The majority of electricity used in Minnesota continues to come from carbon-free sources, but the growth of green energy generation has slowed, while the use of coal grew over the past year, according to a report released this week from Clean Energy Economy Minnesota and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy.

Zero-carbon sources including wind and solar power and nuclear energy supplied 55 percent of Minnesota’s electricity in 2025. That’s well over the national average of 43 percent, and it’s the sixth straight year clean energy has supplied more than half of the state’s power.

“Minnesota continues to be a leader at the forefront of the energy transition,” said Gregg Mast, executive director of Clean Energy Economy Minnesota at an event Thursday announcing the release of the 2026 Energy Factsheet.

But the total of the state’s electricity coming from renewable sources has remained flat since 2022. And significant growth is needed for the state is to meet its mandate to produce 100 percent of electricity from carbon-free sources by 2040.

Renewable sources have generated one-third of the state’s electricity for the past three years. Over the past year, the share of the state’s electricity generated by coal grew from 20 to 24 percent— although looking back over the past decade, the use of coal has dropped by 15 percent.

Nuclear energy’s use ticked up two points to 22 percent over the past year, and has held fairly steady over the past decade. Natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal but still produces greenhouse gas emissions, declined from 27 to 21 percent of the state’s energy mix last year. But over the past decade, the state’s use of gas has grown by eight percent.

The state’s greenhouse gas emissions held steady over the past year, after three consecutive years of declines. Minnesota has cut emissions nearly in half over the past 20 years, outpacing the national reduction of 38 percent.

Despite that progress, the state is not on pace to meet its goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, compared to 2005 levels, and to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

Renewable energy development in Minnesota and nationwide has faced significant hurdles in President Donald Trump’s second term. The federal government has terminated billions of dollars in grants for renewable energy and electric grid modernization projects.

“Minnesota is not arguing, we are transitioning. It is only Washington, D.C. that is arguing against the clean energy transition,” said Pete Wyckoff, deputy commissioner of energy resources at the Minnesota Department of Commerce.

Still, headwinds remain. Residential solar installations, for example, have slowed since the federal government eliminated tax credits for them, said Marty Morud, president of TruNorth Solar in the Twin Cities.

“The phone has not been ringing nearly as often this year as it was last year,” said Morud, who added that some some homeowners have to wait years for utilities to interconnect their solar systems to the electric grid.

But Minnesota is part of a global trend showing a rapid transition to renewable energy, said Wyckoff. Around the world, wind and solar met 99 percent of new energy demand last year, Wyckoff said.

In Minnesota, wind and solar accounted for 98 percent of all new electric generation capacity added in the past five years. The state added 264 megawatts of new solar capacity in 2025, nearly ten times the amount of natural gas added to the state’s energy mix.

“In Minnesota, we don't tilt at windmills,” Wyckoff said. “We erect wind turbines, and more recently, solar panels, and we dig geothermal wells.”

Trail cameras near Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota captured footage of a female cougar and three large kittens in late March.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said Thursday it’s the first time in more than a century there’s been documentation of a reproducing cougar population in the state.

Over the past couple decades there have been nearly 200 hundred mountain lion sightings in Minnesota, many of them trail camera video footage. But those were all older, solitary cats, often wandering from the Dakotas.

That's why this video, of an adult female cougar and her kittens, frolicking and feasting on a dead deer, was so surprising.

“We were just incredulous,” said Thomas Gable, project lead of the University of Minnesota’s Voyageurs Wolf Project, which captured the video.

“Looking at the footage was and still is surreal. We never anticipated seeing four cougars together in northern Minnesota. In total, we captured around four hours of footage of this cougar family,” Gable said. “It was fascinating to see and hear their interactions — the mother grooming her kittens, the kittens growling and hissing at each other. We feel incredibly fortunate we were able to capture such a wild moment in such detail.”

The video of the four cougars — also known as mountain lions or pumas — was captured by two trail cameras that Voyageurs Wolf Project researchers placed over a deer carcass northeast of Orr.

“In late March, we received a mortality signal from a GPS-collared deer and found the carcass buried under a pile of leaves on a hillside — a telltale sign of feline predation,” researchers wrote in notes accompanying the video posted online. “We suspected it was likely a bobcat but thought, just possibly, it could be a cougar. So we put up two trail cameras on the cached deer carcass and four hours later, two cougar kittens returned to the kill. The entire family showed up that evening and spent hours in front of our cameras.”

The project’s hundreds of trail cameras had previously recorded footage of lone cougars eight times in the past three years — but none of those sightings involved kittens.

Based on traits observed in the March video, “we estimate the kittens to be 7-9 months old, so born last fall,” said John Erb, research biologist with the Minnesota DNR. “The only other confirmed kittens in Minnesota turned out to be captive escapees and involved a female with two kittens that showed up and hung around a homeowner’s porch in 2001.”

Cougars were native to Minnesota before becoming extinct within the state, according to the DNR. Over the past two decades, Erb has tracked sightings of lone cougars across Minnesota, including one that passed near two Duluth schools in December.

Another passed through the Twin Cities in 2011, before it was eventually killed on a busy Connecticut highway.

Erb has counted about 180 since 2002, although some of those are multiple sightings of the same cat. They can travel more than 40 miles a day. The cougars were all believed to be solitary young males passing through the state from Nebraska or the Dakotas.

"But clearly we had a female sneak in and and finally snuck into the same spot where a male showed up,” Erb told MPR News.

Erb called the sighting of kittens “an important starting point for potential population establishment in Minnesota” but cautioned that it’s difficult to predict what will happen to the family.

“These kittens might not survive, potentially getting killed by wolves, a male cougar or vehicles. They may also become part of the founding catalyst for a slow but steady increase in numbers. Time will tell, but we are clearly nearing a point where the probability of a self-sustaining population has increased,” Erb said.

"It won't surprise me if we start seeing a little pocket of them develop,” Erb added. “It becomes easier to build once you have that first group."

In past years, Tom Gable with the Voyageurs Wolf Project has made prank April Fool’s videos of cougar kitten sightings in Minnesota, because he never thought he’d see it happen.

"It's sort of like the dream of any wildlife biologist,” he said. “There’s not a lot of moments you get to document something like that for the first time in who knows how long."

The March footage follows a sighting of two cougar kittens in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula last year.

The DNR said cougars almost always try to avoid human contact and are rarely seen. The animals are protected in Minnesota.

Find more information about cougars in Minnesota — including suggestions on what to do if you see one — on the DNR website.

In the summer of 2021, five "Fire Boss" airplanes skimmed the surface of a lake. They belonged to aerial firefighting company Dauntless Air, and they were helping fight a wildfire in Washington state.

CEO Brett L'Esperance described the planes this way: "So if you've ever seen Planes 2, this is Dusty Crophopper."

In a video of the maneuver shared by Dauntless Air, the single-engine aircraft roar across the water one by one, filling their twin pontoons with water.

While the U.S. government is in charge of fighting most big wildfires, nearly all the 500 or so aircraft they use are privately owned by contractors like Dauntless.

Last year, those planes burned through about $50 million worth of jet fuel. Every fire season is different, but if this year is the same as last season, that fuel bill would almost double to nearly $100 million. That's because the price of jet fuel has skyrocketed since the war in Iran began in late February. Ultimately, taxpayers will be the ones to shell out tens of millions of dollars more to fight summer wildfires this year.

Willis Curdy, a retired firefighting-aircraft pilot, said planes are often pushed to their limits.

"This is not like getting in a 737 and going to 33,000 feet," Curdy said.

Curdy, who spent nearly 40 years fighting wildfires, said the advanced maneuvers that pilots use come at a high cost.

"You're asking for a lot of power, a lot of [additional] fuel consumption than you would if you're high, just gliding through the air," he said.

Most aerial firefighting companies have contracts that allow them to pass along higher fuel prices to U.S. taxpayers.

The U.S. Forest Service, the federal agency in charge of fighting most big wildfires in the United States, declined NPR's request for an interview for this story.

In emailed statements, officials said the Forest Service has budgeted $45 million for fire aviation fuel this year. That's $7 million less than it spent last year.

"Yeah, I think that budget's going to change," Curdy said with a laugh.

Last year's fuel bill was slightly above the six-year average. This year, several Western states had very dry to record-dry winters, setting them up for a potentially catastrophic wildfire season.

L'Esperance, Dauntless Air, said he's less worried about fuel prices than the potential for shortages of jet fuel.

"That's what's keeping me up at night," he said.

L'Esperance has his eye on oil imports heading into California, where most of the jet fuel used across the West is refined. The California Energy Commission is reporting the lowest stock of jet fuel at refineries in more than two years.

The American Petroleum Institute says the state is more reliant on imported oil than the rest of the country — imports that have stalled due to the war in Iran.

"When things get really, really busy and scary in that late June, July, August and September time frame, if we don't have the fuel to respond, we just can't respond," L'Esperance said.

The Forest Service has not responded to NPR's questions about whether it expects a shortage this year of fuel for firefighting aircraft. But the agency told NPR it has the flexibility to spend more if it needs to.

It very well might — federal forecasters are predicting an active fire season in much of the West.

Copyright 2026, NPR

A citizen’s group fighting a proposed Google data center in the small northeastern Minnesota city of Hermantown has filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging it has violated state law in its pursuit of the data center.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in St. Louis County District Court by Stop the Hermantown Data Center. The group claims the city of Hermantown improperly changed its 2045 comprehensive plan and rezoned the neighborhood where the data center is proposed to be built to allow the controversial project to move forward.

The lawsuit also alleges the city violated Minnesota’s open meeting law by closing three meetings to the public while Hermantown officials secretly worked with the developer to make changes to its development plan.

City officials met with representatives of Google for more than a year before the project was made public last year. Several city and county officials signed non-disclosure agreements forbidding them from discussing the proposal, which was dubbed “Project Loon” in documents.

The group filed the lawsuit “to appeal the city’s actions and lack of transparency,” said Hermantown resident Emma Richtman. “We found it necessary to try and get a seat at the table to have a say in the plans for the development of a hyperscale data center in our community.”

Hermantown officials say they don’t comment on pending litigation.

The Hermantown city council voted last October to approve a zoning change to make way for the proposed data center on about 200 acres in a rural corner of the city, about eight miles west of Duluth.

It’s one of about a dozen large-scale data centers proposed around the state. Only one is under construction: a Meta facility in Rosemount.

Data centers are huge buildings that house rows of computer servers. Those servers contain the raw computing power that undergirds cloud computing and the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. The complex in Hermantown would include up to four buildings. Each one would be up to 50 feet tall and would cover an area about the size of five football fields.

The more than $1 billion project would create around 100 permanent jobs and hundreds of construction jobs. The city is weighing a proposal to grant Google significant tax incentives. In return, the tech giant would contribute tens of millions of dollars toward infrastructure upgrades, as well as payments to the city and school district.

Opponents argue the massive project would fundamentally change the character of a rural neighborhood, depress property values, increase traffic and create noise and light pollution.

Community residents say they were kept in the dark as the city negotiated with Google. Jonathan Thornton, who lives about a mile from the proposed data center, was part of an advisory committee helping develop the city’s 2045 comprehensive plan.

Thornton said those committee meetings abruptly stopped in the summer of 2024. Shortly thereafter, city officials changed the comprehensive plan to allow for a data center at its proposed location.

“This complaint is the direct result of what happens when government officials sign non-disclosure agreements and circumvent the public process,” Thornton said at a rally announcing the lawsuit outside Hermantown city hall.

The Hermantown citizens group is also involved in another lawsuit that alleges the project’s environmental review was inadequate. The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy is representing the group in that lawsuit. The MCEA also has filed lawsuits against proposed data center projects in Faribault, Lakeville, Monticello and Pine Island.

The Monticello City Council voted 4-1 Monday night to adopt an ordinance that could open the door to developers building massive data centers in the community 40 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

The ordinance also includes new restrictions for data centers that city officials say are aimed at reducing negative impacts on people living nearby and ensuring Monticello residents don’t bear any financial costs.

After the vote, council member Tracy Hinz called it “one of the best, most well-framed ordinances in our state, if not broader.”

“I feel disappointed that I've let down some people with my vote, but I also have really, I think, balanced that disappointment out with my duty as a public servant,” she said. “It’s not about pleasing everyone. It’s about doing what’s in the best interest of the community and not closing any doors for future development.”

The vote came after more than two hours of debate. About a dozen people spoke, nearly all opposed to data centers being built in Monticello.

Many expressed deep worry that the massive facilities could lower their property values, drain resources like water and electricity and create constant noise from equipment, affecting people and wildlife.

“I am very much against the data center, because to me, it’s experimental, and I don’t think Monticello should have to be the guinea pigs for this,” said Joan Bondhus, who has lived in the city since 1964.

Monticello is one of several Minnesota cities wrestling with whether to permit hyperscale data centers, which are huge warehouses filled with computer servers that help power cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

The plans have sparked strong opposition from some residents who are concerned about their massive size, water and energy consumption and possible noise and light pollution.

But some cities, including Monticello, see potential benefits they could bring, including property tax revenue, construction jobs and investment in roads and utilities.

“We need to diversify our tax base,” Hinz said before the vote. “We need to think about opportunities. And I cannot possibly deny an ordinance that allows for future applications and consideration of opportunities."

Monticello is considered a prime location for a data center because of available land, water and electricity. No developers have submitted formal applications to build a data center yet. But at least two have expressed interest in building facilities on land the city plans to annex.

That includes Monticello Tech, which has proposed building a data center campus covering about 3 million square feet — about 50 football fields — on about 550 acres east of Highway 25.

Another developer, Scannell Properties, wants to build a 1.3 million-square-foot data center on about 100 acres near the Bertram Chain of Lakes Regional Park.

Monticello’s ordinance creates a zoning designation specifically for data centers. Developers who want to build a data center would first have to get the property rezoned, then apply for a conditional use permit.

The ordinance requires data centers to demonstrate that there’s adequate water and energy to meet their needs. It also tries to reduce impacts to people living nearby by setting standards for landscape buffers, screening, noise and lighting.

After a debate, the council increased the distance that data centers will be required to be located from residential areas to at least 300 feet. Opponents of data centers wanted to require a much greater distance.

David Thorsen, who lives in a neighborhood near one of the proposed sites, said he’s worried about potential health impacts if he has to live next to a data center, and not being able to sell his house if he wants to move.

“I don’t want to sit on my patio for six years and listen to construction,” he said. “And fine, great, it brings temporary jobs to the community to build it, but it doesn’t bring long-term jobs.”

Several residents asked the city to consider pausing new data center development, as some other Minnesota cities have done.

Monticello officials say the ordinance does not mean that the city will automatically approve a proposal to build a data center. They say each application will be considered individually.

The ordinance also makes clear that the city will not extend tax incentives to lure a data center to Monticello, and the project’s developers would have to pay for any new infrastructure that’s needed.

Mayor Lloyd Hilgart said he thinks that the city has done “everything within our power” to create an ordinance that is the best for the city of Monticello” and addresses residents’ concerns.

“I believe that everything but the kitchen sink is in that ordinance,” he said.

After the meeting, some residents voiced disappointment, but said the ordinance was better than originally proposed because of public input. They vowed to closely watch any applications to build a data center to make sure they follow the rules and aren’t granted any exceptions.

Jenna Van Den Boom, who helped organize a group called Stop the Monticello Data Centers, called the council’s vote “a kick in the gut.”

“I think we kind of expected that it was going to happen,” she said. “But also, I think there's always that hope that Monticello is family-first city, and that we would pick our families and our community. And it was just really disappointing that we didn't see that.”

The end of the mining ban near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area is now official.

President Donald Trump has signed a Congressional resolution that passed the Senate earlier this month on a 50-49 vote, reversing a moratorium on mining on federal land that includes about 350 square miles of the Superior National Forest.

The mining ban spanned an area encompassing the watershed of the Boundary Waters, meaning any water pollution from potential mines in the area could potentially flow into the wilderness area.

When the Biden administration put the ban in place three years ago, it cited concerns that mining could cause irreparable harm to the fragile wilderness of interconnected rivers and lakes that draws canoeists from around the country.

Trump’s signature ends a “reckless policy that sidelined Minnesota’s miners and undermined our nation’s ability to source our own materials,” said Northeast Minnesota Republican Congressman Pete Stauber, who introduced the resolution to overturn the ban.

It relied on the a law called the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to overturn executive branch actions with simple majority votes in the U.S. House and Senate, preventing Democrats from using the filibuster to block the legislation.

“Now, proposed mining projects aimed at unlocking trillions of dollars’ worth of critical minerals can move forward through the proper state and federal environmental review and permitting process,” Stauber added.

The move is expected to provide a huge boost to Twin Metals, which is seeking to build an underground mine for copper and nickel near Ely, just outside the Boundary Waters. Twin Metals’ proposed mine is located along the shore of Birch Lake, part of the Kawishiwi River, which flows into the wilderness.

“This decision dismisses outright years of rigorous scientific evidence, the voices of hundreds of thousands of Americans and the clear will of Minnesotans—70 percent of whom support permanent protection of the Boundary Waters,” said Ingrid Lyons, executive director of Save the Boundary Waters.

Attention now shifts to Minnesota. Any mining project in the state would need to undergo environmental review and secure permits from state and federal agencies. That process could take several years, if not decades.

Wolves on a remote island in Lake Superior appear to be thriving, but they're making deep dents in the moose population that they rely on as a leading food source, according to a report released Monday.

Isle Royale is a 134,000-acre national park in far western Lake Superior between Grand Marais, Minnesota, and Thunder Bay, Canada. The island is a natural laboratory, offering scientists a rare opportunity to observe wolves and moose largely free from human influence.

Researchers have conducted wolf and moose population surveys on the island since 1958. The surveys had been an annual winter event when the roadless island is closed to visitors, but researchers have run into obstacles in recent years.

The pandemic in 2021 forced scientists to cancel the survey for the first time. The National Park Service ordered researchers to evacuate the island during their 2024 winter survey after weeks of unusually warm weather left the ice surrounding the island unsafe for ski-plane landings. Researchers rely on the planes for easier wildlife tracking but the island has no runway, forcing them to land on iced-over Lake Superior. Things didn't go much better last year when researchers were forced to scrap the effort after their pilot suffered a last-minute medical issue.

But this year a team of researchers led by scientists from Michigan Tech University were able to conduct a survey from Jan. 22 through March 3. Findings from the survey led them to estimate the island's wolf population at 37 animals. Data scientists gathered before they evacuated in 2024 survey showed the population at 30.

The 2026 estimates are the highest since the late 1970s and represent a marked improvement since the population dwindled to just two wolves a decade ago. Researchers believe inbreeding led to depressed survival rates in pups.

The island's moose population, though, is declining dramatically. This year's survey put the population at 524 moose, down 75 percent from a high of 2,000 in 2019. Wolves likely killed almost a quarter of the moose population over the last year, scientists estimated. For the first time in almost 70 years, researchers observed no moose calves during the winter survey.

Sarah Hoy, a Michigan Tech researcher who specializes in predator-prey interactions and one of the survey's co-leaders, said scientists had to brave wind chills that dipped to minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit and it was difficult to keep warm with the woodstoves in their cabins.

But clear skies facilitated exceptional observations. The scientists spotted wolves on all but one survey flight, she said. One of the highlights was watching a pack snuggle up together on the ice on Valentine's Day, she said.

“It's always such a privilege to get to see wolves interacting, witnessing courtship behavior, pups playfully tugging on each other's tails, or a pack working together to take down a moose,” she said.

Scientists plan to conduct summer research on the island with an eye toward how the burgeoning wolf packs can maintain balance with the rest of the ecosystem.

Elected leaders in Monticello could decide Monday night whether to adopt controversial new rules for data centers.

Faced with at least two proposals to build data centers in the small community about 40 miles northwest of Minneapolis, Monticello staff and city officials decided to craft an ordinance to govern where and how they could be built.

But some residents don’t think the ordinance is strict enough, and are frustrated that city leaders are considering allowing a data center to be built near their neighborhoods.

"Obviously we don't want a data center at all anywhere near our homes or in our community,” said Lisa Keenan, who lives a few hundred feet from one of the proposed sites. She helped start a Facebook group called “Stop the Monticello Data Centers,” which has more than 1,400 members.

At a packed City Council meeting earlier in April, many people wore red and carried signs reading “No data centers.” Mayor Lloyd Hilgart called a recess after some residents shouted their displeasure.

City Administrator Rachel Leonard said she's not surprised that people feel strongly about the issue.

"This is one of the biggest decisions that we've had to make as a community,” she said. “And people feel really invested in the future of Monticello and in the lives that they're building here."

Prime location

With plenty of available land, water for cooling equipment and electricity from Xcel Energy’s nuclear power plant, Monticello is considered an attractive location for a large data center.

But when developers first approached Monticello in 2024, data centers weren’t on city officials’ radar.

"Honestly, I’d probably never even heard of them before,” Hilgart said in December. “Probably most people hadn't.”

Monticello officials decided that if data centers were coming, they wanted to be ready with information and some ground rules.

"While they could see benefits to this type of potential development, they could also very clearly see some of the risks and what has happened in other places in the country,” Leonard said. “And that they did not want to pursue this at any cost.”

So city staff, planning commission and City Council members spent the past year researching data centers, and how other communities have handled them.

They drafted an ordinance that would create a special zoning district specifically for data center campuses, which can be several football fields in size. Data centers would need to be set back at least 200 feet from residential areas, and demonstrate there’s adequate water and energy available.

The ordinance also tries to address how a data center would affect the people living around it, Leonard said, by requiring landscape buffers, screening and setting limits on noise and lights.

‘We don’t get any say’

The rules have gone through many revisions and public meetings. Lots of people have weighed in, and some aren't happy with the results.

Keenan said the ordinance is better than nothing. But she thinks it should require data centers to be much farther away from homes. And she worries the ordinance could signal a green light for developers.

"When that application comes in, it's our understanding basically that if they can check all the boxes and get the permits from the DNR or the state or whoever, it's pretty much the city doesn't have any right to say no,” Keenan said.

Monticello leaders say an ordinance doesn't mean the city will automatically allow a developer to build a data center. They say they'll consider each application individually.

Hilgart said the ordinance makes clear that the city won't provide tax incentives or pay for new infrastructure for a data center.

"I believe the ordinance offers the protection that the city is looking for,” he said.

Jenna Van Den Boom owns a home in a housing development close to one of the proposed data center sites, and has helped organize the opposition. She said residents are frustrated because they feel city officials aren’t listening to their concerns.

Van Den Boom said she’s worried about noise and dust from construction, which could last for several years.

“We've invested time, money and energy in making these our forever homes,” she said. “And then we don't get any say, it feels very, very wrong and very violating.”

Building boom

Proposals to build the huge warehouses filled with computer servers that power cloud computing and artificial intelligence have been popping up in communities across Minnesota and the U.S.

Opponents are concerned about their massive size, their vast water and energy consumption, and noise and light pollution.

But some cities see the potential benefits they could bring, including property tax revenue, construction jobs and economic growth.

City officials say proposals to build data centers in Monticello and elsewhere likely will keep coming.

“We believe that it is in our best interest to have local regulations related to this type of development,” Leonard said.

But some Monticello residents say there should be state or even national rules on data centers to protect people from their impacts.

State lawmakers are considering several related measures this session, including a statewide moratorium on data centers and a bill to stop local officials from signing nondisclosure agreements with developers. It’s not clear whether any will become law.

A handful of Minnesota cities have passed their own moratoriums on new data centers, including Carver, Eagan, New Brighton and Rosemount.

Monticello officials say they’ve had an unofficial pause on data center development for the past year, by alerting developers that they wouldn’t accept any applications until the ordinance is complete.

Maine dethroned Minnesota last year as the national leader in community solar per capita. That's according to a new report from the nonprofit, Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

Community solar is a way for individuals, businesses, nonprofits and other groups to purchase or “subscribe” to renewable energy from a local source.

Ingrid Behrsin is a senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. She said community solar stalled in Minnesota because of two main factors – availability and policy changes.

“It's the reduction in the incentive, and it's also the reduction in the available places where you can plug in a community solar development into the grid," she said.

Before then, Behrsin said Minnesota ran away with a per capita solar capacity nationwide for a decade, until cracks began to show.

Community solar programs aren’t owned by any corporate/private utility companies. So when community solar arrays are built, they take money away from those companies by way of customers switching over to solar.

Katie Kienbaum, a senior researcher with the Energy Democracy Institute at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, said utility companies have a lot of political power. And in many states they hold a lot of sway over legislatures.

“There is just a broad opposition to solar, generally from utilities,” Kienbaum said. “And you'll see that in them opposing or trying to change net metering policies to reduce compensation for solar owners.”

According to Behrsin, it’s similar to what the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission recently did, when it included a cap on the wattage that community solar can offer to its customers. She said that in turn, shut out potential subscribers who were on waitlists, and made financing projects harder and more expensive, especially for smaller developers.

“The best community solar programs don’t have any caps,” Behrsin said. “The second best grow their capacity caps over time. They don’t decrease them.”

She added the uncertainty around when a cap might get hit in any given year can leave developers in limbo.

Behrsin said there will need to be some changes for Minnesota to regain its position as the nation’s community solar leader, but it’s not impossible.

“Utilities and the regulatory commission need to work together,” she said. “To ensure that we can plug as many community solar gardens into the grid as possible, to maximize electricity cost savings for residents, and the reduction in dependency on needing to develop large scale alternative generators that are not distributed solar.”

Last year 42 percent of all installed solar in Minnesota was community solar, tying it at second place in the rankings with New York state.

There's something fishy going on in the frigid, dark depths of Lake Superior.

In the deepest part of the lake, a quarter mile below the surface, researchers are discovering a growing number of extraordinarily thin lake trout that weigh about half their typical, healthy body weight. Scientists have dubbed them "zombie fish."

The fish are so skinny they look like they’re suffering from a famine, said Shawn Sitar, a fisheries research biologist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “That's how emaciated these are,” he said.

Scientists don’t know yet what’s behind the phenomenon, or if there's even a problem. Researchers are first trying to determine what’s causing the severely underweight fish, what the long-term implications might be, “and then, if something is necessary, what we can do to prevent that from being a problem,” said Greg McClinchey, legislative affairs and policy director for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.

The condition is occurring in one of four sub-species of lake trout known as siscowets that live in the deepest part of the lake. They have adapted to have very high body fat content, which allows them to survive in such harsh conditions. “So they should be very robust," said Sitar.

But instead, some fish they’ve surveyed have only about a third of the fat content of healthy fish of the same age and length. They look gaunt and like they’ve been stretched thin. Some also have deformed spines.

Sitar and his colleagues were the first to document that siscowets and other fish live in the deepest part of Lake Superior, more than 1,300 feet below the surface, about 30 miles north of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Munising, Mich.

No light reaches it. The water pressure is immense. Yet there is a delicate food web that exists there.

Researchers place gill nets far below the surface to catch lake trout to survey them. It’s dangerous work in such deep areas because of the amount of tension on the net when they pull it back into the boat.

Over the past decade, Sitar has observed slight declines in the number of siscowet. Their condition has also deteriorated. But those trends have accelerated in the past couple years.

Last year, in one of the nets they pulled up from the deepest part of the lake, “we saw 50 percent of our catch in deep water looking like these zombies,” he said. “Something was wrong in deep water areas."

In shallower areas, researchers have found the number of “zombie” fish ranging from 12 to 37 percent of the total fish they’ve surveyed. But Sitar says some of the healthy fish, what researchers call “normies,” may be on their way to becoming “zombies.”

Sitar has a few theories to explain what's happening. The first hypothesis is that fish are starving in extremely deep water because of some natural ecological event.

The researchers have so far only found zombie fish in the deepest holes in the lake, a thousand feet or deeper. Those are extreme environments, with very few food sources– similar to arctic conditions or high-altitude ecosystems on land.

So if one of the fish the trout prey upon has been depleted for some reason, it could cause starvation among siscowets, Sitar explained, "Because they can't get enough daily calories to sustain themselves."

The condition could also be disease related. In June scientists will conduct a fish health assessment to make sure there isn’t a disease spreading among fish.

A third possibility could be that sea lamprey are weakening a large number of siscowets. Sitar suspects that’s not the issue, because lamprey leave wounds behind where they attach to lake trout, and scientists aren’t seeing many more scars on zombie fish than others.

Researchers are also investigating whether the trout have been contaminated by a toxin. The zombie fish have slightly higher levels of mercury in their tissue than healthy trout. Sitar doesn’t know yet if that’s the cause. But it’s something they plan to investigate.

So far, zombie fish have only been observed in extremely deep areas off the shore of Michigan’s upper peninsula. Minnesota DNR fisheries scientists say they haven't seen any zombie fish yet. But they may conduct some surveys next year to see if the fish are also haunting Lake Superior’s North Shore.

This discovery comes at a time when lake trout overall are thriving in Lake Superior. 60 years ago the lake’s top predator was nearly wiped out by the invasive eel-like lamprey. But a control program managed by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, a binational treaty organization between the U.S. and Canada, has allowed the lake trout to slowly recover.

Two years ago the commission announced that lake trout were fully recovered in most of Lake Superior, and after a decades-long pause, the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior has resumed harvesting them. Now the organization is helping to coordinate research into the “zombie fish” to determine whether it’s a problem that requires some sort of action.

“We want to make sure that we're not looking down the barrel of something much worse than we might imagine,” said McClinchey.

The Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ, or Bassett Creek, flows from Medicine Lake in Plymouth to the Mississippi River in Minneapolis across from Boom Island. Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ is the Dakota name for the creek.

A group of water walkers traveled about 13 miles on foot from Medicine Lake to the Mississippi River on Wednesday, approximating the creek’s path. Participants of the ceremonial water walk, or nibi walk in the Ojibwe language, honored and prayed for the water while on their journey.

Sharon Day is a member of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa and has led the water walks for many years. The walks began over two decades ago in response to water pollution.

“Nothing can live without water,” Day said.

Nearly 40 walkers arrived at the riverbank, and one woman carried a copper bucket filled with water from Medicine Lake. During the ceremony, the carrier poured the water from the bucket into the creek where it meets the Mississippi.

Roxanne  Biidaabinokwe Gould is a retired educator and is Odawa and Ojibwe. She had waited in the crowd for the walkers to arrive. Gould says the watershed was heavily polluted when the city was being settled in the 1800s.

“The creek was used as a dumping ground for sewage. So, it was greatly neglected and abused,” Gould said.

Day planned the Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ water walk for Earth Day as a chance for community members to reflect on the water as a “life giver.”

“[Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ] was so polluted. Hearing all the stories about what happened, and [I] just wanted to walk this river on Earth Day,” said Day.

Day says participants of varying ages took part in the water walk, and that everyone can take care of the earth’s waterways.

Retired educator Jim Rock, a member of the Sisseton Dakota Oyate, was also in the crowd when walkers arrived at Bassett Creek. He says every day is “Mother Earth” Day.

“That water is her blood," he said, comparing the earth to a body, which cares for those who inhabit it. "Not just our selfish, two-legged human way, but [for] all these relatives.”

Gould shared that Bassett Creek had been a source of “food and medicine” for Dakota people before pollution and city development.

“The creek was a path that the Dakota people used for thousands of years. They would walk along the high part of the creek from Medicine Lake to the Mississippi River,” Gould said. “It was, I think, popular because there was so much abundance.”

By doing the water walk on Earth Day, participants hope to encourage efforts to restore Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ to its original abundance.

Chandra Colvin covers Native American communities in Minnesota for MPR News via Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.

Another chance for severe weather arrives in Minnesota on Thursday, and one of the ways the National Weather Service will get information on its aftermath is from regular people’s backyards.

More than 20,000 people nationwide volunteer as part of the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, or CoCoRaHS. And the Minnesota Climatology Office is hoping more people can join in the effort.

State Climatologist Luigi Romolo says the information is “crucial” and “invaluable.”

All you need is a 4-inch rain gauge.

It’s especially helpful in the wake of federal funding cuts to NOAA.

“We have about 200 to 250 National Weather Service stations across the entire state of Minnesota. That isn't a lot in a state that has 87 counties, and some of them don't report fastidiously, so we rely on these volunteers to fill in the gaps,” Romolo said. On Wednesday, “a day when it barely rained in Minnesota, we had 950 volunteers report. Most of them reported zero precipitation. It’s incredible. It almost triples the amount of dots on the map that we would normally have.”

MPR News Meteorologist Sven Sundgaard echoed the importance of CoCoRaHS.

“It is absolutely essential information. We can't possibly cover the state or the country otherwise,” Sundgaard said. “We have some pretty good estimates with satellites; that's how we can estimate rainfall in the Amazon, for example. But nothing beats real-time data on the ground.”

Learn more at CoCoRaHS.org.

The cost of gasoline and petroleum has risen sharply since the start of President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, which has led to higher plastic prices.

Can companies that offer more earth-friendly products avoid some of the costs of the war or even see a boost in business?

Natur-Tec, based in Circle Pines, makes sustainable bio-based materials and products, such as compostable trash bags. Vineet Dalal, its vice president and director of global market development, joined Morning Edition to explain the economics his company is experiencing.

For the bioplastics maker, production cost increases are coming from increased transportation and logistics costs due to higher diesel prices, but the overall immediate costs are lower than those of conventional plastic manufacturers. Bloomberg reports that Dow Inc., Exxon Mobile Corp. and Nova Chemicals Corp. are also raising their plastic prices as a result of the war and shuttered shipping out of the Strait of Hormuz.

Fertilizer prices are also higher because the war is slowing the nitrogen supply chain, right in time for the Midwest’s planting season. While Natur-Tec is avoiding some additional costs right now, Dalal believes secondary tolls could hit in the coming months since his products are derived from corn.

“Some crops, like corn, are more nitrogen intensive, and so if the farmer says, instead of planting corn this year, I'm going to switch to soybeans, that's less corn that's going to be planted. Or even if they do decide to plant corn, they might use less nitrogen, and that might result in lower yields,” Dalal explained. “I suspect over the next eight to 12 months, there might be some impact on feedstock pricing as far as corn is concerned. Even though bioplastics are plant-based and not directly impacted by the higher energy prices, I think this is a lesson for us that the war in the Middle East will affect all aspects of the economy.”

Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player button above.

Last week, the U.S. Senate overturned a 20-year federal mining ban on land near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Supporters say modern mines can protect the environment while producing critical minerals and boosting the regional economy. Opponents argue the environmental risks are too great and the economic benefits aren't what they seem.

MPR News guest host Catharine Richert talks about what comes next and how lifting the ban could affect the environment and jobs.

Guests:

• Julie Lucas is the executive director of MiningMinnesota, an industry trade group.

• Ingrid Lyons is the executive director of Save the Boundary Waters.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.    

Wednesday is Earth Day, which started in 1970 as a protest against pollution and habitat loss. Climate change was not a household term at the time, but it's now a number-one priority for people concerned about the wellbeing of the planet.

The state of Minnesota is chasing a set of goals to tackle the causes of climate change and cushion its impact on communities. The state is trying to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, compared to 2005 levels, and reach net-zero emissions by 2050. It is not on track to meet those goals, according to a recent presentation the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency gave to state lawmakers.

To learn more about the state’s climate plans and what it will take to get on track, MPR News host Nina Moini talked with Katrina Kessler, commissioner of the MPCA and chair of the Minnesota Climate Change Subcabinet.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Use the audio player above to listen to the full interview.

How's the state doing in terms of meeting its emissions targets?

We have seen a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from Minnesota's electricity sector. We have reduced that sector’s emissions by 50 percent since 2005 and that has been a result of strong legislative action and strong leadership from utilities such as Xcel Energy.

That type of collaboration between state and private entities, as well as local partners, is what we need to do more of to accelerate towards our goals, because we are currently falling short of meeting those goals. We know that if we continue to implement current state and federal policies, we will cut Minnesota's greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent by 2030 and 39 percent by 2050. That is falling short of the 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that we have set by 2030 and complete carbon neutrality by 2050.

What would it take to get back on track?

We need to continue towards our carbon-free electricity by 2040, get all of our energy coming from renewable sources. But we also need to make progress in the way that we sequester carbon in our soils, the way we grow food, transport food, transportation choices, including whether we're walking, biking, using trains, planes or cars, as well as think about the way we heat buildings and the way we are working across sectors to store carbon whenever possible.

A lot of people are concerned about energy use by data centers that power artificial intelligence. How does AI fit into climate policy?

In segments of Minnesota's economy and certainly in individual households, AI has been embraced, and I see that with my own high schoolers. But we also know the power that is required to run these hyperscale data centers is significant. We need to invest in grid resilience and address affordability, because we can't have data centers moving into communities and then having customers of that local, municipal electrical supply subsidize the cost of that hyperscale data center. I think it's not only finding ways to continue to be on track towards our carbon neutrality goals, but also think about how data centers can potentially be good neighbors and offset concerns about grid resilience and affordability in communities.

At the federal level, there have been rollbacks to incentives for electric vehicles. What needs to happen to help reduce emissions from transportation?

Rollbacks of federal climate commitments will drive up energy costs and threaten gains that we've made in Minnesota. All the more reason that we need to recommit in Minnesota to do what's right for our goals that are in law. We have strong leadership at our Department of Transportation, at the Met Council and with local governments across the state, recognizing that not only are people asking for choices, but they're asking for affordability. Certainly, fuel prices right now reinforce the fact that we should have more affordable choices, and that includes transit: different ways that we can fuel our cars, looking at ways that we can move commodities, as well as people, in a different way across the state and across the country.

What are some of the small ways that you would encourage Minnesotans to help?

One thing people can do within their own homes and in their neighborhoods is think about the food choices that they're making, and particularly food waste. Methane, which comes from degrading organic material, is a four-times-more-powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, much of the food that people buy and bring into their homes or have in restaurants or larger institutions is wasted and could be used to feed people, feed animals, or at the very least, be processed at an organics facility. That is one area that we're trying to lift up as something that is possible and actually helps with affordability for all Minnesotans.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

One of the state's greenest university campuses is getting even greener.

The University of Minnesota Morris reached carbon neutrality when it comes to the electricity that powers its campus, thanks to two wind turbines named Bert and Ernie. Now, it's taking steps to decarbonize the source of heat in its buildings.

That's led Morris to a new thermal battery that it began piloting in March. It is believed to be the first campus in the U.S. to use this technology for heating.

UMN Morris Sustainability Director Troy Goodnough joined MPR News host Nina Moini to talk about how it works.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.

By Celia Llopis-Jepsen | Harvest Public Media

South-central Kansas is sandy. Commodity crops abound. And you don’t have to dig very deep to hit groundwater.

These three seemingly unrelated facts make for a trifecta with an unwanted prize: A lot of the drinking water is now polluted with nitrate, mostly from chemical fertilizer.

Scientists have tested more than 200 private wells across nine counties in this region. About half of the sites turned out to contain more nitrate than the federal government considers safe to drink.

Many of the others were not far from crossing that point.

“In another year or two, you could be above it,” said Matthew Kirk, a geology professor at Kansas State University who’s been busy for the past five years helping families in this region find out what’s in their water — and simultaneously piecing together a picture of how widespread the contamination has become.

Across the Midwest and Great Plains, large-scale fertilizer application and livestock facilities have upped the pace of nitrate accumulating in groundwater.

In parts of the region, many private wells that rural households relied on for decades are no longer safe to drink from without installing pricey treatment.

In Kansas, communities are discussing how to fertilize crops more carefully. In Iowa, economists are trying to pin down the costs of polluted groundwater. In Minnesota, well owners and environmental groups are suing for stricter fertilizer and manure regulations.

Meanwhile, some researchers worry that families often don’t know that their water has changed over time, and now poses a serious health risk.

“Most of the families are just — from generation to generation — using the same well,” said Kansas State graduate student Thisura Ilukgoda Gedara, who helped sample wells for free for farmers, ranchers and others in the area. “ We can help them to understand whether the water that they are consuming is good or bad.”

Some aquifers are especially vulnerable

Nitrate pollution has hit risky levels faster in some parts of the country than others.

It’s not that these places are the only ones spraying chemical fertilizer on crops or concentrating animals on feedlots. But accidents of local geology allow the nitrogen produced by these activities to more quickly penetrate the groundwater there.

In south-central Kansas, nitrogen easily seeps into the Great Bend Prairie Aquifer because its water is often just tens of feet below ground and the sandy soil is particularly permeable.

In southeast Minnesota, highly penetrable, fractured bedrock gives the nitrate easy access, as do the many spots where surface and groundwater connect.

Such contamination has repercussions for human health.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has for decades considered 10 milligrams per liter of water to be the safety limit for nitrate in public water supplies. This is based on evidence that higher amounts can cause a dangerous condition in infants — methemoglobinemia. Also known as blue baby syndrome, this can be fatal.

But some public health researchers remain concerned that unnaturally high amounts of nitrate in drinking water might play a role in other conditions, too, such as thyroid disease or colorectal cancer. And they aren’t convinced the EPA’s 10-milligram limit is low enough.

Meanwhile, since the 1990s, more water utilities have been blowing past the EPA’s limit – in particular, those that depend on groundwater instead of lakes or rivers.

In Texas alone, at least 50 community water systems tested above the EPA limit in 2022 and 2023, affecting the water supplies for 45,000 people.

The city of Pratt, in south-central Kansas, had to shut off two wells that comprised nearly a quarter of its total water supply. The town of just 6,500 people must now figure out how to afford infrastructure to treat the water, which is expected to cost tens of millions of dollars.

Because they are regulated, public water suppliers monitor nitrate levels and have to protect their customers from this contamination. But more than 40 million Americans get their drinking water from private wells, and it’s not clear how many test their well water for pollutants.

A survey of rural households in parts of Iowa with known nitrogen pollution found in 2022 that 10 percent of respondents had tested their water in the past year.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urges well owners to test annually. Nitrate levels can change that fast, and the contamination doesn’t make itself known in any obvious way.

“There’s no smell, there’s no color,” said Kirk, the Kansas State geologist. “If you have high nitrate, it looks and tastes fine potentially.”

The price of groundwater pollution

Installing equipment to remove nitrate can cost a household hundreds or thousands of dollars, depending on the treatment system and how comprehensive it is.

“Brita filters aren’t going to do it,” said Gabriel Lade, an economist at the Ohio State University.

Lade is one of the researchers behind the 2022 Iowa study. His expertise is environmental and agricultural economics.

A decade ago, while at Iowa State University, he and some colleagues set about documenting the economic benefits for Iowa of reducing nutrient pollution, which includes nitrate. Lade said the information could help policymakers weigh how much money to spend on conservation practices that help mitigate nutrient pollution, such as wetland restoration.

To tally the potential benefits of less pollution, economists worked on understanding the pollution’s toll on Iowa. For example, nitrogen and phosphorus accumulates in lakes, fueling toxic algae blooms.

“People tend to change where they recreate,” Lade said, “And there’s a cost to that.”

The researchers found that reducing this nutrient load in lakes could translate to $30 million in recreational benefits for Iowans.

Another example is when elevated contamination pushes water utilities to spend millions of dollars on removing nutrients from drinking water to protect public health.

Iowa’s most high-profile example of this is in Des Moines, which has worked to combat nitrate in its drinking water for years. The city’s water utility sued upstream agricultural areas in court. The case was dismissed.

Iowa State researchers also noted that nutrient pollution impacts rural families that depend on private wells instead of utilities. Only, they ran into hurdles pinning down the extent of the impact.

No one knows, for example, how many Iowans are drinking untreated, nitrate-laden wellwater. This makes it difficult to explore the cost to human health.

“This is one of the biggest challenges,” Lade said. “It’s really hard to tell what exposure is.”

This sent Lade and his colleagues down a different path: Surveying people who depend on wells. The researchers mailed surveys to rural households in counties with known nitrate problems and more than 8,000 private well users replied.

About 40 percent said they drink their well water without filtering it and without having tested it in the past year.

Many respondents believed nitrate can be a cause for concern. But they were more likely to think it was a problem somewhere else in Iowa than specifically in their area.

“ It may relate to just basic human biases,” Lade said. People may think, “‘I know it’s an issue, but my water looks clear, smells fine. We’re probably good to go.’”

Lade and his colleagues have now secured funding to expand their research in Iowa by surveying households in more counties and potentially giving them information tailored to shed light on the nitrate situation in their specific area.

Iowa funds counties to test households’ well water for free. However, University of Iowa researchers found in 2019 that most counties weren’t using up the money for tests because not enough people were requesting them.

A more informed public

Nitrogen pollution has many sources, including livestock facilities, wastewater treatment plants and spreading manure on fields. Individual wells can even become contaminated from being located near a septic tank.

In south-central Kansas, chemical analysis indicates most of the nitrate in the region’s aquifer comes from synthetic fertilizer applied to cropland, said Kirk, the Kansas State geologist.

The increases in nitrate over the past four decades in this region rank as some of the biggest nationally compared to data gathered in a national long-term study, he said.

Kansas State scientists found one well with more than five times as much nitrate as the EPA considers safe to drink.

The university has been sampling wells for free the past five years. Many rural households found out that their water was unsafe to drink without treatment.

Kirk hopes word will spread among relatives and neighbors, prompting others to test their water, too. His team also gave public presentations in the region to show residents what they were finding.

At a recent workshop, Kirk said, farmers, Kansas State Extension agents, water managers, scientists and others gathered to discuss the problem.

Participants talked about ways to get more precise with fertilizer or to reduce how much they need. For example, they spoke about improving the soil by planting cover crops or applying fertilizer only when and where crops will use it. Overapplying or applying at the wrong time makes it more likely that nitrogen will escape into the groundwater.

Meanwhile, Kirk co-published a guide for Kansas farmers who irrigate. In areas with high nitrate levels in the groundwater, irrigation is now effectively a source of fertilizer.

“You can account for that and basically buy less fertilizer,” he said. “That’s going to decrease your nitrogen input … and save you money.”

The legal battle in Minnesota

Nitrate contamination has led to lawsuits in some states.

In southeast Minnesota, private well owners, environmentalists and trout conservationists accuse state agencies of falling down on the job while nitrate surges in groundwater, rivers and streams.

In 2023, they petitioned the EPA to take emergency action to protect public health. The EPA told Minnesota to take “timely actions” to address the pollution, to make sure people know about the hazard, to help them test their well water and to offer bottled water where wells prove to be contaminated.

Minnesota state agencies told the EPA they would tackle the most immediate matters first — such as making sure households had bottled water where needed — and review and update rules related to sources of nitrate pollution in the long term.

But those who originally petitioned the EPA are unimpressed with the state’s efforts.

Last year, three of the groups — the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, the Minnesota Well Owners Organization and Minnesota Trout Unlimited — sued the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in state court. They argued the agencies’ regulation of feedlots and farms is far too weak.

A judge ordered the agencies to gather public feedback on how they currently regulate manure and fertilizer. The Pollution Control Agency has started work toward updating its regulations for the state’s 17,000 feedlots.

Agriculture groups disagree with the push for stronger rules. Nine groups filed to intervene in state court last year, including the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, Minnesota Milk Producers Association and Minnesota Soybean Growers Association.

“Minnesota has some of the strictest water protection rules in the country,” the 7,000-member Minnesota Corn Growers Association wrote in a news release. “Farmer organizations and individual farmers share the goal with the public of protecting our water.”

The groups are arguing that the lawsuit risks undermining the integrity of the state’s regulatory process.

“Rules should be based on ‘sound/accepted science’ and not political positions and the PR claims of advocacy organizations,” the news release said.

But supporters of tighter regulation say they want Minnesota to figure out what truly effective regulation looks like, even if it ends up requiring a significant rewrite.

“That’s the fight we’re looking for,” said Paul Wotzka, co-founder of the Minnesota Well Owners Organization and a resident of rural southeast Minnesota with a private well. “We think the existing rules stink and you’ve got to kind of tear down what is there before you can build anew.”

Wotzka is a water quality expert who spent decades working for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and other state and local agencies. That work included monitoring pollution in streams, which in southeast Minnesota easily ends up in the groundwater, too.

He believed it must be possible to farm without polluting water and ultimately decided to try. So he and his wife became organic farmers. They grow about 16 acres of vegetables, fruits and nuts, from asparagus and rhubarb to peaches and hazelnuts in Wabasha County.

During their three decades on the farm, Wotzka said the nitrate concentration in their well has dropped 80%. He credits two changes for the decrease: The state reverted nearby cropland to forest, and he farms without chemical fertilizer.

“That’s a success story,” he said. “There is hope.”

Still, Wotzka worries state regulators don’t have much appetite to challenge the status quo approach to farming that relies heavily on fertilizer.

“ Big Ag would like you to believe that there are no alternatives to what you need to do to grow corn and beans,” he said. “People have to start looking at alternatives.”

He’d like to see more discussion of environmentally friendly approaches.

Half a century ago, agriculture in southeast Minnesota looked far different from today, he said. Many more farmers owned pasture and hayfields. They rotated alfalfa and small grains onto their fields, helping the soil.

In recent decades, corn and soybean acres have surged, federal policies steer farmers toward monocropping, and conservation programs remain too rigid for farmers who might otherwise take a very different approach in hopes of growing food while keeping water clean.

“It’s really easy for people to say, ‘Well, they’re going to give me subsidized crop insurance for corn and soybeans,’” Wotzka said. “‘Why would I grow anything else?’”

Celia Llopis-Jepsen is an environment reporter for Harvest Public Media and host of the environmental podcast Up From Dust. You can follow her on Bluesky or email her at celia (at) kcur (dot) org.

Harvest Public Media is a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.

The Nobles County Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday to reject a zoning change that would allow data centers to be built on farmland.

A standing room only crowd at the Nobles County Government Center applauded the 3-2 vote, which will, for now, prevent any data centers from being developed in the southwestern Minnesota county. The vote delivers a blow to Geronimo Power’s $4 billion plan to build a data center complex on about 950 acres of farmland just east of Reading and north of Worthington.

Geronimo Power’s president Blake Nixon did not say what the company will do now but did suggest it could find another home for its data center project in the region.

“We appreciate the board's time and effort in looking at it and the community's feedback,” Nixon told MPR News. “We've always said that if the community doesn't want it, we're not going to force it on the community, and even though there is a lot of support for it, if the community is telling us consistently that there's serious concerns or that they don't want it, our brand is to consider other other options.”

“Interestingly, we're hearing a lot of interest from other communities in the region, in the Southwest Minnesota region, so we'll just take a step back and think and discuss the best path forward,” Nixon added. “We continue to believe that the project can bring huge benefits to the region generally and the community."

The county board’s decision upholds a recommendation made by the county’s planning commission earlier this month that denied zoning changes to allow such projects to be built in agricultural preservation districts.

The text amendment to the county’s zoning ordinance would have allowed data centers as a light industrial use in agriculture preservation districts, said Bruce Heitkamp, Nobles County Administrator. Currently, data centers are not permitted to be placed in those areas. Heitkamp said he was neither for or against the zoning change but he did note that such projects may significantly change the county’s tax base.

“Seventy to 80 percent of Nobles County is in ag preservation district. It’s our number one industry,” Heitkamp told MPR News. “Down here, it’s 70 percent of our tax base. So, if that text amendment was approved, data centers, if approved, would be approved anywhere in those ag preservation district areas.”

Geronimo Power’s data center development would have generated an estimated $7 million annually in tax revenue for Nobles County, according to the county’s scoping documents.

But the proposal to allow data centers in the county sparked a lot of opposition amongst local residents. In contrast to other data center developers around the state that have been secretive about their plans, Geronimo Power was very upfront with the community and openly disclosed details of its plan. But that may have only bolstered the opposition.

A standing room only crowd attended Tuesday’s county board meeting, with many of the residents there opposed to the project. And about 300 residents packed the April 8 planning committee meeting at which the zoning change was discussed.

“Everybody’s concerned, and we’re concerned too,” Heitkamp said. “But we’re looking at the strengths and weaknesses [of the plan], the opportunities, the threats.”

While several other data center project developers across the state have revealed few, if any, details about their projects in advance of such votes, often having local government officials sign non-disclosure agreements prohibiting them from discussing the plans, Geronimo Power took the opposite approach. The company has hosted open houses to show details of their plans, and it has been actively promoting the project all around the county. Nonetheless, the project still drew significant opposition among county residents.

However, Nixon said he doesn’t regret being upfront about the data center project from the start.

"I never think it's a mistake to be open and transparent, and just because something doesn't work doesn't mean it was not the right thing to do,” Nixon said. “I think it is the right thing to do, and we will continue to do it, and hopefully people will, you know, appreciate that and meet us halfway and not use that against us."

Nobles County commissioners could have overridden the planning commission’s recommendation and approve the zoning change. Or it could have directed staff to develop an alternative measure that could include stricter data center regulations and limit where they could be located. Two commissioners voted for that option. But the three commissioner majority voted to uphold the county’s planning commission’s recommendation and deny the zoning change, keeping data centers out of Nobles County, for now.

Correction (April 21, 2026): A previous version of the story misstated the last name of Geronimo Power President Blake Nixon. It has been fixed.

Sujaya Rao arrived Saturday at the University of Minnesota’s student center in St. Paul with her usual trays of homemade brownies.

But there was one key difference in Rao’s chocolate treats.

“You can't see the insect. You can't smell it. There's no odor, but tonight it's going to chirp in your stomach,” Rao joked with curious passersby who sampled the brownies.

The retired professor — a self-proclaimed “insect evangelist” — tabled at the Great Minnsect Show. Rao, professor emeritus in the entomology department, helped start the event in 2019 to showcase the wonders of bugs.

The free public event drew thousands to educational activities, including an insect petting zoo, maggot racing and watercolor painting with maggots.

Rao passed out her brownies with a smile. Though they were unassuming, the treats were made of milled cricket flour.

“Bug appétit. Why eat bugs? Why not?” read the sign behind Rao, an advocate for insect cuisine. Insects offer high protein content without the environmental impact of cattle farming, she said.

Plus cricket flour is gluten-free, though a note warned people with shellfish allergies.

“Just because insects are closely related,” Rao said, adding researchers aren’t entirely sure about correlated sensitivities.

The idea of insects as a food source has gained traction since the United Nations released a report in 2013 promoting human consumption of insects to combat food insecurity, according to Rao. With nine billion people projected on Earth by 2050, she said people will need to look for alternatives to animal-based products.

“How are we going to feed everyone?” Rao said. “There won't be enough land and with so many people, that land will be taken up by human dwelling, so we need alternative foods.”

Chad Simons, co-founder of 3 Cricketeers, said one tablespoon of cricket flour has 13 grams of protein. The St. Louis Park company tabled next to Rao at the Great Minnsect Show, selling snack foods made of crickets.

Between Rao’s and Simons’ tables, people could try a variety of cricket-based delights: fig and date balls, chocolate bars and hummus “with a crunch.”

“I love that they're sustainable, but they really taste good, honestly. It's really a lot of fun,” Simons said.

Simons got the idea for the business after his son came home from school with a cricket cookie. His wife, a registered nurse, then discovered the health benefits, such as calcium, iron and vitamin D.

They’re exploring expanding cricket powder into pastas, crackers and other foods.

“The future is definitely using crickets as an ingredient, really any kind of insect,” he said.

A proposal that would lift a 20-year mining ban near the Boundary Waters is on its way to President Donald Trump’s desk for final signature. It passed the Senate Thursday by a single vote.

The repeal was spearheaded by Minnesota Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, who represents the area where the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is located. Mining supporters say it will jump-start a second mining boom, boosting the economy. Opponents argue it's a gamble at the cost of irreparable damage to the wilderness area.

One of the groups that opposed repealing the ban is the Minnesota Legislature's Native American Caucus. In a statement, the caucus called the Senate vote, “A dark day for our people and homelands” and an “assault” on tribal sovereignty.

State Rep. Shelley Buck, DFL-Maplewood, is part of that caucus. She said she and her colleagues see the world differently than those in favor of mining near the BWCA.

"The water, the plants, the animals — they’re our relatives,” Buck said. “Waters here in Minnesota especially are very sacred and important to us as Dakota people.”

She added that lifting the mining ban also interferes with treaties.

“When things happen to those waters and those lands that contaminate what we get out of them, we're not able to eat and sustain ourselves like the treaties say we are allowed to.”

Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player above.

As a child, Stephanie Pearson grew up like a lot of northern Minnesota kids do: She hiked the Superior Hiking Trail from her home in Duluth and spent summers canoeing in the Boundary Waters.

Those adventures kick started her career in outdoors writing.

Her job has taken her all over the country and gave her the chance to explore national parks and remotes trails.

Now, she's back in Duluth and has just published a book with National Geographic about her time on the trail titled, “100 Hikes of a Lifetime USA.”

She shared her favorite hikes and how she put this behemoth of a book together on Minnesota Now.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

The U.S. Senate voted 50-49 Thursday morning to overturn a 20-year ban on mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., who represents northeastern Minnesota, introduced the legislation. Both of Minnesota's U.S. senators, Democrats Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, urged their colleagues to vote it down.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign the measure into law. Its passage is a win for the company Twin Metals, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining firm Antofagasta, which aims to open an underground copper-nickel mine just south of the boundary waters.

Friends of the Boundary Waters Executive Director Chris Knopf told MPR News that groups like his would continue to urge state lawmakers and regulators to prevent mining in the area, out of concern that it would pollute water and threaten animals and plants including wild rice. “It’s an attack on our clean water heritage and the thousands and thousands of people that earn their living from the outdoor economy here,” he said.

Julie Lucas represents Twin Metals and other companies as executive director of the industry group, MiningMinnesota. She joined MPR News guest host Kelly Gordon to talk about what this vote means for mining in the state.

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Use the audio player above to listen to the full interview.

What is your reaction to today’s vote?

I am cautiously optimistic that we can start having conversations about what mining in the watershed would look like and what mining today means. I also just really want folks to know that we care deeply about the Boundary Waters. I live in northeastern Minnesota. I'm a water resources scientist by training, and I really want to find a way to start having those just really gnarly conversations about minerals and mining and environmental protection. I know people are really scared right now, and I just want folks to know this vote does not mean a mine opens tomorrow.

What do you say to people who worry that with so many interconnected waterways in the area, pollution seems inevitable?

It absolutely isn’t inevitable. That’s where we really need to get into the science on the deposit itself. It’s important to understand how our actual deposit was created, how our geology was created, and understand how it's different than mines out West. It's a very different geological formation, and it's not one that leads to acid-rock drainage.

I really invite people to spend time with our geologists and our engineers and our industry. We, our engineers, take oaths of protection, of public welfare in the environment, and we want to have those conversations.

What do you think this means for the mining industry in Minnesota?

We are just really lucky to have what we have here. This is a world-class deposit. We are very unique in having this copper, nickel, platinum, palladium, gold, cobalt, silver deposit that is unlike anywhere else in in the entire U.S. Today's vote, like I said, it doesn't open a mine tomorrow. It just open opens us up to doing exploration again. It's not just exploration for the minerals. This offers up exploration for the water. It gets back into doing the science of, what does the groundwater look like up in this region, what does the surface water look like? Where are the current wild rice stands?

I live in the Rainy River watershed for a reason. I love being around water, and right now I'm in Duluth, and we have Lake Superior here. Water is our identity in Minnesota, and none of us want to harm that. But we also know that we have a 100 percent clean energy goal in Minnesota, which means we're driving the demand for copper and nickel and all of these metals.

What would it take for mining to begin?

There's a lot of steps forward. They still have to get their leases back. They would still have to present what's called a mine plan of operations, and that would lay out what they see as their current plan for everything: management of waste materials, management of water, how they would actually process, their tailings facility, all of that gets mapped out. And that may be different than what they proposed back in 2019, I'm not sure. And they would submit that proposal to both the federal and the state government, and then both the federal and state government have their own environmental review processes and their own permitting.

Most of the nitty-gritty permitting stuff is handled at the state level and primarily the [Minnesota] Pollution Control Agency. So we are looking at a multi-year process of environmental review, which includes multiple public hearings, public comment periods, opportunities for the public to weigh in. It’s important for people to understand that a project gets proposed, and then, ideally, the situation is designed for us to tear it apart as citizens and as concerned organizations. A project can be adjusted, and ideally is, through environmental review.

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The U.S. Senate has voted to overturn a 20-year ban on mining on about 350 square miles of federal land near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, paving the way for Twin Metals to renew efforts to open an underground copper mine near Ely, on the doorstep of the wilderness area.

The resolution, sponsored by Minnesota Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, is expected to be signed by President Donald Trump, who promised during his 2024 campaign to repeal the mining moratorium, which President Joe Biden imposed three years ago.

The vote is a major victory for Twin Metals, a subsidiary of the giant Chilean mining company Antofagasta, which has been working for more than a decade to open a mine along the shore of Birch Lake, about seven miles east of Ely, just south of the wilderness area.

The measure passed 50-49, mostly along party lines. All Democrats opposed it, including Minnesota U.S. Sens. Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar. Smith spoke for hours against the proposal late Wednesday night and again Thursday morning, urging her Republican colleagues to oppose the resolution.

Two Republicans broke ranks and voted against the proposal: Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Mining supporters believe rich deposits of copper and nickel beneath northeastern Minnesota’s forests could jump-start a second mining boom near the state’s Iron Range, providing a giant boost to the region’s economy while also producing critical minerals needed for electric vehicle batteries and other 21st-century technologies.

“The Biden Administration’s decision to enact its illegal mining ban in Northern Minnesota was not only an attack on our way of life and cost countless good-paying, union jobs, it also put our nation’s mineral security at risk.” Stauber, who represents the region, said when he introduced the resolution in January.

Stauber called Thursday’s Senate vote a “major victory for America and Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District. Mining is our past, our present, and our future — and the future looks bright!"

‘Dark day’

The Senate vote is a big blow to conservation groups and others who argue the watershed of the Boundary Waters — a fragile and unique ecosystem and one of the most popular wilderness areas in the country — is the absolute wrong place for this kind of mining, which carries with it much more serious water pollution risks than iron ore mining.

“We can support the need for mining, but that doesn't mean that we mine on the edge of Chaco Canyon or on the rim of the Grand Canyon, and it does not mean that we think that a copper-sulfide mine on the doorstep of the Boundary Waters is a good idea,” Smith said in her remarks before the vote today.

Conservation groups sounded off following the vote.

"Today is a dark day for America’s most beloved Wilderness area, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and a stark warning call for public lands nationwide," said Ingrid Lyons, executive director of Save the Boundary Waters.

"This is a serious blow to the Boundary Waters and to the future of America’s public lands," added Chris Knopf, executive director of Friends of the Boundary Waters. "A few politicians in Washington chose the interests of a foreign mining conglomerate over the will of the American people, over sound science, and over one of the most irreplaceable wild places on the planet."

Earlier this week, the advocacy group American Rivers listed the South Kawashiwi River as the third most endangered waterway in the nation because of its proximity to the proposed Twin Metals mine.

They also argue the opening of copper-nickel mines on the edge of the wilderness threatens a burgeoning outdoor recreation based economy that supports tourists and retirees and cabin-owners drawn to the area’s quiet beauty.

Political football

The vote culminates a decade-long political tug of war over the potential for mining and exploration on land within the watershed of the Boundary Waters that’s spanned the past four presidential administrations.

The Obama administration first began a study on a possible 20-year mining moratorium just before he left office in 2017. President Trump quickly halted that process during his first term. Then Biden restarted it, and ultimately approved the so-called mineral withdrawal in 2023.

Mining is not allowed inside the Boundary Waters, nor in a small buffer zone around it. The moratorium banned mining within the watershed of the wilderness area. That’s critical, supporters argue, because any mining pollution in those 225,000 acres outside of the BWCA could flow directly into the protected wilderness area. And many of the region’s richest copper-nickel deposits lie within the watershed.

As part of its analysis of the mining ban, the U.S. Forest Service looked at 20 other copper-nickel mines across the U.S. and Canada, and found all resulted in some level of environmental degradation, and that the environmental reviews of those projects frequently underestimated their eventual impacts.

“We support mining, just not this mine in this place,” Minnesota Senator Tina Smith told her colleagues on the Senate floor during a speech Monday in which she urged her Republican colleagues to vote against the proposal. “This is an incredibly special place and this mine poses an unacceptable risk.”

Congressional Review Act

The resolution to reverse the mining ban relied on a law called the Congressional Review Act, a tool that Congress can use to overturn federal agency rules with simple majority votes in both chambers. That prevented Democrats from using the filibuster to derail the measure.

Critics of the resolution said it was the first time the law has been used to overturn a public land order.

“What would it look like if Congress gets into the business of repealing administrative actions that have been in place for years?” said Smith. “I think many people look at that and say, ‘Well, that would just be chaos.’”

The resolution does not allow for a future President to put in place another mining moratorium.

What’s next for mining?

The vote does not mean mining in the region is going to happen anytime soon.

“This vote does not open a mine. It opens the door for a transparent, science-based review,” said Julie Lucas, executive director of the industry group Mining Minnesota.

"We don’t need a mining ban for the entire watershed to protect the Boundary Waters. They are already protected by strict federal and Minnesota laws that require environmental review and permitting processes for any proposed mine,” she added.

Lucas said the public would have “ample opportunities” to comment during the state and federal reviews.

Twin Metals also needs to resecure federal mineral leases for its project that were canceled by the Biden administration in 2022. Stauber has introduced legislation to return those leases to the company.

Ultimately, any proposed mining project in Minnesota needs to go through an extensive environmental review process that typically takes several years, and secure federal permits and state permits from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

The U.S. Senate could vote Wednesday on legislation that would roll back protections against mining in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

If passed, this would overturn a 20-year ban on mining across more than 200,000 acres of the Superior National Forest that was put in place in 2023.

The measure led by Minnesota Republican congressman Pete Stauber passed the House back in January. It has stalled in the Senate since.

Chris Knopf, executive director of Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, joined MPR News guest host Kelly Gordon to talk about the possible vote.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

We think of wildlife as separate from urban life. But there are a lot of wild critters living all around us in the city.

Turkeys have made a remarkable comeback in the last few decades after being driven entirely out of Minnesota. Deer, squirrels, rats and racoons are regular visitors to many people’s back yards. And, a relatively new research project is documenting how coyotes and foxes are vying for territory in city neighborhoods.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks about the secret lives of wild animals in our midst and how they interact with each other and with us.

Guests:

• Geoff Miller is a post-doctoral associate in the department of fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology at the University of Minnesota, where he works with the Twin Cities Coyote and Fox Project. His research focuses on how coyotes and foxes live in urban areas, and interact with each other and humans.

• Marlene Zuk is a professor in the department of ecology, evolution and behavior at the University of Minnesota. Her newest book is “Outsider Animals: How the Creatures at the Margins of Our Lives Have the Most to Teach Us.”

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.    

A conservation group has listed a major river in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area as the third most endangered river in the country on its annual list of threatened waterways.

It marks the fourth time American Rivers has included the South Kawishiwi River on its list of 10 most endangered rivers — it was also selected in 2013, 2018 and 2021.

The river winds in and out of the federally protected canoe wilderness area in northeast Minnesota. Twin Metals, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta, has proposed building an underground mine for copper and nickel along the pristine river’s shoreline near Ely, just south of the Boundary Waters.

The designation from American Rivers comes as the U.S. Senate is poised to take up a resolution later this month that would reverse the 20-year long ban on mining in the area, which could open the door for Twin Metals to reapply to open a mine there.

Conservation groups argue that mining for metals such as copper and nickel, which carries with it the potential for more severe water pollution than iron ore mining in Minnesota, could cause irreparable harm to one of the nation’s most cherished and highly visited wilderness areas.

“Spoiling some of the purest, most pristine waters for a foreign mine and foreign corporate interests is a short-sighted move that could cause irreversible harm to the region,” said Elizabeth Riggs, Great Lakes regional director for American Rivers.

In 2023, the Biden administration imposed a 20-year mining moratorium covering about 350 square miles of federal land south of the Boundary Waters, including where the Twin Metals mine would be located.

The land is located outside the Boundary Waters but within its watershed. As a result, water pollution from mining could flow into the federally protected wilderness area.

In January, the U.S. House passed a resolution introduced by Rep. Pete Sauber, R-Hermantown, to overturn the moratorium. It would also prohibit future administrations from imposing another ban.

Stauber’s resolution utilizes a law called the Congressional Review Act that allows Congress to overturn federal agency rules with simple majority votes in both chambers. That means it couldn’t be blocked by a Senate filibuster, which, under the upper chamber’s rules, requires 60 votes to call legislation for a vote.

But the Senate is running out of time to take up the measure. Ingrid Lyons, executive director of Save the Boundary Waters, said Congress faces a deadline of April 24 or April 27 to pass the resolution and send it to President Trump for his signature.

Lyons said Senate leadership has signaled the vote could occur in the next 10 days. She said public lands advocates are lobbying furiously against the measure. That includes descendants of former President and noted land conservationist Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, who sent a letter to Congress urging members to reject the resolution and “seek ways to permanently protect the Boundary Waters.”

“We are having a lot of really good meetings, a lot of surprising meetings, about what overturning these protections would mean,” said Lyons, who describes it as an unprecedented effort to overturn public land management decisions. “It really kind of opens up a Pandora's box in terms of public land decisions.”

When Stauber introduced his resolution in January, he said the “dangerous and illegal mining ban was thrust upon my constituents and our way of life in Northern Minnesota and put our nation’s mineral security in jeopardy.”

Julie Lucas, executive director of the industry group Mining Minnesota, said overturning the moratorium wouldn’t mean an automatic green light for mining projects. They would still have to go through years of applying for permits and environmental impact studies.

“It's about getting us back into the conversations and back into environmental review. Because these are significant deposits there, and we should be looking at what it would mean to mine those.”

Lucas says those in the mining industry also value the preciousness of the Boundary Waters.

“We didn't go into this industry because we don't love the environment. We went into it because we want to make mining better.”

There’s a new effort afoot in northern Minnesota to better understand why the state’s moose population has remained stubbornly flat since it declined sharply about 15 years ago.

The Northern Moose Alliance also wants to better engage the public about scientists’ efforts to recover the iconic animal’s numbers in the northwoods. This winter, they placed GPS collars on 60 young moose, around nine months of age, that will allow them to track the animals as they grow to full adulthood.

Those “in-between” years, before juvenile moose become full-grown adults, represent a gap in research in the state. And those years are critical. They often determine whether a young moose survives long enough to join the breeding population and, ultimately, help moose numbers start to grow again.

“This project is aimed at really looking at what's happening with those younger moose,” said Michelle Carstensen, wildlife health program supervisor at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “Are there challenges to getting them to one year old? When do they really reproduce? And how many calves are they contributing to the population?”

By teasing out answers to those questions, scientists from state, tribal, academic and nonprofit partners hope to gain clues that might allow wildlife and land managers to create better moose habitat in specific locations that could improve the odds of young moose surviving and becoming productive adults.

Collaring Moose

The project’s first phase began this winter, when researchers placed the tracking collars on young moose across the state’s core moose range, stretching roughly from Two Harbors to Ely to Grand Portage at the tip of the Arrowhead region.

Those collars will allow researchers to closely monitor their movements. They’re also equipped with mortality sensors that send notifications via satellite when a moose stops moving for six hours. Researchers will then investigate to determine the cause of death.

The group partnered with a helicopter capture company to perform the work. When crews spotted a young moose from the air using thermal imaging, they hovered above and shot it with a tranquilizing dart to sedate it.

They landed, attached the collar and quickly collected biological samples and assessed their overall health–including how many parasites, especially winter ticks, they were infested with.

The work was conducted during intense periods of extreme cold, high winds and poor visibility.

“We’re flying in a helicopter with no doors,” said Seth Moore, the director of natural resources for the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, one of the partners in the project. “So you have a wind chill that is absolutely brutally cold.”

But the work was successful. No moose died during the collaring effort– which is something that plagued the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources when it placed research collars on adult moose and calves over a dozen years ago, part of a landmark study that attempted to pinpoint the reasons behind the moose population’s crash in northeast Minnesota from nearly 9,000 animals 20 years ago to about 4,000 today.

“We're monitoring them daily for their survival,” Carstensen said. “I'm going to knock on wood, but so far, we haven't had a mortality.”

Researchers said the young moose they collared appeared healthier than anticipated. But they’re entering the most challenging time of the year.

They’ve made it through the majority of winter, but they’re still waiting for green-up to bring better forage with more nutritional value. Winter ticks are taking their last big blood meal.

It’s also the time of year when wolves can be most dangerous to moose. When a crust layer develops on top of deep snow during freeze-thaw cycles, moose will “post-hole right through” because they’re so heavy, Carstensen said. But wolves can run on top.

“As the winter fades and spring appears, wolves get that advantage, and it tends to be at a time when moose can be weaker,” said Carstensen. That’s why April tends to be a prime month for moose to die from predation.

“And they're usually taking advantage of young moose that are coming out of winter in the poorest condition, old moose or moose that have other pre-existing health conditions, like brain worm or really heavy tick loads,” Carstensen added.

More moose?

Earlier research has confirmed the many factors that contributed to northeast Minnesota’s plummeting moose population.

Winter ticks cause severe blood loss and energy depletion. Parasites, including liver flukes and brainworm–which is transmitted by white-tailed deer– further diminish moose health. Wolves and bears – which target moose calves – also threaten moose, especially when they’re already weakened by disease or parasites.

There’s no smoking gun. But scientists widely agree that climate change is the overarching culprit for moose decline in Minnesota, the southernmost part of their range. Mild winters have allowed ticks and deer to expand their range northward. Moose also suffer from heat stress in the summer.

Despite those challenges, moose numbers have stabilized at around 4,000 over the past decade.

“Stability is good. Reversing a decline and getting to stable is a great first step,” said Morgan Swingen, wildlife biologist for the 1854 Treaty Authority, an intertribal natural resources agency based in Duluth that’s co-leading the project along with the DNR. “But we would like to see the population increase again, and in order to do that, we need to have reproduction and survival happening.”

The hope is that by learning the challenges young moose face, wildlife and land managers can develop more specific strategies that give moose the best chance at recovering.

If they find that moose are struggling to reproduce, for example, that could mean better habitat or forage is needed in specific locations. If researchers find young females are having plenty of calves, but those calves are having trouble surviving, that could suggest action may be needed to manage deer populations to control parasites, or bear or wolf numbers because of predation concerns.

Researchers plan to place more collars on young moose the next two winters and track the animals for six years. The work is supported by a $1.8 million grant from state lottery proceeds through the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund.

Northern Moose Alliance scientists are also asking people to share trail camera photos of moose to help track hair loss caused by winter ticks. Researchers plan to share updates and videos highlighting their field work.

“People care deeply about moose,” said Tom Irivine, executive director of the National Parks of Lake Superior Foundation, another project partner. “We want the public to be able to follow along and become part of the solution to protecting this cherished and iconic species.”

For decades, about a third of the state fell under the so-called “shotgun zone,” which only allowed deer hunters to use shotguns loaded with single-slug shotgun shells, legal muzzle-loading long guns and legal handguns.

The law was implemented in the 1940s to increase deer populations in the southern and western parts of the state. Using shotguns, which had a shorter range than rifles, resulted in less efficient deer harvesting because hunters were forced to get closer to the deer.

But technological improvements increased the range of shotguns, and deer populations in the targeted areas grew, prompting the state legislature to repeal the law, which then opened statewide rifle use to hunt deer.

Now, it’s up to the counties in the previous shotgun zone, which runs south of a line from Moorhead to Taylors Falls, to decide whether to allow the use of rifles in next year’s deer hunting season.

But concerns remain around the safety of the rifles for hunting. Clay County, in northwestern Minnesota, held a public hearing on Tuesday on whether to allow deer hunters to use rifles.

Clay County Board of Commissioners had three choices: maintain its previous shotgun rules, allow rifle use or allow rifles only to the east of State Highway 9.

The hearing room was packed with about 40 people, and most speakers opposed rifle use. Many were concerned about the potential for harming bystanders or other unintended targets.

“I've got a couple hundred cows around my place, and I’ve got a couple of pastures around there, and all of a sudden, if [hunters are] walking through there, they can shoot a cow, I mean, they wouldn't even see it if they're over half a mile away,” Clay County resident David Heng said.

Other speakers, though, were more open to the idea of allowing rifles or, at least, to compromise with permitting the firearm’s usage east of Highway 9.

“I think it addresses a lot of the concerns in there for people and the more populated areas, where you can have people shooting rifles and maybe not be so worried about the open country [compared to the] hill country,” Clay County resident Josh Noennig said.

He added that rifles could provide greater accuracy, giving hunters pause before firing.

“I feel like when the deer isn't 10 yards in front [you], and you have that option to shoot at 100 or 150 yards, you have more time to make that decision, as opposed to just maybe pulling that trigger right away when the deer moves and, ‘Oh, something was behind it,’” Noennig said. “In terms of that, it does make it safe for hunting at a distance and gives you more time.”

Minnesota Deer Hunters Association Executive Director Jared Mazurek stressed that the ban on rifles in the shotgun zone did not have to do with safety.

“In reality, this was all about limiting harvest in order to allow that population to recover to the point where we could then look at using rifles in the future, and we have reached that point,” he said.

The MN Deer Hunters are pushing for all counties to allow the use of rifles. Hunting zones can span multiple counties, so if one county has different rules from another, it could cause confusion among hunters, law enforcement and officers with the Department of Natural Resources, Mazurek said.

On top of that, many rifles have less recoil than shotguns, so they can be more accessible for youth.

“It gives individuals the opportunity to choose the weapon that they are comfortable with, to hunt the season that they are able to hunt, and to hunt in the way that fits them the best,” Mazurek said. “And if we can get more people engaged in doing that, I think we can at least stop this trend of hunter decline.”

And Mazurek notes that rifles have been permitted, including in the previous shotgun-only zone, to harvest other species. They were forbidden for hunting white-tailed deer in the restricted zone.

“So if you can trust the hunter to go on a coyote hunt on your flat agricultural landscape, why can't you trust that hunter to do the same with a white-tailed deer and make an ethical shot, clean harvest, and follow the firearm safety rules, right?” he said.

The DNR has asked counties to notify it of any changes to their firearm rules by May 5.

The fishing opener is just weeks away, and state health officials have updated their guidelines on how much fish is safe to eat from lakes and rivers across the state, in an effort to better protect Minnesota anglers and others from harmful pollutants including mercury and PFAS.

The updates from the Minnesota Department of Health include recommendations to eat smaller walleye and northern pike, because older, larger fish tend to contain more mercury.

The revisions also for the first time include specific guidelines for northeast Minnesota, where mercury levels in fish are among the highest in the state, and new suggested limits for the Vermillion River in Dakota and Scott counties in the southern Twin Cities metro area, where PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” have been found in fish.

The changes in the mercury guidelines aren’t because of an increase in levels of the toxin, although mercury levels in Minnesota’s fish have been slowly but steadily growing for the past 30 years. Rather, they’re based on a new analysis of mercury data going back to 1967. It also represents an effort to simplify the recommendations by limiting the number of lakes and rivers with waterbody-specific guidelines.

Public health officials are trying to thread a needle that recognizes the health benefits of eating fish– which contains omega-3 fatty acids that help with heart health and brain function– while also keeping people safe from certain toxins. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin to the brain which can impact learning and memory in a fetus during pregnancy, and can continue to impair the brain through infancy and childhood.

“But we also know that, especially people that are pregnant and planning pregnancy, if they're eating moderate amounts of fish low in contaminants, that often their infants have better neurodevelopmental outcomes,” Angela Preimesberger, MDH’s fish consumption guidance program lead, told MPR News. “And so that's why we don't want people to stop eating fish.”

Health officials offer more restrictive guidelines for people who are especially sensitive to the toxins, including children under 15, and people 15 and older who are or could become pregnant, along with those who are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed.

In Cook, Lake and St. Louis counties in northeast Minnesota, the new guidelines for sensitive groups recommend that people:

–Do not eat muskie, northern pike 26 inches or longer, or walleye 18 inches or longer

–Limit consumption to one serving per month of bass, catfish, lake trout, northern shorter than 26 inches, walleye shorter than 18 inches, and yellow perch

–Limit consumption to one serving per week of bullhead, crappie, inland trout, lake herring (cisco), whitefish, and sunfish (such as bluegill)

For the general population, the new guidelines recommend:

–no more than one serving per month of muskie

–no more than one serving per week of bass, catfish, lake trout, northern pike, walleye and yellow perch

–no more than two servings per week of crappie and sunfish

–no more than four servings per week of bullhead, inland trout, lake herring, and whitefish

Health officials also added length-based guidelines for walleye and northern pike. Sensitive populations should not eat more than one serving per month, and the fish should be less than 20 inches long. In northeast Minnesota, officials recommend those groups eat walleye and northern smaller than 18 inches.

Some lakes with higher mercury levels in northeast Minnesota have more restrictive guidelines. The department of health added 17-inch guidelines to nine lakes in northeast counties, following questions from MPR News and other media.

Those lakes include Mit Lake in Cook County, and Crane, Colby, Esquagama, Lower and Upper Comstock, and Lower and Upper Pauness lakes, all of which are in St. Louis County.

But those recommendations don’t go far enough for some, especially for Crane Lake, a huge lake on the edge of Voyageurs National Park that’s a popular destination for anglers.

Large walleye tested in Crane Lake contain much higher for levels of mercury than what’s considered safe, especially for sensitive groups. Despite that, the new regulations there are less restrictive than the 15-inch walleye limit that was previously recommended for sensitive groups.

“The mercury is really high in those walleyes. There should be an advisory that tells pregnant women not to eat them,” said Eric Morrison, a volunteer with the Northern Lakes Scientific Advisory Panel.

Morrison would like to see state officials list average mercury content in fish in various lakes, so people can know what they’re eating.

The Department of Health’s Preimsberger acknowledges it can be confusing to figure out which fish is safe to eat, so she recommends checking specific lakes and rivers before going fishing.

“Check before you go and see if there are any guidelines for the particular water body where you're going to fish, whether it's a lake or a river, and then you'll know how many of those fish you can safely eat.”

Mercury is emitted into the atmosphere from coal-burning power plants and other industrial facilities outside of Minnesota and within the state, including six huge taconite plants in northeast Minnesota, which are the state’s largest mercury emitters.

It falls to the earth in rain and snow, and then runs off into waterways, where it’s converted into a toxic form that works its way up the food chain, bioaccumulating in fish. Larger and older fish accumulate more mercury.

In Cook, Lake and St. Louis counties, several factors contribute to lakes and rivers having fish with higher mercury concentrations than elsewhere in the state.

The region, which includes the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, has abundant mucky, microbe-rich wetlands, which provide ideal conditions for mercury methylation, the process that turns mercury toxic.

New PFAS guidelines

Health officials have also added consumption guidelines for fish caught in the Vermillion River from headwater streams in Scott and Dakota counties, including the South Branch of the river, to the Hastings Dam, due to PFAS contamination in the waterway.

PFAS are human-made chemicals that do not break down over time and have been widely used for decades to make products ranging from cookware to clothing to carpet. They’ve been linked to harmful impacts on child development, including low birth weight in infants and a weaker immune system in children. They may also cause changes in liver function and increase cancer risks in people of all ages.

“Eating fish is not your only route of exposure to these contaminants,” said Preimsberger, “but where we find these levels are elevated, we encourage people to eat fish in other water bodies.”

The fishing season for trout in inland streams in Minnesota opens Saturday. The fishing season for most other species in Minnesota opens Saturday, May 9.

Three Minneapolis environmental activists started a hunger strike Friday, in a push for the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners to close the county’s trash incinerator.

Natasha Villanueva stopped eating as of Friday morning. She lives in the north Minneapolis neighborhood adjacent to the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center, known as the HERC, and she worries about the pollution from the site.

At a press conference outside Hennepin County Government Center Friday morning, she said she’s contacted her commissioners and shown up to several public meetings to ask questions about the incinerator and push for a closure plan. She said she hasn’t gotten a satisfying response from her elected officials.

“We have come to this point because no action has been taken,” Villanueva said.

The Hennepin County board made a plan in 2023 to close the HERC between 2028 and 2040. But activists say the board is working too slowly toward that plan. They say the air pollution from the incinerator needs to stop sooner — especially given its location in north Minneapolis just outside downtown, in a neighborhood where pollution levels and asthma rates are already high.

The hunger strikers say they plan to drink only water during the strike and not eat until the board meets their demands. They’re asking the board to call a vote to commit to a closure by the end of next year. They also want the board to form a community task force to decide what to do with the site after it closes.

Nazir Khan is the director of the Minnesota Environmental Justice Table, one of the organizations pushing for the closure of the HERC. He’s also going on the hunger strike. He said it’s meant to escalate pressure on the board to set that vote.

“All we need is one commissioner to call the votes,” Khan said. “The only way to get them to do that, since they don’t care about the people, is to wake enough people up so this becomes a crisis for them.”

The third striker, Joshua Lewis, said he’s looking at the hunger strike as both a political and a spiritual action.

“No community should have to organize a hunger strike just to demand the right to breathe clean air,” Lewis said. “No child should grow up under a sky marked by waste infrastructure and political neglect.”

The three hunger strikers, joined by a few dozen supporters, went into the commissioners’ offices on Friday to deliver a letter from Villanueva outlining the plan for the strike and their demands. Villanueva asked a front desk worker if she could speak to her commissioner, board chair Irene Fernando; the employee said none of the commissioners were in the building.

Villanueva said she’s frustrated by the lack of response. She said she also did not get an answer when she reached out to Fernando to inform her that she was starting the hunger strike.

“It was part of a pattern of disregard for constituents, and to me, that’s unacceptable and led to our escalation,” Villanueva said. “We deserve a response from our elected officials.”

Fernando’s office did not immediately respond to request for comment from MPR News.

In a statement sent to MPR News, commissioner Heather Edelson said she shares the goal of closing the HERC, but that it will take time.

“I care about the people behind this movement, and I am genuinely concerned for their health and safety,” Edelson said. “A hunger strike is a serious and risky step, and I hope we can continue this conversation in a way that keeps everyone safe.”

The county’s plan to shut down the HERC says a significant reduction in solid waste is needed first. Some of the steps toward that — including banning recyclable and organic materials from landfills and reducing single-use plastics — would involve policy changes at the state level.

About half of the county’s trash currently goes into the HERC. It’s burned to produce electricity, which the county sells on a wholesale electricity market.

Facilities that convert waste into energy are meant to repurpose trash and divert it from landfills. But activists say it’s not worth the air pollution that comes with burning trash — especially in a residential neighborhood.

Commissioner Edelson said the county needs to avoid putting more waste into landfills.

“Because landfills are not a viable long-term solution given our climate and equity goals, we must first build a stronger, more sustainable waste system, and that work is well underway,” Edelson said.

Hunger strikers say they’re working with a medical team to monitor their health as the strike continues. They’re planning to keep reaching out to their commissioners and set up protests outside the county government offices to keep the pressure up.