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Environmental News

MPR News is your source for environment news from Minnesota and across the country.

Getting to Green: Minnesota’s energy future

Getting to Green is an MPR News series that shares stories about Minnesota’s clean energy transition, including what needs to be done to get there.

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Climate Cast

Listen to Climate Cast, the MPR News podcast all about our changing climate and its impact in Minnesota and worldwide.

Minneapolis tries to stop zebra mussels with heightened prevention efforts

Minneapolis tries to stop zebra mussels with heightened prevention efforts

Ever since zebra mussels infested Lake Minnetonka in 2010, Minneapolis officials have been bracing themselves for the discovery of the sharp-shelled invaders in one of the city's beloved lakes.
by Elizabeth Dunbar

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Masses of plastic particles found in Great Lakes

Masses of plastic particles found in Great Lakes

Already ravaged by toxic algae, invasive mussels and industrial pollution, the Great Lakes now confront another potential threat that few had even imagined until recently: untold millions of plastic litter bits, some visible only through a microscope.

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Minn. bear researcher Lynn Rogers wins temporary, partial reprieve

Minn. bear researcher Lynn Rogers wins temporary, partial reprieve

Minn. bear researcher Lynn Rogers won a temporary reprieve in court today that allows him to continue his controversial research.
by Tim Nelson

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DNR cuts wolf quota by nearly half

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will reduce the number of wolves that can be killed in this fall's wolf hunt.
by Tim Post

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Armyworm damaging crops in Minn., N.D.

Armyworm damaging crops in Minn., N.D.

Parts of Minnesota are seeing the worst armyworm infestation in decades. The worms are damaging crops from the southeastern part of the state up through west central Minnesota and into North Dakota.
by Sasha Aslanian

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Ely researcher vs. DNR over collars on bears

Ely researcher vs. DNR over collars on bears

Ely bear researcher Lynn Rogers goes to court on Monday in Ramsey County to ask a judge to allow him to keep GPS collars on 10 study bears.
by Dan Kraker

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Zoo trying to prevent extinction of 'most Minnesotan' butterfly

Zoo trying to prevent extinction of 'most Minnesotan' butterfly

Biologists at the Minnesota Zoo are scrambling to prevent a modern day extinction of a species that once thrived in Minnesota. The Poweshiek skipperling is a butterfly that lives its whole life in the prairies of the upper Midwest. But the tallgrass prairie is mostly gone. And so is a species that was once among the most common butterflies in Minnesota.
by Cathy Wurzer

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How warming is killing off the trees that helped keep us cool

How warming is killing off the trees that helped keep us cool

Pine bark beetles, now surviving the winters that once killed them, are destroying Western forests. And they're headed this way.

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State land on Lake Superior near Gitchi-Gami trail sells for $1.2M

State land on Lake Superior near Gitchi-Gami trail sells for $1.2M

Two private individuals purchased the land. The auction of school trust fund land marked the first time the property and many other state-owned land located along other lakes had been up for sale.
by Elizabeth Dunbar

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