Conservation

Clean River Partners collaborates with people and organizations to build climate security and resilience in the watershed and its communities. To see the diverse range of conservation initiatives that Clean River Partners has been involved with, check out our complete project map below. Click the top left corner to view project categories.

Cover Crops & Soil Health

Planting cover crops is linked to an array of improvements on agricultural land such as reducing erosion, controlling weeds, increasing soil productivity, and providing habitat. We play a critical role in increasing cover crop acreage in the Cannon River watershed. Clean River Partners’ Conservation Program helps farmers to implement cover crops to improve farmland and the land, water, and communities that surround it.

Perennial & Alternative Cropping

Increasing continuous living cover on the landscape has a range of benefits from reducing erosion, to providing additional income sources for producers. Southeastern Minnesota hosts many organizations developing alternatives to conventional, annual farming, and Clean River Partners is eager to help advance this critical movement.

Habitat Protection & Restoration

The Cannon River watershed has an incredible abundance of unique habitats. Here we find prairies, savannas, forests, and various wetlands, all sharing the landscape with agricultural and urban areas. We work in diverse ways to restore and conserve these ecosystems to maximize the cultural, environmental, and economic benefits they provide for our community.

Building Networks & Shared Vision

Watersheds are inherently complex things to manage and conserve. They seldom regard political or social boundaries, and people that inhabit them have radically different lives, ideas, and ways of using the land. To overcome these differences, we bring diverse groups together to more effectively protect the land and water we all depend on.