Itasca State Park invites you to the park next weekend for their annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count event. Itasca State Park Lead Naturalist Connie Cox tells us more about the event, and its long history at Itasca.
Cox says this bird count is done each year for scientific purposes.
For more information about the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, or to locate a bird count near you, go to the Audubon website at www.audubon.org.
Now that we’ve had the biggest snowfall of the winter so far, people will be using their snow blowers for the first time this season. R&J Broadcasting’s Joe Lancello has some safety reminders.
R&J Broadcasting’s Joe Lancello.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will open a late-season deer hunt Dec. 19 through 21 in several permit areas to help manage chronic wasting disease. To find deer permit areas covered by the hunt, visit the DNR website..
The DNR says CWD testing is voluntary this year because enough samples were collected during the regular firearms season. Hunters who want their deer tested can use self-service stations, partner sampling locations, mail-in kits, or make an appointment at a DNR office. There will be no staffed check stations during the management hunt.
Carcass movement restrictions remain in place. Hunters must quarter their deer before taking meat out of the CWD zone, and whole carcasses can’t leave the area until a “not detected” test result is confirmed. Heads may still go directly to licensed taxidermists outside the zone.
To encourage participation, the DNR is allowing flexible license use. Disease-management permits may be used on both antlered and antlerless deer, and the bag limit is five. Most hunters in last year’s late-season CWD hunt harvested one or two deer.More information, including testing details and CWD results, is available at mndnr.gov/cwd.
The Minnesota DNR has completed one of its largest land acquisitions in decades — nearly 16,000 acres of forested land across ten northern Minnesota counties are now permanently protected.
The project preserves critical habitat, expands recreation access, and ensures the land remains forested for generations. It stems from years of collaboration between the DNR, The Conservation Fund, Northern Waters Land Trust, and multiple counties.
To help explain the scale of the purchase, I spoke with DNR Northeast Regional Communications Specialist Ingrid Johnson, who says mapping the land is challenging because of how spread out the parcels are.
She says the DNR’s GIS staff is already working to create a public-facing map of the tracts.
The acquisition includes over 10 thousand acres purchased with Outdoor Heritage Funds in counties such as Aitkin, Becker, Cass, Crow Wing, Hubbard, Itasca, Koochiching, and Wadena. These lands will expand wildlife management areas, scientific and natural areas, and state forests.
Another 51-hundred acres in St. Louis County were purchased with Reinvest in Minnesota dollars, helping consolidate state forestland and preserve large, continuous habitat blocks.
Johnson says the effort has been many years in the making.
DNR Northeast Regional Communications Specialist Ingrid Johnson.
Over a dozen robotics teams from across Northwest Minnesota will be participating in the Northern Minnesota Robotics Conference’s annual FIRST Lego League event later this week in Bemidji. NMRC representative Matt Wendland tells us more about the Event.
Wendland explains how Lego League differs from other NMRC leagues like FRC.
Again, the NMRC First Lego League event will get underway at 9:30 AM on Friday, December 12 at the Sanford Center Ballroom in Bemidji. The event runs all afternoon with the final matches concluding round 5:30.