Great River Greening delivers land restoration and sustainable management across 25 of Minnesota’s counties and has developed conservation projects in almost 30 more counties. Executive Director Kateri Routh describes one method the organization uses.
Transcript
Intro: This is Minnesota’s Legacy: A look at the organizations and peoples who have benefitted from Minnesota’s unique Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment
goat sounds
Amira Warren-Yearby: Great River Greening used Outdoor Heritage Funds in a unique way. They used goats. Yes goats!
nature sound & goats walking
Kateri Routh: Great River Greening is Minnesota’s leader in land-based restoration & sustainable management. Outdoor Heritage Fund has supported the restoration of an Oak Savanna at Belle Prairie County Park. Great River Greening in fact got to use goats to browse invasive buckthorn, which they're very good at.
Sounds of river water and goats walking
Warren-Yearby: That’s Kateri Routh, Executive Director at Great River Greening. She says the goats are an environmentally friendly way to make room for native plants! Katire says in addition to funding the goats, they’ve used the funds for historical purposes too.
digging sounds
Routh: We’ve worked with an archeologist who’s actually identified that that site has at least 3 archeological sites within the park, making it a culturally significant site, which is really cool. And we’re actually currently working to conduct a full archeological dig to better understand the site before we go in with our equipment so we can be good stewards of that land. This is really important work.
nature sounds
Warren-Yearby: Great River Greening has many more land-based restoration projects around Minnesota. Visit their website…Great River Greening dot org where you’ll find more information about projects in your area. But don’t expect you’ll always see goats!
sounds of typing; goats
Outro: Minnesota’s Legacy is a production of AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, more at ampers dot org.