Provides grants to Soil and Water Conservation Districts that focuses on increasing capacity to address four resource concern areas?Soil Erosion, Riparian Zone Management, Water Storage and Treatment, and Excess Nutrients.
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.
We restored 2,081 acres of grassland and enhanced 42,425 acres of grassland for a total of 44,506 acres of wildlife habitat across 329 sites with these funds.
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.
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.
Funding supports an Irrigation Specialist to develop guidance and provide education on irrigation and nitrogenbest management practices (BMPs). In this position, Dr. Vasu Sharma provides direct support to irrigators onissues of irrigation scheduling and soil water monitoring. She is collaborating on the development of new irrigationscheduling tools that help irrigators manage water and nitrogen resources more precisely. These tools help reducenitrogen leaching losses in irrigated cropping systems.
This project will address Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), United States Environment Protection Agency (EPA), and public comments on draft Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) studies and Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategy (WRAPS) reports, preliminary draft TMDL studies, and public noticed TMDL studies and WRAPS reports for the Lower Red River Watershed and the Lake of the Woods Watershed and produce final versions of the TMDL studies and WRAPS reports for each watershed.
Legacy funds allow the Minnesota Zoo to extend the season of the Wells Fargo Family Farm beyond its historical May to September season to include full programming and exhibits from April through November.
Minnesota’s twelve regional library systems, which encompass more than 350 public libraries in all areas of the state, can benefit from a portion of the Legacy Amendment’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Through State Library Services, a division of the Minnesota Department of Education, each regional library system is eligible to receive a formula-driven allocation from the annual $2.2 million Minnesota Regional Library System Legacy Grant. Northwest Regional Library System (NRL) is a consolidated regional public library system in upper northwest Minnesota.
