For those of you who haven’t heard we are currently undergoing some office renovations. These renovations were made possible through a grant from the Lowe’s Gives Foundation to go towards our Youth Environmental Education Center.

Here are a few before and during pictures. Huge shout out to the Lowe’s volunteers and the Youthworks crew for all of their hard work.

We did it, or more importantly YOU did it. Thanks to folks like you we were able to not only meet our increased match grant goal of $90,000 but we exceeded it! Thank you for making 2019 another amazing year for land protection.

Thank you Walmart for the grant allowing us to purchase more trail cams. This video of a coyote was taken out at our Sturgeon River Preserve!

With tomorrow being opening day for rifle hunting we just wanted to remind everyone to wear orange if you plan on being in the woods. Good luck out there hunters, stay warm and stay safe.

The accessible boardwalk at the Sturgeon River Preserve is complete! Huge shout out to all of our wonderful donors and volunteers that helped this project come to life. Please go out and enjoy the near 450′ of boardwalk through the wetland at the SRP.

We had our last snowshoe hike of the season this past weekend out at the Louis Groen Nature Preserve in Johannesburg. This was one of several hikes that took place this season. We had a great time snowshoeing with the kids and staff at the Vanderbilt Area Schools, the folks at Crossroads Industries, Scott Warsen with the U.S. Forest Service, Sam Cornelius with Kids Outdoors Otsego and everyone who attended one of our public snowshoe hikes. Thank you for making it a great snowshoeing season.

We had a great time on our first snowshoe hike of the year out at the Sturgeon River Preserve on Saturday January 26th. We were worried about going forward with it knowing how cold it was going to get but even with it being -10 degrees Fahrenheit we still had a nice group of 9 people brave the weather and enjoy the morning with us. Here’s a photo of part of the group all bundled up enjoying the snow.

Keep an eye open for other snowshoeing opportunities. Snowshoes are free to use at events.