| Fast Facts |
location
85 miles north of Grand Forks, North Dakota
ecoregion
Northern Tallgrass Prairie
project size
700 square miles
preserves
Norway Dunes, Wallace C. Dayton Conservation and Wildlife Area
public lands
four wildlife management areas (Caribou, Beaches Lake, Skull Lake and Roseau River); Gardenton Community Pasture, Canada
partners
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Manitoba Department of Natural Resources, Nature Conservancy of Canada
conservancy initiatives
Fire
natural events
sandhill crane migration and nesting, May– October; large breeding colony of Franklin’s gulls, summer; flowering of western prairie fringed orchid, first two weeks in July | |
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| Large contiguous blocks of parkland are needed to maintain the delicate balance of woodland and prairie in this dynamic system. |
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Aspen on the prairie parkland.
© John Gregor |
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slands of trembling aspen and balsam poplar dot the sweeping expanse of the Tallgrass Aspen Parkland, a vast patchwork of trees, brush, prairie and wetlands extending from northwest Minnesota into Manitoba, Canada. This woodland-prairie mosaic remains much unchanged since 1857, when explorer Henry Hind wrote about “hummocks of aspen and willow” on ancient lake ridges. Here the prairie of America’s heartland transitions to the conifer forests of the north.
Some 10,000 years ago, a mile-high sheet of ice shaped this land. Its successor, Glacial Lake Agassiz, leveled the land, its shoreline leaving behind sand and gravel beach ridges that rise 25 feet above the plains, winding northward. The Sioux and Chippewa Indians used these ridges in their journeys. The most prominent of the ridge trails became the Pembina Trail, a major 19th-century fur trading route between Winnipeg and Minneapolis-St. Paul. |
Prairie blazing star.
© G. Alan Nelson |
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The arrival of railroad service to northwestern Minnesota rendered the trail obsolete. In 1879 the U.S. government granted a checkerboard of square-mile tracts to a railroad company to finance the construction of the rail. Though much of this prairie was purchased and converted to cropland, vast blocks of aspen parkland were deemed poorly |
| suited to agriculture and were later protected by state wildlife officials and The Nature Conservancy. | |
Today these assembled remnants of parkland are large enough—thousands of acres in some places—to allow for the dynamic interplay of drought, flooding, fire and natural recovery that shaped the ecosystem. Here the Conservancy and our partners, both in the United States and in Canada, focus on ecosystem restoration, primarily a careful prescription of fire that prevents forests from taking root while maintaining characteristic shrubs and woodland patches among the tallgrass prairie.
Learn more about The Nature Conservancy's work in Minnesota. |
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| Conservation Profile |
targets
northern tallgrass prairie, peatlands, aspen/oak savanna, floodplain forests, timber wolf, moose, elk, black bear, great gray owl, yellow rail, LeConte’s sparrow, sandhill crane, western prairie fringed orchid
stresses
invasive plants, reduced frequency of fire, drainage of wetlands and channelization of rivers, habitat conversion to agriculture, grazing practices, road construction
strategies
acquire land, secure conservation easements, restore ecosystems through fire, grazing, water and forest management, encourage conservation management of public land
results
350,000 acres in conservation management; cross-border prescribed burns conducted | | | | |
