Supporting Natural Resource Protection and Restoration in the Twin Cities Metro through an Exploration of Community Connection to Nature

The Minnesota Land Trust (MLT) serves to protect and restore Minnesota's most vital natural lands in order to provide wildlife habitat, clean water, outdoor experiences and scenic beauty for generations to come. The Land Trust is best known for land protection work through conservation easements, which permanently protect private landowner’s land from development, keeping the land in its natural state to benefit wildlife habitat, clean water and more. There are three primary pillars of the Land Trust’s work: 1) Land Protection 2) Habitat Restoration and 3) Community Engagement. The primary objective of this project was to support research and planning efforts for protection, restoration and engagement in the MLT’s Twin Cities Metro Program area. In particular, the project focused on better understanding the ways in which communities in the Twin Cities Metro relate to nature, how those relationships intersect with the core work of MLT, and strategies for engaging communities and protecting remaining habitat in the region. Historically, MLT has viewed their Metro Planning area as one large area, covering all and part of 21 counties surrounding the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul (see Fig. 3). This approach did not differentiate the diverse needs and complexities of the planning area and treated planning, protection, restoration and engagement efforts the same whether they were focusing in Minneapolis or smaller communities like Cokato, Isanti, or Belle Plaine. This somewhat hampered the land trust’s ability to be responsive and flexible to the needs of dense metropolitan areas in comparison with smaller rural communities with larger agricultural and habitat tracts. This project aimed to provide evidence and analysis for a differentiated approach to planning in the Metro, which provided a sea change for conservation and engagement planning in the Metro Program Area