Lessard council issues its recommendations
December 16, 2011
As we’ve mentioned in a previous post, the Minnesota Waterfowl Association takes advantage of Legacy Amendment dollars primarily through the Conservation Partners Legacy grant program.
Basically, the dollars that fund that program are part of the larger set of recommendations the Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council makes and the Legislature approves.
In recent days, the L-SOHC has issued its latest round of recommendations for spending the Outdoor Heritage Fund money, which is the fish and wildlife habitat portion of the amendment. The recommendation for the small-grants program is just less than $5 million, and you can rest assured that we here at MWA will apply for some of those dollars.
But we thought it would be interesting to take a look at how recommendations for the other $90 million break down.
• The majority of the activities that money will fund relate to enhancement of existing land. According to the L-SOHC, enhancement this time around will total 108,367 acres.
• Fee acquisition of land constitutes the majority of the funding – nearly $36.3 million. Most of the acquisitions are in the prairie portion of the state.
• Acquisition of conservation easements totals more than $20.3 million. Much of that is for the RIM-WRP program, which will leverage $22 million in federal funds and do some great work on wetlands.
• Of the 129,124 acres included in the recommendations, 19,347 are wetlands; 99,431 are prairies; 5,560 are forests; and the balance are habitat.
The recommendations will be sent to the Legislature as a bill, which lawmakers must approve. In previous years, the bill has pretty much been approved as-is, which is good news and a testimonial to the good work that members of the Lessard council do.
