Great River Greening (GRG) inspires, engages and leads local Minnesota communities in conserving and caring for the land and water that enrich our lives.
The McKnight Foundation’s support for Great River Greening has been critical for implementing the local, community-led approach to reducing agricultural pollution in targeted watersheds. GRG has developed a model in Seven Mile Creek, where already GRG have done outreach to 320 landowners, installed 71 conservation practices – impacting more than 2,100 acres of drainage area – and completed surveys, community assessments, and workshops to integrate farmer and other stakeholders into a vision for the watershed.
Since they started in 1995, Great River Greening has engaged over 25,000 volunteers in projects on both public and private land that conserves critical land habitat and affects water quality.
Great River Greening’s vision is to see healthy land and water across Minnesota. The challenges are serious: degraded parks, an increasing loss of diverse habitat in our natural areas, a disappearance of pollinators, and a declining interest from our youth in being outdoors.
As the state leader in community-based restoration, they understand that engaging people is as important as practicing state-of-the-art environmental restoration techniques.
Since their beginning in 1995, GRG have worked alongside 40,000 volunteers to improve forests, prairies, wetlands, and shorelines. The experienced ecologists have worked on more than 350 sites throughout the state, using innovative methods, like animal grazing and enhancing pollinator habitat.
