This week’s update from lobbyist John Tuma:

“We have been informed that charitable hands have smoothed the later path of Dred and his Harriet, so that a freedom so tardily come by, has not been attended by its usual awkwardness, abuse and suffering.”
- Dred Scott’s obituary, New York Times, September 21, 1858

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While the Lessard Outdoor Heritage Council has generated considerable publicity with its recommendations for spending approximately $69 million this year in habitat funding from the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment approved by Minnesota voters last November, the Clean Water Council has been toiling in relative obscurity. But this panel could have decisive impact on how $100 million in clean water funding from the Amendment is spent annually. The Council, though, is not analogous to the Lessard panel. At Conservation Minnesota’s site tracking the Amendment’s implementation, Clean Wate Council member Sarah Strommen explains the similarities and differences.

The House and Senate each passed budget resolutions last week that support the priorities of President’s Obama’s budget, but it is important that the final resolution to come out of Congress look more like the House version, which will make it easier to invest in our Great Outdoors.

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While editing a recent LSP podcast featuring farmer Joel Salatin, I was reminded of a New York Times feature on young urbanites “returning to the land” to raise food. Taken together, the podcast and the article offer further evidence that the current excitement over sustainable agriculture, local foods and stewardship farming is not a short-term fad fated to being the subject of a PBS documentary in 20 years. This movement is here to stay. And that makes it, for lack of a better word, sustainable. (more…)

Despite some controversy earlier in the process, the first legislative actions on habitat conservation spending recommendations from the Lessard Outdoor Heritage Council appear promising. Initial committee actions have supported the approximately $69 million in projects that would buy land and easements and restore or protect vital Minnesota habitat. That could set a heartening precedent in the first year of implementation of the 25-year Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment approved by voters last November.
At Conservation Minnesota’s website devoted to tracking Legacy Amendment implementation, Darby Nelson has the good news.

This week’s update from lobbyist John Tuma:

“No mortal man could have surmised what was afterward learned, but the Confederate Naval officers intended to destroy the Minnesota…”
- Confederate Military History, volume 12  (more…)