Conservation Program Area

Rum River & St. Croix River

This area is characterized by wild, beautiful rivers, including the Rum, St. Croix, Kettle, and the Snake. It also includes Lake Mille Lacs, one of Minnesota’s largest lakes well known for its abundant fishing.

The St. Croix River – a Wild & Scenic River and National Scenic Riverway – is a major migratory corridor for waterbirds, and birds like the bald eagle, sandhill crane, osprey, and trumpeter swan call it home. Lake Mille Lacs also features the nation’s smallest National Wildlife Refuge, which is nonetheless important as breeding grounds for the common tern.

Current Grant Opportunities:

    Explore Projects in this Area

    A red barn in the distance under a blue sky, with a water body and prairie full of yellow flowers in the foreground

    A Century Old Farm’s Greatest Yield Yet

    The property in the Minnesota Land Trust’s Rum and St. Croix River Conservation Priority area includes the forested northern shore of Rock Lake and is situated between a Walmart Supercenter, golf course, and two residential developments near the growing community of Pine City, Minnesota.   The most obvious and, likely lucrative, opportunity for retired farmer [...]

    A land peninsula with trees juts into the mostly smooth water as a cloudy sky reflects

    St. Croix Watershed Research Station Land Permanently Protected

    Minnesota Land Trust, Washington County, and Science Museum of Minnesota permanently protect St. Croix Watershed Research Station Land At the Science Museum of Minnesota’s St. Croix Watershed Research Station, groundwater bubbles up to the surface through a “boiling sand spring.” Native plant communities like cold-water wetlands, oak forests and restored prairie harbor a large number [...]

    News Press Releases

    Minnesota Land Trust and Osprey Wilds ELC Permanently Protect Grindstone Lake

    Partnership Preserves 460 Acres of Forest, Prairie and Wetland Habitat It’s a 54-year-old gift that keeps on giving. Osprey Wilds Environmental Learning Center, located on Grindstone Lake in Sandstone, Minn., started its life as a 535-acre gift from Marguerite Schwyzer in 1968. On January 25, 2022, Osprey Wilds and the Minnesota Land Trust completed a [...]

    News Press Releases

    Adult bison in front of winterscape

    A Bison and Native Prairie Partnership Thrives in Central Minnesota

    Situated in Morrison County, Minnesota, within the Minnesota Land Trust’s Rum River & St. Croix River conservation program area approximately 15 miles from Mille Lacs Lake, this 552-acre protected property features rolling terrain with a mix of grasslands, forest, and wetlands. In addition to the bison herd that grazes on various herbaceous grasses and forbs [...]

    Featured Protected Property


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