As monarchs continue to gain prominence as a species of growing concern across the country, more and more organizations and agencies are teaming up under the umbrella of the Monarch Joint Venture to conserve their population and migration. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is the latest agency to join our partnership, and we are pleased to welcome them.
The Minnesota DNR’s mission is to work with citizens to conserve and manage the state's natural resources, to provide outdoor recreation opportunities, and to provide commercial uses of natural resources in a way that creates a sustainable quality of life. Their goals for fish and wildlife provide an ideal setting to promote monarch conservation in many of their conservation and education programs. The Minnesota DNR is working to ensure that fish and wildlife populations and the habitats that support them are healthy and that conservation partnerships and stewardship ethics are strong across Minnesota.
Lands managed by state agencies have important potential for monarch conservation. The Minnesota DNR manages over three million acres of state forests, 236,900 acres of state park land and over one million acres designated as wildlife management areas. Partnership with the Monarch Joint Venture will help the Minnesota DNR integrate monarch and pollinator-friendly, science-based conservation strategies into their management plans, creating high quality habitat throughout the state.
This partnership will also provide key education and messaging in a state important for monarch conservation efforts. Minnesotans and others visiting state parks or hunting wild game may also encounter more monarchs on these lands as the DNR works to establish higher quality habitat and milkweed host plants for monarchs, in addition to providing numerous educational and research opportunities for the general public.
Connecting efforts across all scales of individual, local, state, regional, and national levels is essential to the MJV’s efforts, and we’re excited to continue building connections on the state level with agency partners like Minnesota DNR. Together, we will work to implement monarch conservation and education on the ground in Minnesota, a key region for the monarch breeding population. We welcome the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to our monarch conservation team!