Conservation is a deep and bipartisan sentiment in Minnesotans. From Sigurd Olson to former Gov. Elmer Anderson, many Minnesotans have left a lasting conservation legacy on the state and the rest of the nation. Today, several state-based groups continue that work.

Bi-Partisan Conservation
The late Sen. Hubert Humphrey, a Democrat, was among the towering leaders in passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964 and made sure some of his own Boundary Waters were included in the bill. Former Gov. Elmer Anderson, a Republican, worked tirelessly for creation of Voyageurs National Park and for its careful management AS a national park rather than as an economic convenience for local governments.

Wilderness Society Roots
The Wilderness Society owes much of its early success to another pair of Minnesotans: Sigurd Olson and Ernest Oberholtzer. Oberholtzer, from his island in Rainy Lake, waged nearly a lifelong campaign to prevent the damming of all the north woods streams and rivers to provide cheap hydropower for paper companies. The existence of both Voyageurs National Park and the BWCAW are enduring monuments to his work.

Oberholtzer apparently recruited Olson to The Wilderness Society. In a 1935 letter to the fledgling organization, Olson noted that Oberholtzer had told him of the new organization and its aims. "Please enroll me as a member who has never learned to compromise when the question of wilderness has come up," he wrote. He served as president of the organization for a number of years. Through his teaching, his writing and his civil advocacy, he has influenced generations of wilderness activists.

Today's Practitioners

Friends of the Boundary Waters
Today's most careful custodian of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is the Friends of the Boundary Waters. Recently it has begun to envision the BWCAW and neighboring Quetico, along with adjacent wildlands, as a single wildland core and has begun developing partnerships with its Canadian neighbors. The Friends is at work on a conservation vision for the region, leaning heavily on principles of conservation biology, to ensure that the core remains intact.
>> More

Voyageurs National Park Association
While the Friends also helps keeps an eye on Voyageurs National Park, for another Minnesota grass roots group, the Voyageurs National Park Association (VNPA), Minnesota's only national park is both its name and its major focus. VNPA was founded to advocate for creation of the park and today is at the center of most efforts to, as its mission statement has it, "preserve the natural, recreational and historical resources of Voyageurs National Park."  The organization pays particular attention to endangered species in the park-timber wolves and bald eagles-and to wilderness values.
>> More

Northeastern Minnesotans For Wilderness
When the last big flare-up over both the Boundary Waters and Voyageurs occurred in the mid-90s, the urban-rural divide was much in evidence. Some anti-park and anti-wilderness groups complained loudly that management of the two areas was dictated from afar and the only in-state support for either was in the Twin Cities, far to the south. They succeeded in getting legislation introduced to create local management councils that would dictate to the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service the two areas' management.

A group in Ely, MN, gateway to the BWCAW, formed a home-grown group to refute the charge that locals don't support the wilderness area. Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness continues to make that case as it works on wilderness area issues, including motorized access, blowdown and fire management, roadbuilding on adjacent lands.
>> More

Minnesotans for Responsible Recreation
Minnesotans for Responsible Recreation, MRR, was founded in 1996 to unite the voice of Minnesotans concerned about the noise, fumes, danger to others, and environmental damage caused by off-highway vehicles, snowmobiles, and high-powered watercraft.
>> More