
Minnesota Heroes
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Palisade Head at Tettegouche State Park, Lake Superior. One of the company’s earliest gifts was 660 acres along the shore of Lake Superior, which the Conservancy donated to the people of Minnesota to expand Temperance River and Tettegouche state parks.
Photo © L. Morgan
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3M
“When it comes to environmental preservation, 3M wants to have a measurable impact,” says Katherine Reed, retired Vice President of Environmental Health and Safety Operations with 3M.
“It’s one of the reasons we chose to support The Nature Conservancy,” she added. “Like 3M, the Conservancy is science-based, international in scope and focused on tangible results. It’s an organization we are proud to stand next to.”
For the past 25 years, 3M has been a strong supporter of the Conservancy’s work in Minnesota and beyond its borders. One of the company’s earliest gifts was 660 acres in Lake and Cook counties along the shore of Lake Superior, which the Conservancy donated to the people of Minnesota to expand Temperance River and Tettegouche state parks.
3M’s former CEO Livio DeSimone served on the Conservancy’s national Board of Governors for five years from 1997 to 2002, before his retirement, and the company donated materials for the Conservancy’s new national office in Arlington, Virginia.
In 2000, under the leadership of Katherine Reed, 3M included the environment as one of the pillars of its foundation’s giving and selected the Conservancy as its first national environmental partner. The company’s $3.2 million gift (part of a total gift of $5.1 million to the Conservancy) in 2001 allowed the Minnesota program to dramatically expand its work to conserve the grasslands at Ordway/Glacial Lakes in central Minnesota and the Tallgrass Aspen Parkland in the northwest.
Again in 2007, 3M supported the Conservancy’s efforts to protect habitat on a large scale—this time in Minnesota’s Northwoods—with a $1.5 million gift to the Minnesota Forest Legacy Campaign. The gift will allow the Conservancy to protect thousands of acres of forestland in northeast Minnesota using innovative tools like working forest conservation easements, providing both economic and environmental benefits.
“As our population grows and the pace of development intensifies, the need for the Conservancy to think big about land and water conservation has never been more urgent,” said Peggy Ladner, Minnesota State Director. “Through its generous support over the years, 3M has helped make large scale grassland and forest conservation in Minnesota a reality.”