The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will restore or enhance habitat to facilitate fish passage, restore degraded streams, and enhance habitat critical to fish and other aquatic life. Projects are prioritized based on ecological benefit, urgency, feasibility, and stakeholder support.
Grasslands continue to be the most threatened habitat in the state. This programmatic request will build on the DNR's history of enhancing and restoring grasslands, embedded wetlands, and oak savannas to increase wildlife populations. The Prairie Plan, Pheasant Plan, and Wildlife Action Plan will guide our efforts to ensure we are operating in a strategic and targeted manner.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MNDNR) will complete six fish passage projects to reconnect reaches of habitat for fish and other aquatic life, restore 71 acres on eight rivers to create over six miles of diverse habitat, and enhance 224 acres of riparian and terrestrial habitat on Aquatic Management Areas. The footprint of fish passage projects is small, but projects will reconnect over 290,000 acres of lake and river habitat.
Grasslands continue to be the most threatened habitat in the state. This programmatic request will build on the DNR's history of enhancing and restoring grasslands, embedded wetlands, and oak savannas. The Prairie Plan, Pheasant Plan, and Wildlife Action Plan will guide our efforts to ensure we are operating in a strategic and targeted manner. This proposal will enhance and restore grasslands on 5,700 acres parcels that are permanently protected and most open to public hunting using prescribed fire, tree removal, high-diversity seedings, and similar practices.
Grasslands and wetlands in western Minnesota continues to be the most threatened habitat in the state. At the same time, the DNR continues to work to make the state's forests more productive for wildlife, timber, and other compatible uses. This request will realign and streamline previous funding requests by placing all DNR Roving Crews under a single proposal and appropriation.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MNDNR) will complete one fish passage project to reconnect reaches of habitat for fish and other aquatic life and restore reaches of two rivers, creating over nine miles of diverse habitat. The footprint of fish passage projects is small, but the Bucks Mill project will reconnect 6,200 acres of lake and river habitat. Stream projects were selected from a statewide list, prioritized by factors such as ecological benefit, scale of impact, urgency of completion, and local support.
Minnesota's iconic forests and brushland habitats require enhancement beyond DNR timber harvest practices. Enhancements, such as brushland shearing provide critical wildlife habitat but are not achieved through timber harvest practices. These additional habitat benefits improve the quality of the forests for wildlife, water quality and outdoor recreation. DNR's Conservation Agenda, Wildlife Action Plan, Forest Action Plan, SNA Strategic Land Protection, Fish Habitat Plan, will guide habitat enhancements in this proposal to meet the objectives put forth in these plans.
Grasslands continue to be the most threatened habitat in the state. This programmatic request will build on the DNR's history of enhancing and restoring grasslands. The Prairie Plan and Wildlife Action Plan will guide our efforts to ensure we are operating in a strategic and targeted manner. This proposal will enhance and restore grasslands on 2,856 acres that are permanently protected using prescribed fire, tree removal, high-diversity seedings, and similar practices. Most lands enhanced with these funds are public and open to hunting.
We will generate genome sequences of bacteria growing in wastewater treatment bioreactors, allowing us to improve phosphorus and nitrogen removal from wastewater in Minnesota and to discover novel pharmaceutical compounds.
This proposal enhances 2,857 acres of open landscape habitat in the Northern Forest and Forest/Prairie Transition Regions for Sharp-tailed Grouse and other species. Enhancement work will take place on protected lands open to public hunting including Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs), National Wildlife Refuges (NWRs), state forest lands, Scientific Natural Areas (SNAs), and county lands. In addition, this proposal seeks to acquire and restore 743 acres of sharp-tail habitat in Lake of the Woods County to be transferred to the MNDNR.
Expand fishing opportunities in urban areas, teach more kids and families how to fish, and inventory and inform the public about safe and legal shore fishing sites throughout Minnesota.
This proposal aims to answer this question: How would the water quality of Minnesota's lakes change in the next century under future scenarios of urbanization, agricultural growth, and climate change?
This project will analyze existing and projected data to develop simple tools to predict the effect of land use and climate change on extreme floods and droughts.
The project will assess chemical and biological defluorination activities in environmental samples and identify the microorganisms, metabolic pathways, and intermediates resulting from degradation of fluorinated pesticides and pharmaceuticals.
This project will build the first comprehensive list of Minnesota moths and butterflies. Information gained through surveys and outreach efforts will inform land managers and inspire public appreciation.
BWSR will administer funding to eligible County projects that provide funds and other assistance to low income property owners to upgrade or replace Noncompliant Septic Systems. BWSR will also manage annual reporting completed by each County.
This project will finalize HSPF watershed model construction and complete the calibration/validation process. The consultant will add representation of point source discharges to the model. The consultant will compile flow data for the purposes of calibration and validation. An initial hydrologic calibration will be performed and submitted for approval.
This project will maximize the utility and usefulness of three HSPF models that have been constructed and calibrated for hydrology. The contractor will identify and reduce parameterization errors in the following three HSPF models: 1) Buffalo River Watershed, 2 ) Thief River Watershed, 3) Bois de Sioux-Mustinka Watersheds. This will result, not only in a better hydrology calibration, but will also improve each of the models’ ability to more accurately estimate sediment and pollutant loads and concentrations.
The goal of this project is to construct, calibrate, and validate a watershed model using Hydrologic Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF). The project will result in a HSPF model that can readily be used to provide information to support conventional parameter TMDLs.
This phase of the project will complete the analysis of existing and newly collected water quality data in the Red River of the North-Grand Marais Creek watershed and also verify the impairments on the currently listed reaches and determine the status of the remaining river reaches as being either impaired or currently meeting standards. Stakeholder involvement and public participation will be a primary focus throughout the project.
This project will create and optimize eDNA assays to detect the presence of 8 endangered or threatened mussel species around Buffalo Slough near Prairie Island Indian Community.
Geologic atlases provide maps/databases essential for improved management of ground and surface water. This proposal will complete current projects and start new projects to equal about 4 complete atlases.
Get the Lead Out is focused on protecting common loons and wildlife through education and outreach about the danger of lead fishing tackle and promoting lead-free tackle alternatives.
The Thief River is the source of drinking water for the City of Thief River Falls. The river's other designated uses also include recreation and aquatic life. Water quality monitoring conducted by local agencies discovered that the Thief River is not meeting state water quality standards for both turbidity (muddiness) and dissolved oxygen. Each year, approximately 12,376 tons of sediment is deposited into the Thief River Falls reservoir by the Thief River. That is the equivalent of over 1,200 dump trucks full of dirt.
The purpose of this project is to prepare a Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy (WRAPS) Report and Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Study for public notice. This project will include addressing and incorporating Minnesota Pollution Control (MPCA) review comments in both documents. The TMDL Study has been submitted to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) for preliminary review. USEPA comments will be addressed prior to public notice.
The goal of this project is to construct watershed models for the Grand Marais Creek and Snake River Watersheds and perform an initial hydrologic calibration using Hydrologic Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF).
In the early 1900s, a joint State and County drainage project constructed a 1 mile outlet channel to Grand Marais Creek to provide a shorter outlet to the Red River and effectively abandoned the lower 6 miles of the natural channel. In recent times, the ditch has eroded from its original shape to a channel of steep gradients and unstable banks. This has resulted in head cutting of the channel and nearly continuous channel erosion and bank sloughing with the effect of depositing up to an estimated annual average of 700 tons of sediment into the Red River.
Per Minnesota Laws, 2011, 1st Special Session, Chapter 6, Article 4, Section 2, Subd. 6, "These amounts are appropriated to the commissioner of administration for grants to the named organizations for the purposes specified in this subdivision.
Per Minnesota Laws, 2009, Chapter 172, Article 4, Section 2, Subd. 5, "Funds in this subdivision are appropriated to the commissioner of the Department of Administration for grants to the named organizations for the purposes specified in this subdivision. Up to one percent of funds may be used by the Department of Administration for grants administration. Grants made to public television or radio organizations are subject to Minnesota Statutes, sections 129D.18 and 129D.19."
The Grassland Conservation Partnership Phase II grant resulted in the protection via conservation easement of 1,778 acres of grassland habitat and 3 miles of shoreline associated with 2 working grasslands projects in western Minnesota. Land protected through conservation easement exceeded the proposed outputs for this grant by 445% (1,778 versus 400 proposed acres). In addition, 140 acres of grasslands habitat was enhanced through the grant.
This project proposes to increase the adoption of cover cropping in southwest Minnesota to address issues of loss of diversity and environmental degradation. By generating important information on cover crops,
Evaluation of Minnesota raptors, in rehabilitation and free ranging settings, for current or previous exposure to highly pathogenic avian influenza virus to better understand outbreak impacts to raptor populations.
