[Music] Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for North Central Minnesota.

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I'm Ray Gildow.

Welcome to Lakeland Currents, the 2024 edition.

It's good to have you back with us this fall and I think we have an exciting program coming up for you.

If you're interested in water quality, most of the water south of Interstate 94 is what's called impaired and that means it's had numbers of things happen to it that aren't healthy.

Most of the water north of Interstate 94 is still very pristine, very healthy and so we're doing a number of programs every year to help focus on the issues of water quality and tonight is no different.

We're going to show you some of the things that are happening with the Northern Waters Land Trust which is a very exciting organization spending time on water quality.

So, let's start out right with Ally would you introduce yourself and what it is that you're doing?

Absolutely, yes my name is Ally Mazurek.

I'm the grants manager and water conservation specialist for Northern Waters Land Trust.

I'm also joined today by members of our conservation committee Pete and Andy and I'll let them introduce themselves in a second but we're a land trust based out of Walker and we really focus our work in the north central region of Minnesota where you mentioned the lakes are still pristine and intact and land trusts in general are community-based nonprofit organizations that help land owners protect their lands permanently.

What does it, what is a land trust?

Why is it called a land trust?

So, land trusts are called that in general because it's a partnership between our organization and a land owner.

We use two different avenues in order to protect lands permanently.

One is land acquisition and through that transaction that's a transfer of ownership where we can either purchase the land outright or accept donated property and then another avenue that we use to protect land is called a voluntary conservation agreement or a conservation easement and there's been studies about the names of how naming things is better received by the public and so we're kind of shifting our language more towards voluntary land conservation agreements in an effort to make that a little bit less intimidating but basically through that process a land owner can voluntarily enter into a partnership with the land trust to permanently protect their land from development while maintaining ownership of their property.

Well, let's introduce these gentlemen and then I'll get you some more questions.

As we start with you Andy.

Okay, Ray I'm a volunteer with the the Northern Waters Land Trust on the conservation committee and I'm on that committee as a retired CPA.

These conservation transactions do potentially have tax implications and so I can provide advice there.

I'm also on the board of the 10 Mile Lake Association.

I co-chair the conservation committee and the conservation committee of that lake association and other lake associations will work very closely with the Northern Waters Land Trust to help identify parcels that can be preserved and then to work with them on the funding to preserve those parcels.

For people who may not know, where is 10 Mile?

10 Mile Lake is between Walker and Hackensak about 50 miles north of Brainerd and 50 miles south of Bemidji.

It's a beautiful lake, very clear lake isn't it?

Yes, very deep lake, 200 foot depths.

How much?

200 feet depths.

Wow, that's amazing and a springfed lake.

It's an origin lake.

It begins a watershed that runs through the Woman Lake Chain and then eventually into Leech.

Peter how about your full name and what is it you're doing.

Sure, Peter Jacobson.

I'm a retired fisheries scientist.

I work with Minnesota DNR Fisheries section for 32 years and I'm also on the conservation committee with the Northern Waters Land Trust but one of the things that I think that finds me here is that I helped develop some of the targeting and methods to achieve some of the really good water quality in some of these Northern Minnesota watersheds that are still forested and we develop some goals of how much of the land on those waters should remain forested to ensure that they still have good water quality.

I got to be careful throwing out statistics when I'm not positive but I know on Gull Lake, the number of buildings per mile around that lake is staggering, seems to me like there's 30 or 40 homes or cabins on every mile of lake shore which is changing the water quality because of the different, we don't have the forest there that we used to have.

So, in a lot of the lakes in northern Minnesota it's not too late to do things, is it to help?

Even on a lake like Gull Lake where you have all that very heavy development right around the shoreline, if you have forests beyond that back in the watershed and a watershed can be very large for a lake sometimes many miles.

If you keep that forested even a lake like Gull Lake can maintain good water quality.

So, you have to look at the entirety of the watershed before you can really say if the lake has problems or not.

So, we have a lot of lakes in northern Minnesota just like Gull Lake where you have that ring of development right on the shoreline but as long as you keep the forest forested beyond that shoreline, you've got a great chance of keeping good water quality.

Good information, I think most people think if they have their home and the water there's nothing else you can do but behind it is a very good area.

Exactly.

Good to know.

You have many members who have been in involved when it was a Leech Lake Area Watershed Foundation, are you still actively recruiting as many members as you can from the and I think your area service area is probably Region Five yet?

Isn't that the primary region?

Yes.

So, are you still actively looking for people to get involved with the trust?

Absolutely, yes.

I think that's always an ongoing goal of ours.

So, as you mentioned we definitely, our focus area historically has been Cass County, Crow Wing County, Aitken County, Hubbard County and, you know, we've recently kind of started expanding beyond that as we've identified a need and a want for these protection programs from land owners and areas beyond that and also the fact that, you know, watersheds don't tend to adhere to a municipal boundary.

So, we kind of expand beyond that naturally too but yes I think, you know, board members, committee members, we're always looking for folks that are passionate about this kind of work, you know, you don't have to have a background in natural resources necessarily although that's obviously really valuable to have on the team but just people that, you know, have the time to dedicate to kind of moving this mission forward.

That's something we look for.

I think a lot of people think when you put land into a conservation easement or you don't call it easement now but it doesn't mean that your family can't use it.

What does it mean?

What what happens to that land?

Whoever wants to address it go ahead.

It's basically an agreement where a private property owner says I will commit my property permanently to not be developed and it doesn't have to be the entire property.

It could be a portion.

So, a good example would be a lake owner who maybe has their cabin property, cabin of course typically on the lake but then also is fortunate enough to have extra acreage let's say 20 acre parcel that's part of that and most of that as Pete indicated could be well behind the cabin but it's a critical part of the watershed and if that land owner, that cabin owner recognizes the importance of preserving that property, the rest of that property in undeveloped status they might agree to a conservation transaction where they would continue to own it privately, continue to remain non-public land as it would not allow the public to use the property but by permanently committing that to never be developed, to never have future buildings on it, they can be compensated for that or alternatively could claim a tax deduction for the reduction in developable value.

So, it really in many cases doesn't change the use of that property at all.

If the land owner is saying I'm never going to develop it and furthermore I don't necessarily want the kids or grandkids to develop it, I'll make that commitment permanent and be compensated one way or the other either directly or through a tax deduction for preserving the property.

If I'm a cabin owner is there a minimum size of land that you need to have to be involved with your trust?

So, typically for the land acquisition there's not a minimum acreage but for the easement program we like to see properties be at least 20 acres and that's just because there's a lot of legal fees and title fees and things that we go through to make that successful and so that's kind of the minimum that we set to make that worthwhile.

And who are the partners that you work with when you're doing these acquisitions?

So, it's kind of different depending on that program tract.

So, on the acquisition side where we're purchasing or accepting donated lands, we need to find a long-term managing entity to receive that land and then manage it for habitat long term.

So, we work with a number of entities to do that.

A big partner of ours is the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

We also work with US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Counties often accept land that we've purchased.

We also partner with the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe as well.

On the voluntary land conservation agreements or easement side of things, we partner, we have a really strong partnership with Minnesota Land Trust which is the other major land trust in our state.

They do a lot of great work as well on the land protection water quality preservation front and so they partner with us on a number of our protection programs and facilitating easements for land owners.

I think one of the things to point out besides those partnerships is the ability of the Northern Waters Land Trust to access the funds to either purchase those properties or to pay the owner for that voluntary conservation agreement.

The Land Trust does a tremendous job of having a track record of finding these types of properties and then getting the funding through the Outdoor Heritage Council out of the Twin Cities.

The Outdoor Heritage Council is funded by some sales tax dollars and so typically the Land Trust might, this Land Trust might bring into our area $2-$3-$4 million a year to then be used to either acquire or preserve specific properties.

So, they have a tremendous track record and credibility record with the Outdoor Heritage Council of attracting those funds.

Putting you on the spot Ally, do you have any idea how many lakes that you're actually involved with, where you're actually conserving land?

I don't mean to put you on the spot.

So, let's see, we currently have two programs, well more than that actually but our kind of main focuses for the landowner partnership, land protection programs are our Clean Water Critical Habitat program and our Lakes of Outstanding Biological Significance program and we can go into further detail on those but we prioritize 34 lakes of outstanding biological significance through the funded program that we facilitate and the fishery side of things it's a little bit less than that, I want to say 15 to 20 lakes and then the watersheds that encompass those.

To date, let's see, we were established in 1995.

We've done about a 100 projects in those 29 almost 30 years to the tune of about 9,000 acres protected and 60 miles of shoreline.

Wow!

That's really impressive.

I don't have specific lakes for you though, I'm sorry about that.

Peter, what's the significance of preserving lakeshore for fisheries?

Well, lakeshore has some of the best physical habitat that'll from a fish point of view you need, you know, the trees that fall in the water create wonderful habitat, the substrate needs to remain clear because that's where a lot of fish spawn, the vegetation is better to be undisturbed especially some of the emerging vegetations like hard stem bull rushes and lily pads.

So, that's a critical component of fish habitat but the other side of it, this is where it's really exciting for an organization like Northern Waters Land Trust is they also include water quality.

Water quality is just a fundamental fish habitat and you can work on the the shoreline and that helps to preserve the physical habitat of a lake but to preserve water quality you have to go out in the watershed and and again that's many miles, sometimes many miles away from the shoreline itself and that's the kind of work that the NWLT does where it goes into the watershed and protects those undisturbed forests and make sure that clean water is entering that lake.

So, really both sides of the fish habitat puzzle are being addressed with organizations like an NWLT.

I know my wife and I have a cabin on Leech and I know there's been a lot of work done in Miller's Bay which is a prime muskie habitat for raising young, I don't think many people think of the shorelines or the shallow waters as raising, you know, some of the young fish of these particular species.

It's just a very, very vital isn't it to preserve that area for that habitat?

Not not only the spawning but the nursery areas for young game fish but also the production of forages.

There's many different minnow species that use those shallow water that provide the prey base for the bigger game fish.

So, it's a critical habitat area of a lake, the shallows near the shoreline.

On 10 Mile we have four bays and our conservation committee concentrates on on protecting properties in those four bays for the reasons that Pete mentioned and also one of those bays is where the springs are that feed our lake and so to keep those without docks and the jet skis and the disturbing factors that that development brings is really important and so we've been fortunate over the years to be working with the DNR, with the Northern Waters Land Trust to acquire some of those properties or to have them donated to us and put into these conservation easement arrangements that assure that there will be no development.

I know you have a good relationship with lake associations.

Could you talk a little bit about that?

Absolutely, we consider lake associations one of our most valuable partnerships in accomplishing the work that we do.

Lake associations are obviously staffed by highly motivated, passionate people and they're kind of, they're the advocates for their lake.

They're the eyes and ears and kind of mouthpiece, you know, they're the people that and being residents, they see, you know, where the migratory bird populations are nesting.

They see the ebbs and flows of where the fish are congregating and at what times of year and they're going to be the people who notice those disturbances first, you know, with the exception of the wildlife species and so, you know, we really value that partnership for that reason, for the advocacy reason but also their ability to cultivate relationships with their neighbors and promote the importance of shoreline conservation, watershed stewardship and all the things we're trying to move forward.

You said you're sort of expanding your area a little bit, if someone is interested in working with your organization from Pierz and there's some area lakes around Pierz, what would they do?

How do they have to go about doing that?

So, they can absolutely reach out to us.

What we kind of consider an asset of ourselves is we're a Regional Land Trust.

We're based in Walker.

We can connect you with local resources as well and so absolutely reach out to us and we can, you know, if we don't have a program that you're eligible for then we can absolutely connect you with one of our other partners that perhaps does.

I could give you an example Ray of how our lake association used the Northern Waters Land Trust to help identify properties that were potential conservation properties.

So, the Northern Waters Land Trust has a very sophisticated scoring system using maps.

So we sat down with one of their people and they pulled up the map of our lake and with that map they had identified through color coding which parcels were larger, 20 acres or more that had conservation potential.

In other words that were critical to the watershed.

Some were on the lake, some were back a little bit but that were the most prioritized in terms of their environmental significance.

So, once we identified those then our conservation committee sat down went through the Cass County map said okay who are the owners of these particular parcels and now on the members of our lake association were then reaching out, contacting these people, very low-key but hey you we've noticed you've got a parcel on or very near the lake that's critical to our preservation of the environmental aspects of the lake, here are some programs that you might be interested in, maybe it's a sale if that would fit you down the the road or maybe it's just you retaining it but taking some of that acreage and preserving it permanently in conservation.

So, the Lake Association through the connections we have, the relationships we have with our neighbors is really in the best landowners, very non-threatening, very lowkey just to say you've got critical property, here are some programs you may not know about if you're interested we can get you in touch with the people that have the dollars and have the expertise.

Okay, let's just talk a little bit about the 75% watershed protection which is something I know you're really all focusing on.

Who would like to address that?

I'll start and then I'll probably pitch it to Pete who's the expert for sure but we at Northern Waters Land Trust, we take a watershed based approach to our conservation efforts and that's because we recognize that these lakes don't exist in isolation, they're influenced by everything that drains into them and so the 75% threshold is a goal that we strive for within the watersheds that we work in, knowing that once 75% of the land within the watershed is protected we can reasonably assume or interpret that to mean the lake as a whole is going to be more resilient to threats like climate change or development in the future but Pete's going to say all that much more articulately than I just did so.

No, you said it perfectly Ally.

It actually came from some research that we did when I was with Minnesota DNR in the Fisheries Research Unit and we looked at the watersheds of lakes all the way from Southwestern Minnesota, where we have heavily farmed lakes with a lot of nutrients and sediments going into those lakes.

We have some real problems with impairments that you talked about all the way to the Boundary Waters.

We have, where we have pristine beautifully clear lakes and everything in between.

So, that allows us to see what the effects of that land use in the watershed are on a wide range of lakes and that's where we came up with this suggested goal of having at least 75% of a lake's watershed in some kind of undisturbed state and that could and that's for the most part in northern Minnesota that's forest but it could be wetlands, bogs other lakes.

It could be grasslands and prairies Oak savanas but some kind of undeveloped state.

So, if you can keep 75% of that watershed undeveloped you're going to have very likely good water quality in that lake.

I don't know if people understand how tough it is to clean up a lake when it's been impaired.

I know there's lakes I've seen way down in southern Minnesota in the late summer they're green.

They don't even look like fresh water and the cost of restoring those is really, really significant so the investment ahead of time in preserving these is really critical isn't it?

It really is and in a lot of sense it's a lot cheaper to protect a lake than it is to restore a lake for that very reason and we're doing it and the Northern Waters Land Trust is doing it by protecting those forested lands and we think it's really a bargain in conservation.

The the amount of dollars that's going up for these kind of programs, we're actually moving a needle on those watersheds versus down in the southern part of the state.

It's been really expensive with very few successes.

So, we think this is really a good use for a lot of those conservation dollars.

Do you find that people are interested in jumping into this program and getting involved?

We've noticed a great response to these kinds of programs and often times, you know, we do our own outreach efforts in an attempt to just make folks aware of their options and their opportunities with these types of programs but we also get a lot of inquiries just through word of mouth where somebody will have a neighbor who's decided to put one of those voluntary land conservation agreements onto their property and you know perhaps that neighbor is equally interested in not seeing their land developed and seeing their land, you know, intact into perpetuity and so they'll reach out saying tell me more about how I can protect my land too.

One of the phenomenons you mentioned earlier is people love their lakes and there multiple generations of being on the lake and developing a real affinity for protecting that piece of water and that really helps with the idea that, you know, this isn't just about today or tomorrow or you, this is your kids, your grandkids and the successors of preserving that lake for the long run.

I think Minnesotans have a really good reputation and many of the people on our lakes are not from Minnesota but there's just a real commitment to preserve these waters and I think the more we can educate people about what happens when they get impaired the better we all going to be for that.

We have invasive species that are moving into most of our lakes aren't they?

That's another big stressor around the lake.

Invasive species, climate change is a stressor that's looking us straight in the face but one of the great things about this program is we're actually building resilience by maintaining those water quality and water qualities in those lakes are actually more resilient to climate change and a great example is Northern Waters Land Trust's focus on what we call Ciscoe refuge lakes.

Lakes that have real deep water with a lot of cold water below that maintain good habitat for Ciscoes and Ciscoes and tullibee is the same thing, white fish and lake trout maintaining the water quality in those lakes are going to make them resilient to more climate warming in the future.

So, a lot of these things are are interconnected.

I was involved with the land trust when we started looking at those lakes.

I forgot how many there were in the land trust project but I know Roosevelt in Outing is one of the real deep interesting lakes.

When people donate to this program, how do you, how do you generate your income?

How do you guys function financially as an organization?

So, a big chunk of our funding is through the Outdoor Heritage Fund that Andy mentioned previously and that's funding through the clean water no I'm sorry clean.

The Outdoor Heritage Council?

Yes, the Land and Legacy Amendment Clean Land and Water amendment that is coming up for a vote in November I think.

Too many acronyms, yes exactly, it's coming up for a vote November but you know so that a portion of sales tax, a fraction of sales tax goes to protecting habitat throughout the state and so we apply for grant funding each year to the Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council, that's a competitive process and then we have been fortunate enough to receive funding for our initiatives.

The Clean Water Critical Habitat program which focuses on protecting those tullibee refuge lakes.

We started receiving funding for that in 2014 and then our more recent initiative is that Lakes of Outstanding Biological Significance program and we started receiving funding for that in 2021.

So, that's a big chunk and then obviously we rely on donors as well.

We're out of time, could you tell people how to get a hold of you?

Yes, please get a hold of us by visiting northernwaterslandtrust.org.

My contact information is there.

I can answer any of your questions about the program.

Do you have an office?

We do, we have an office in Walker that is on 800 West Minnesota Avenue.

Okay, thank you all for jumping on board with us.

It's very, very important program you're doing, appreciate the effort you're putting into it too.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

You've been watching Lakeland Currents on PBS.

I'm Ray Gildow.

So long until next time.