On June 23, 2020, the Washington County Board of Commissioners approved a Land and Water Legacy Program project that supports creation of a conservation area park with public hiking trails in the City of Afton. Belwin Conservancy, the City of Afton, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and the county reached an agreement on the [...]
In this issue of our biannual newsletter, you’ll read about a state-of-the art telescope you can visit at Belwin, what your landscape means to native creatures, and how our Arts, Culture, and Ecology program brought a Buckthorn Buffalo to Belwin’s land.
As you drive down any street in any town, city, or even the countryside, what you most likely see are squares of mowed green grass, maybe a flower garden and a few shrubs. These are dead landscapes as far as insects, reptiles, amphibians and birds are concerned. There may not be cover for a bird [...]
Sometimes, saving a forest means cutting down a few trees. That’s what Belwin land managers were doing this winter, when approximately 100 red pines were cut from a planted stand near the Belwin Education Center. While trees have many important benefits for the environment, human health, wildlife, and more, such homogenous, human-planted plantations create an [...]
Belwin’s work to protect the prized Valley Creek has big benefits downstream in the Wild & Scenic River it joins. Valley Creek is clean and healthy, but it really shouldn’t be. The headwaters of the cold and crystal-clear stream are found at the edge of the Twin Cities urban core. The surrounding landscape is developed [...]
