Parks and Trails Council of Minnesota

Land protection: a major focus of Parks & Trails Council's work is acquiring land for Parks and Trails, sometimes creating a whole park or trail from scratch like we did with afton and grand portage state Parks, but more often adding critical land within an already established park or trail corridor. In the past two years, the Parks & Trails Council facilitated 10 land transactions protecting 215 acres valued at $3.52 million for the public's use and benefit. P&tc is involved in six active projects that will protect 50 additional acres, and we are holding 93 acres in trust for public partners. See schedule o for additional program languageone of the projects p&tc is really excited about is work we are doing to secure 2.1 miles of the swedish immigrant trail connecting taylors falls and shafer to the east and center city/lindstrom/chisago city to the west. This acquisition, which actually involves three landowners, combined with work mndot will be doing on a county highway project in the next two years will mean the entire 20-mile corridor connecting the sunrise prairie trail in the west to interstate falls state park in the east will be in public ownership.p&tc's conservation model is funded by our samuel h. morgan land acquisition fund, a revolving fund that has grown to nearly $5.3 million as supporters have added to it over the years. Using this fund, we negotiate complex deals and purchase high quality land from willing sellers; we then hold this land in trust while partnering with a public agency to convey it for a park or trail. All proceeds are then reinvested to save the next critical land. To date, nearly 10,000 acres have been added to Minnesota Parks and Trails through this innovative model. Many of these lands would have otherwise been lost to development. Sometimes we have to hold land in trust indefinitely while we wait for our public partner to secure funding. You can tour some of p&tc's accomplishments in the "land protection" section of our website at www.parksandtrails.org and in the 2023 annual report.

Outreach and community engagement: of course, community is at the heart of p&tc's work, and we are grateful to have a dedicated community of people who work with us to coordinate hands-on projects in the Parks and Trails. In 2023, p&tc worked with 54 volunteer-based friends groups across the state. See schedule o for additional program languagewe worked especially closely with four of these groups who undertook vital habitat restoration projects as part of our grant program. They include: the frontenac state park association, who restored an important area for breeding and migrating birds near the park'Parks's wildlife blind and who also began working with project get outdoors to bring more underrepresented youths to the park; the friends of minneopa state park, who used a p&tc grant to restore an eroded spot in the picnic area with native plants and shrubs; the friends of lake shetek state park who partnered with a local area school to host field trips in the park; and the friends of scandia Parks and Trails who just began phase one of a three-year project to restore native prairie in liten park.p&tc believes that our public lands are enhanced when volunteers engage in hands-on habitat restoration projects that contribute to a collective land ethic. We work to boost opportunities for friends groups, land management agencies, and local communities to work together to accomplish even more. Finally, for the third year in a row, p&tc hosted eight webinars to build friends group capacity. You can find more information on the work we do with friends groups by visiting the "friends groups" section of our website at www.parksandtrails.org.

Research and public policy: Parks & Trails Council prides itself on making sure that policies we advocate for are informed by the best available data, science and research. When research is missing, we build the necessary infrastructure and collect it ourselves. Doing so has helped us become a go to source for independent research when our public partners need to understand the impact of their investments. In fact, 2023 marked the third year in which we facilitated visitor surveys at mountain biking systems funded by Parks & Trails legacy grants. In april, we released trail visitor survey reports for giants ridge and redhead mountain bike park for the iron range tourism board. See schedule o for additional program languagewhile Parks and Trails speak to p&tc members, they are unable to speak for themselves. To that end p&tc has become the voice for these special places that don't have one. The good news is that we were part of a team of organizations and folks who helped secure nearly $200 million in capital investments for Parks and Trails throughout the state in 2023. This is the largest Parks and Trails investment package in state history. And if that isn't enough, we actually turned our research into policy by bringing data collected by our research bike to the capitol. In fact, we worked to introduce bills to provide annual funding for state trail rehab based on our research findings. While state Trails didn't receive the $4.8 million they require annually, lawmakers did write them into the bonding bill for the first time in several years. We also had good success on the policy front. As always, Parks & Trails continued our vigilance to defeat efforts to open up state Parks to all-terrain vehicles. This is a fight we have been leading for nearly a decade, and we're not letting our guard down now.we also managed to help stop a proposal to significantly raise state park entrance fees at a time when the state already had a $17.5 billion surplus. This would have marked the second large entrance fee increase in six years and would have made access to Minnesota state Parks the most expensive in the upper midwest. Research shows that higher entrance fees disincentivize the benefits state Parks provide and disproportionately affect people already underrepresented in outdoor recreation. Finally, as the go to source of information on all things Parks and Trails, p&tc develops, maintains and updates several fact sheets that are used by decision makers and are accessible in the "research and reports" section of our website at www.parksandtrails.org. A summary of p&tc's legislative accomplishments can also be found in the advocacy section of our website.