Rochester's Conservation Newsletter
Conservation Minnesota has been hosting Americorps members, called Community Stewards, since 2022. Located in Moorhead, Duluth, Bemidji, Saint Cloud, Rochester, and Winona, their role is to build relationships within the community, facilitate service projects, promote learning, and spark conversations about their area's most important conservation issues.
The Community Stewards hosted many events across the state this fall—a buckthorn pull in Moorhead, a trash clean up in Saint Cloud, and bat education and bat box making event in Bemidji, among others. Along with our other Stewards, our Rochester members have been engaging the community and making a difference in their city. Some highlights:
Events with RNeighbors
Conservation Minnesota teamed up with the Rochester Izaak Walton group to pick up trash at a site in NW Rochester for RNeighbors 2024 Litter Bit Better event. RNeighbors is a local organization that empowers citizen leaders to create sustainable neighborhood networks. At the group’s 2024 fall event, 1,179 volunteers collected over 620 pounds of litter at 64 sites around Rochester.
Conservation Minnesota partnered with RNeighborwoods for the group’s Fall Tree Planting, held on October 12th at Riverside Park. RNeighborwoods, a program within RNeighbors, empowers and educates the community to grow and has been working to plan, plant, and manage trees since 2004, helping grow a sustainable urban forest.
Prairie Seed Collection
We collected prairie seeds for prairie restoration efforts at Olmsted County parks as part of National Public Lands Day (NPLD), celebrated on September 28th. This year we also joined volunteers to collect seeds at Oxbox Park in Byron and in the Prairie Crossing neighborhood in northwest Rochester. The event was organized by Friends of Chester Woods. Check out this new resource on seed collecting.
Compost Project
Conservation Minnesota volunteers helped build a new “static aerated composting system” at one of Village Cooperative Agriculture’s sites. The new system helps eliminate the need for turning which can be a problem at community gardens. The Village Agricultural Cooperative in Rochester is building the economic power of historically marginalized communities. They source land in under-utilized urban areas to create family farms that produce culturally relevant foods. Learn more about the project.
Environmental Book Club
Our new book club recently completed “Braiding Sweetgrass” and has chosen “The Darkness Manifesto: On Light Pollution, Night Ecology, and the Ancient Rhythms That Sustain Life” for the next reading. We’ll discuss the book on Tuesday, January 14th at 6:30pm All are welcome! Many thanks to Anna Smith for providing space at Garden Party Books for our meetings. Email maryh@conservationminnesota.org if you would like to join us in January.
National Federation of the Blind
For the first time Conservation Minnesota hosted a table at the National Federation of the Blind state convention to build a sense of connection to nature with a community that experiences accessibility barriers in the Great Outdoors. We hosted trivia about our environment and hands-on activities.
As a statewide organization, our stewards do the invaluable work of connecting people to our work- no matter their zip code. To stay in touch about all our events across the state, sign up for Conservation Minnesota updates.
We hope to see you at an event soon!