Mississippi Park Connection

Programs: Community engagementmississippi park connection has established itself as a leader in helping people experience the mississippi river and the national park. Public programs build relevancy for the park and act as the best way to engage large numbers of people in our work. As a visible partner in public programming, we are building a constituency for future volunteers, donors, and park lovers. Mississippi river visitor center:in august 2016, we re-opened the park's visitor center in the science museum of minnesota with new interactive exhibits. Through a $630,000 fundraising campaign, we helped to transform the center into a gateway river experience for residents and visitors. Attendance at the center has tripled and the project won the outstanding pubic engagement award from the public lands alliance. Upper saint anthony falls lock visitor center:in june of 2015, the lock at upper saint anthony falls was closed due to an act of congress. The u. S. Army corps of engineers has been operating the lock for boat traffic since 1963. Currently, the army corps has a real estate agreement with the national park service to manage and operate the lock's visitor center between memorial day and labor day of 2016. Both the national park service and mississippi park connection believe that the lock's visitor center could become a key destination for the public within the bustling saint anthony historic district and be a hub for public programming. Mississippi park connection provides funding for seasonal ranger positions, supplies, and marketing. Mpc also provides on the ground staff to work at the site. Paddle share:the river is increasingly being seen as a world class recreational resource but it is often difficult to access, particularly if you do not have your own canoe and rack on your car. Additionally, because paddling on the river is most enjoyable point a to point b from upriver to downriver with the flow of water, paddling often requires two cars to make a successful outing. Because of this, we worked with the national park service to launch a new program called paddle share. Paddle share consists of several kayak share stations on the mississippi river. Each self-serve kayak share system includes a steel rack that can hold 10 kayaks, swipe card readers installed on metal lockers, master controller with power supply, magnetic door locks, armored pull apart cables, installation, wiring, and software. In addition, paddles and pfds will be at each station. Bike share bikes and docks near these locations will enable roundtrip bike and accessible paddle opportunities on the mississippi river between these destinations that include a regional park, water access, bike/pedestrian trails, and nearby transit. The effort represents a pilot project to blend a kayak share program with the popular bike share program already in existence in the twin cities (nice ride). By giving access to recreational equipment along the mississippi river, we encourage new audiences to find and experience their national park.

youth education we continue to support long-standing programs that give urban youth a national park experience and introduce them to the mississippi river. Take me to the river, urban wilderness canoe adventures, journey to the falls, and big river journey now in its 20th year together with our youth service learning projects, serve more than 18,000 3rd-12th graders from the minneapolis-st. Paul metropolitan area each year. With cutbacks in school funding for field trips, our "ticket to ride" scholarship fund provides impactful financial support for our existing education programs. We are also developing a larger plan surrounding youth outdoor and nature-based education in honor of the recent "every kid in a park" initiative launched by the white house in 2015. Every kid in a park seeks to remove barriers to access on our nation's public lands and waters, with a special focus on 4th graders from underserved and urban communities. In traditional national parks, this means waiving the entry fee for 4th graders; here in our urban location we are setting more ambitious goals. Barriers to nature exist beyond access alone, and one-off experiences with a school along the river can only do so much to create the life-long relationship to nature that we are hoping to encourage. Urban national parks like ours are in a prime position to not only address access issues, but also remove additional (e. G. Cultural, socio-economic, knowledge-based) barriers to outdoor play. This is why we are leading a process with our board, the national park service, and other non-profit partners that work with students in nature locally and nationally, to create a vision and strategy document that articulates the need for a more robust nature-based education standard. The new strategy will identify what barriers to outdoor education exist beyond access. It will also lay the groundwork for nature-based education to be incorporated into the very fabric of academic standards and curriculum requirements at metro schools.

environmental stewardship coldwater spring:the national park service manages 100 acres of land nestled between minnehaha falls and fort snelling state park at coldwater spring. Invasive species like buckthorn choke out native species. Highly used trails are in need of maintenance. Mississippi park connection works with the national park service to restore, enhance, and maintain high quality habitat for wildlife and important visitor amenities like restrooms, trails and interpretive programming on the site. We also coordinate and manage a robust program of volunteers at coldwater spring in partnership with the national park service, which includes nearly 20 individuals who meet on-site each week and thousands of volunteers from school and corporate groups who remove invasive species and pick up trash. Park-wide habitat restoration planning:among the twenty-five cities, five counties and several regional park systems that lie within the mississippi national river and recreation area resource managers have myriad skills, knowledge of the resource, supplies, funding, and volunteer support. However, each individual entity is often lacking in one area or another at one time or another. Over many years of working with the national park service on habitat restoration projects, it has become clear to mississippi park connection that our region has a greater need for coordination between the many public land-owning partners, non-profit agencies, watershed district managers etc. Around the subject of "habitat" in this urban landscape. Mississippi park connection has improved coordination among the large public land-owners on issues that concern all of the parks that make up the whole national park to create improved wildlife habitat, provide on-the-ground support in the form of staff and volunteers, and create a guideline of best management practices to support wildlife in this urban stretch of mississippi river. Coordination will happen through large scale, facilitated meetings and address issues of pressing concern related to habitat restoration. It will also happen in one-on-one meetings between our volunteer coordinator, national park staff, and the employees of other organizations across the corridor. Mississippi park connection has already hosted two large partner meetings between land-owning partners that manage habitat on the mississippi river, as well as the non-profits, private citizens, and watershed districts that promote healthy river habitat. By bringing together our partners, we are having meaningful conversations leading to collaborative and landscape-wide solutions for the entire 72-mile national park. This year, we launched the plant for the future campaign, which addresses the need to keep our park healthy in the face of the emerald ash borer (20% of all the trees within the mississippi national river and recreation area are ash trees). Over the next 3-5 years, we will work in partnership with landowners to plant 5000 trees within the national park.