Granola bar company helps habitat restoration efforts

“This is good news,” said Tim McKay, RLSC board member.

Nature Valley is a longtime supporter of national park preservation through its Preserve the Parks program – now in its third year – which benefits the NPCA, says a press release from NPCA. Over the course of the three-year relationship, the Preserve the Parks program will have helped raise more than $1 million to benefit restoration projects in support of America’s national parks.

This year, Nature Valley is continuing to help preserve America’s national parks while encouraging education, outdoor exploration and support, the release said.

McKay explained that the RLSC is a grant recipient because of the Rat Root River walleye project, which is intended to restore the traditional walleye spawning run through a variety of efforts.

The project teams the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Koochiching Soil and Water Conservation District with the RLSC. The club provides the initiative, the district is the financial agent for the funding, and the DNR the technical expertise.

“It is an ongoing project,” McKay said.

Applying for the grant, according to McKay, started last fall when Voyageurs National Park Superintendent Mike Ward was contacted by the NPCA inquiring if any area projects would benefit from grant funding.

McKay said the Rat Root River project focuses on how the number of walleye spawning in the river appears to have declined, and an increase in the average size of male and female walleyes suggest the population may not be replenishing itself with as many new recruits as in the past.

“Years back, we had a hydrologist assess the Rat Root River to give us a background on what has gone wrong with (the decline in spawning) over the years,” he said. “There is a long list, some things we can fix, some we can’t.”

One of the items on the list was the change in root systems which causes riverbank erosion. McKay said it was recommended that more hard wood – slower growing trees – be planted that would live longer and not fall into the river causing blocking the river’s flow.

“We thought this would be a good fit for the Nature Valley money,” he said.

“The money doesn’t target areas directly in a national park,” McKay said. “In this case, the Rat Root project aims to restore habitat for walleye spawning and walleyes, of course, benefit (Voyageurs National) park.”

The NPCA website indicates that grant money is intended to protect and preserve national parks for generations to come, and while McKay said the restoration project may not see results “for several years,” it will hopefully benefit the next generation.

“We may not see results this year or next year, but we’re doing a lot of work to restore the tens of thousands of fish that once spawned in that river,” he said.

McKay added that a considerable amount of money has been given to the project through the Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council and while the RLSC wanted to keep the Nature Valley money separate, it “ultimately wanted the money to compliment the whole project.”

“We hadn’t looked at tree planting yet, and saw the Nature Valley grant as an opportunity,” he said. “We’ve ordered 3,000 trees.”

McKay said Nature Valley representatives as well as staff members of local lawmakers will travel to Borderland to take part in the tree planting effort, which will occur on private property along the Rat Root River.

“Fall is typically not the ideal time to plant trees, but we’ll make it work,” McKay said.

He added that plans to plant additional trees next year are in the works and if any landowners living along the Rat Root River are interested in having trees planted on their property, free of charge, they should contact a RLSC member.

“There is a lot of work to be done out there,” McKay said. “This is a start.”