A lumberjack show will highlight the experience of early settlers, and folk-music and a polka performances will promote intergenerational and intercultural amity.
To hire a qualified architect to conduct a condition assessment of the Cottonwood County Courthouse, listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Provide educational demonstrations and displays of Minnesota history, ag and arts with a dog sledding exhibit, farm feud trivia, a butter churning demonstration, and art demonstrations.
We would like to be able to provide fairgoers a fun experience at seeing horses and ranchers work and run different events with their horses. To see how a blacksmith operates and create iron work. Our magician will create a fun experience for all ages to learn more about agriculture.
We are hoping to continue to promote Minnesota art by bringing items back from prior years, but also improve our arts section for our fair. We would like to bring back our Birch Coulee Working Ranch Rodeo that shows our patrons the older styles of a working ranch such as cattle sorting, roping, and doctoring cattle. This also allows local participants to attend and try the different events it offers. Another popular activity we had was bringing a local blacksmith into our fair to show fairgoers the ways they created different tools in our past.
We will have special music (by a local band and single performer). We also want to build new display racks for the handmade quilts to share the local talent with fairgoers.
