Minnesota’s private landowners drive conservation of prairie remnants

Tony Kaster’s prairie stretches across 80 acres in Marysville Township, an hour west of downtown Minneapolis. On a recent afternoon, a goldfinch flits past a field of golden alexanders. A great blue heron soars above. Sedges peek out from the soil. Dragonflies dart between the milky white blossoms of foxglove beardtongue.

Today, Kaster’s land looks closer to what it was two centuries ago than thirty years ago. Minnesota once had prairie that stretched for more than 18 million acres. Starting in the 19th century, most of that land was converted to crops. Currently, only a little over 1% of native prairie remains in the state, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

The state has worked to accelerate conservation since establishing a Prairie Conservation Plan in 2010, but it can’t afford to buy and manage all remaining prairie land. That has meant that more private landowners like Kaster enrolling their property in conservation easements, legally binding agreements that restrict future development while allowing them to retain ownership.

For example, the Northern Tallgrass Prairie National Wildlife Refuge, a patchwork conservation project in western Minnesota and northwestern Iowa managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has been able to grow mainly because of landowners willing to sell or donate their development rights. Five years ago, easements made up 60% of the refuge’s land acquisitions. Today, they account for over 90% of the refuge’s 15,000 acres in Minnesota and Iowa.

Most native prairie that remains in Minnesota is protected through various programs and is not in danger of future conversion to crop land, according to Susan Galatowitsch, professor of fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology at the University of Minnesota. But preserving and restoring what little prairie remains increasingly depends on the conservation impulses of private landowners.

The land was already used for row crops when Kaster’s parents bought it in the 1980s. They intended to keep leasing it to farmers.

During his college years in the mid-90s, Kaster decided that he wanted to start planting trees on his family land instead. There was no grand plan for ecological restoration at first. But when Kaster realized the soil was formed in prairie conditions, he became captivated by the idea of restoring the land to its original prairie form. “You can sit in these high spots, look out, and see far away into the grasses,” he said.

In 2021, Kaster decided to place his land into a conservation easement with the Minnesota Land Trust, an environmental nonprofit. Landowners can also opt to sell their land to the organization, which would then transfer the property to the DNR for long-term management.

Kaster had already spent two decades restoring native species to the land, so he chose to keep the property and tend to it himself. He also turned down compensation for the loss of land rights, which can amount to anywhere from less than 25% to more than 70% of the property’s value.

Since they count as a charitable donation, easement donations can qualify landowners for an income tax deduction, though with few exceptions they don’t provide a property tax break.

However, the tax bill recently passed by the Legislature included an amendment that would give landowners in the metro a break on their property taxes for easement donations.

Restoring prairies significantly boosts biodiversity: Many essential pollinators and grassland-dependent birds, like trumpeter swans and prairie chickens, cannot exist without prairie, said Galatowitsch.

Prairies also help reduce flood risks, mitigate nitrogen water pollution, and lessen the effects of climate change through sequestering carbon in their extensive root systems, she said.

While the prairie landscape is one of the most transformed landscapes on Earth, it is also one of the ecosystems that humans have had the most success restoring — though it is impossible to restore prairies to their original pristine condition, Galatowitsch said.

To protect the prairie, property owners have to shield it from herbicide drift and invasive weeds, among other external threats, and they have to mimic natural periodic disturbances through controlled burns and grazing.

Now, Kaster is familiar with the routine that maintaining a prairie requires: He picks out native plants suitable for soil conditions, burns the land once every few years, mows down invasive species, and thins out his trees. With resources available from the DNR and other organizations like the Land Trust, Kaster can easily obtain information on prairie management, including seed sources and services for prairie installation.

Most conservation easement programs in Minnesota — including those run by the Land Trust and the Northern Tallgrass Prairie National Wildlife Refuge — are funded by the state’s Outdoor Heritage Fund, which can cover both the cost of acquiring the easement and the restoration work that follows.

Renay Leone, a landowner based in Elk River, is restoring native prairie on her family farm, backed by grant funding from the Land Trust. Her efforts began four years ago with a modest planting of native grasses. Last winter, she started to scale up the restoration by hiring a company to remove invasive vegetation — the first step in a five-year habitat management plan.

Before she retired, Leone spent a few years working at the Land Trust, where she deepened her passion for learning about prairies, native plantings, and pollinators.

Her best advice for restoring and maintaining a prairie? Patience. “Planting native plants, they might not look like much for a year or two,” she said.

Kaster views individual efforts to restore prairies as placing a plant community on a positive trajectory, then working to keep it on track until it reaches a self-sustaining point in the long run. In a hundred years, he hopes, the native swamp white oak he plants will have shaded out all the invasive reed canary grass.

“Really, you do this for people who haven’t been born,” Kaster said.