From Patience Caso, MEP campaign director, and Eric Bergstrom, legislative and campaign outreach

Welcome to the 2012 legislative session! You care about Minnesota’s Great Outdoors and you believe in making and safeguarding investments for future generations. Your voice is critical to protecting and defending our environmental policy foundation — your elected officials need to hear from you.

This year, we’re counting on you to join the members of the Minnesota Environmental Partnership and advocate for: Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine a squad of cheerleaders shouting out “Give me a T”, and the spectators calling back en masse, “T!!!” And then give them an “M”…and a “D”…and finally a “L”.

The spectators look confused. School spirit is suddenly stunningly low. Read the rest of this entry »

photo by Sakarri on Flickr

Tomorrow, the Minnesota House Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Committee will hold a hearing regarding HF 1856. This bill concerns the hunting and trapping of wolves in Minnesota, an issue that the Sierra Club North Star Chapter has been closely and carefully monitoring.

Now that the species has recently been delisted, the state of Minnesota must ensure that the stability of the wolf population does not fall victim to other interests. An initiation of a hunting season immediately following the wolf’s removal from threatened status raises serious concerns. Initially, a 5 year waiting period was called for, after delisting, before a hunting season would be opened. This waiting period was eliminated by legislation passed last year.

It is thanks, in part, to Sierra Club North Star Chapter’s work to protect the wolf under the Endangered Species Act for the past three decades that the Great Lakes Wolf population, which includes Minnesota, has made steps toward recovery. This should be celebrated. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, that didn’t take long. Tomorrow, at the very first meeting of the Minnesota House Government Operations and Elections Committee, lawmakers will take up House File 389, which weakens township, county and city local control. This legislation needs to be stopped before it even gets out of the starting gate. For details on how to send a clear message to the Capitol that weakening local democracy should be off the table, click here. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2012 Legislative Session kicks off this week!

While it’s anticipated that this session will focus on bonding, the Vikings stadium, and various constitutional amendments, important environmental issues will still be part of the policy discussion.

As legislators return to the state Capitol, we urge them to remember that policies that affect our water, clean energy future, and Great Outdoors are vitally important to Minnesota voters – regardless of political party affiliation. Read the rest of this entry »

By Anna Cioffi, Land Stewardship Project
On Monday, Jan. 23, there will be a public hearing of the Minneapolis Planning Commission to discuss proposed draft changes to the zoning code as it pertains to urban agriculture. LSP supports the passage of these draft changes as a first step. However, there are still improvements that could be included to make urban farming economically viable for a wider range of more people. Read the rest of this entry »

What do you like about Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes and 70,000 miles of streams? Swimming? Fishing?

You should know about Beneficial Use Impairments, or BUI’s.

Read the rest of this entry »

One winter evening in 1999 I was sitting in on a Farm Beginnings class being held in the southeast Minnesota community of Plainview when a local banker stood up and made a statement that about knocked me out of my chair. “We need to eat our own cooking,” said the banker, Dean Harrington. The statement wasn’t about food, at least not directly. It was about how we look to ourselves instead of Wall Street when investing in the future of our rural communities. A few weeks ago, I had a chance to chat with Harrington at another  LSP meeting. As the podcast that came out of that conversation demonstrates, he’s still banging the same “home cooking” drum. Radical economic theory? Actually, it’s as no-nonsense as a banker’s gray three-piece suit. Read the rest of this entry »

Ely, Minnesota has been an environmental battlefield for decades. Ely was founded as an iron mining town, and a century later, conflicts today focus on mining.

The conflict came to a head last month at a meeting of the St. Louis County board of commissioners in Ely. Commissioners were hearing testimony about a proposed resolution in support of nonferrous mining in the County. The commissioner chairing the meeting asked the people testifying to state whether they wanted clean water or jobs.

Clean water OR jobs? Read the rest of this entry »

I talked to a Todd County farmer yesterday who uses 100 percent no-till  and other conservation measures to raise his crops. Conserving soil is important to him, and so he’s quite upset at how mobile humus has been on neighboring farms this fall/early winter. “You know that little skiff of snow we got the other day? Well, eroded soil was already mixing with it and blowing around,” the farmer told me. A Minnesota landscape full of Christmas snirt is a rude reminder that we need to stop arguing over if soil erosion is a problem. It is, and the time for action is upon us. Read the rest of this entry »