I was working at Cedar Lake Point Beach this morning, continuing the slow work of restoring a small piece of Minneapolis’s natural landscape, while listening to Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire.

It’s a fascinating read, or in my case, listen, about the relationship between people and plants and the ways plants have succeeded by making themselves appealing to survive. Pollan turns our usual understanding of domestication around. Perhaps humans are not simply manipulating plants. Perhaps plants, by satisfying our desires, have enlisted us to spread them as well. That reciprocal relationship is the central premise of the book.

At one point, while discussing Monsanto’s genetically engineered NewLeaf potato, Pollan turns to what he calls “biological pollution”, the possibility that changes introduced into living systems can escape our control and alter ecological relationships in ways that may be difficult to contain.

I didn’t have to look very far to make my own connection.

Around me were buckthorn, white mulberry and other invasive plants, the kinds of plants I and other volunteers have spent years removing as part of an effort to restore the diversity and ecological relationships of Minneapolis’s roughly 1,200 acres of public natural areas.

Then I noticed someone working along the beach.

She was a water-quality technician, accompanied by two others who appeared to be trainees, taking samples from Cedar Lake. I almost stopped her as she approached the official Park Board vehicle parked nearby to ask a few questions. But I was absorbed in Pollan’s book and figured she didn’t need to be interrupted from doing her real job.

Then the juxtaposition struck me.

We test the water.

We have standards for it. We sample it regularly. We employ people with the expertise to measure it. We collect data over time so we can recognize when conditions are deteriorating and, ideally, respond.

And we should.

Water may be our most immediate sensory connection with environmental quality. We drink it. We swim in it. We look across it. When a lake turns green with algae, smells bad or becomes unsafe for swimming, people recognize that something is wrong.

Water quality has consequently earned a place in our institutional structure, our staffing and our budgets. But I found myself looking back from the lake toward the woods and wondering:

Why don’t we treat the ecological quality of the land with the same seriousness and regularity?

The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board actually has measured the ecological health of its natural areas.

Ecologists conducted field assessments during the 2018 and 2019 growing seasons for MPRB’s Natural Areas Plan Phase II. The results were sobering if not disturbing. Not a single acre assessed received the highest ecological-quality rating of A. Only 3.3 percent of the acreage ranked between B and BC, while 84.8 percent fell between CD and the lowest category, Non-Native.

In other words, the Park Board already has evidence that the ecological condition of much of its natural land is poor. And those field measurements are now seven or eight growing seasons old.

That makes the water-quality technician I watched at Cedar Lake an interesting comparison.

We would never test the lake in 2019 and simply assume those results still describe its condition in 2026. We test water repeatedly because conditions change, because degradation matters and because measurement tells us whether intervention is working.

Why don’t we approach the ecological health of the land surrounding our lakes with the same regularity?

The threats are not difficult to see. Buckthorn overwhelms a woodland understory. Invasive plants displace native plant communities. Tree regeneration can and in many cases has disappeared. Habitat becomes less diverse. And the condition of soils and vegetation on the surrounding landscape ultimately affects the lakes and wetlands below them.

So where is the terrestrial equivalent of the person I watched taking water samples? Where is the regular ecological monitoring? Where are the established measures that tell us whether a woodland is improving or deteriorating? How do we know if the approach and staffing is commensurate with the acreage and the problem we need to address? And where is the budget that says this problem matters?

What Problem Are We Trying to Solve?

Those questions seem particularly important as the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board considers its Natural Resources staffing for 2027 and beyond.

The Park Board already knows that its Natural Resources staff is working at a daunting scale. Its own 2026 budget says the Natural Resources staff manages more than 400 acres of natural areas including prairies, shorelines, wetlands and woodlands and coordinates revegetation and terrestrial invasive-species control.

The Park Board also established an explicit goal of increasing the acreage of Managed Natural Areas by 120 acres while improving the ecological quality of existing areas. Its Natural Areas performance goal acknowledged something important: achieving the goal would require additional funding.

And the 2026 budget went a step further.

It instructed in its 2026 Adopted Budget for staff to evaluate additional acreage for inclusion as Managed Natural Areas, determine the staffing, workspace and equipment needed to maintain that additional land and, if necessary, make requests for additional resources in the 2027–28 budget.

That raises what seems to me a straightforward question:

What did that evaluation tell us?

Additional positions are now being considered within Natural Resources. But rather than simply expanding the number of Natural Resource Specialists or other field personnel directly engaged in terrestrial ecological restoration, some of the emerging functions appear directed toward horticultural expertise associated with places such as Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary and Graco Park, along with a future wildlife function whose responsibilities are not yet clearly defined.

Horticultural and wildlife expertise may serve entirely legitimate purposes. Eloise Butler deserves expert care. Graco Park has its own landscape needs. Wildlife management may address important needs that are not being adequately met today.

But that brings me back to a more fundamental question:

What problem are we trying to solve?

If hundreds of acres of public woodland, prairie, wetland and shoreline remain ecologically degraded, and invasive species continue spreading while volunteers struggle to contain them, then shouldn’t staffing decisions begin with an explicit assessment of that problem?

How many acres require active management? What condition are they in today? Are they getting better or worse? What staffing level would be required not merely to prevent further deterioration, but actually to improve them? And how does the proposed staffing and budget compare with that need?

Those questions are different from asking whether horticulture or wildlife positions would be useful. Almost any environmental program can make a legitimate case for additional resources.

The harder task of budgeting is establishing priorities among legitimate needs.

Measurement Creates Accountability

Across Minneapolis, volunteers continually remove invasive species and attempt to restore native ecological communities. We are, in a very literal sense, pushing back against the kind of biological disruption that Pollan’s phrase caused me to think about while working at Cedar Lake.

The Park Board regularly expresses appreciation for that work. Volunteers receive recognition and encouragement.

But appreciation is not a management strategy.

If invasive plants and ecological degradation exist at a scale beyond what volunteers and current staff can reasonably address, then the institutional response ultimately needs include sustained professional capacity and budgets proportional to the problem.

And that brings me back to the person sampling the lake.

Perhaps the most important thing about water-quality monitoring isn’t simply that someone collects a bottle of water.

Measurement creates accountability.

Imagine if MPRB routinely assessed and reported to the public the ecological condition of its natural areas using a consistent methodology, perhaps not every year, but on a regular cycle.

We could know whether buckthorn and other invasive species were expanding or retreating. We could measure native plant diversity and tree regeneration. We could identify places that were improving and places slipping backward.

Most importantly, we could connect investment to results.

Inventory the land. Measure its condition. Establish standards. Fund the intervention. Measure it again. Report the results.

That would allow commissioners, staff, volunteers and the public to ask a much more meaningful question than simply how much money was spent:

Did the ecological condition of our public land actually improve?

That is why the Natural Resources staffing discussion is about more than personnel. It is about what we choose to measure, what we choose to notice and, ultimately, what we choose to value.

Henry David Thoreau famously wrote that “in Wildness is the preservation of the World.” If we believe there is truth in that observation, preserving wildness in our public natural areas requires more than setting land aside and calling it a natural area.

Especially in an urban landscape that has experienced years of degradation and relatively limited management, preservation requires actively addressing the problems we already know exist. It means establishing ecological health as more than an aspiration. It means making it a measurable priority and investing enough to help these places recover.

We already know how to do this with water.

Perhaps it is time to become equally serious about measuring and restoring the land that surrounds it.

Readers of ER at Cedar Lake Point Beach may wonder what data centers have to do with ecological restoration. For me, the connection is in the word ecosystem.

We most often use that word to describe natural systems, the relationships among plants, wildlife, water, soil, climate, and the other elements that make a healthy habitat possible. But our communities also function as interconnected systems.

Decisions about energy, water, infrastructure, land use, housing, economic development, and quality of life can create effects well beyond the boundaries of an individual property.

That is what interests me about Minneapolis’ proposed zoning regulations for data centers, which are now open for public input. Data centers may bring real benefits, including reuse of underutilized downtown buildings, expansion of digital infrastructure, additional tax base, and potentially support for businesses that depend upon advanced computing and network connectivity.

At the same time, their demands for electricity, water, cooling, backup power, and other infrastructure can have natural, social, and economic consequences.

The ecological-restoration work I write about here has taught me to ask not only what happens to one plant, one parcel, or one project, but what happens to the system as a whole. That seems like an equally useful question to ask as Minneapolis determines how data centers should fit into the city.

The proposed regulations address several important land-use concerns. They also raise broader questions about whether regulating the physical size of individual facilities adequately addresses their actual intensity, cumulative impacts, and demands on surrounding infrastructure.

With that perspective, I offer the following questions and concerns as part of the public discussion:

Electrical demand and intensity.
The proposed 175,000-square-foot limit on “white space” appears to use physical area as a proxy for the scale of a data center. Yet facilities of similar size can have substantially different electrical demands, particularly as computing and AI equipment become increasingly power-dense. If state law prevents Minneapolis from directly limiting megawatt demand through zoning, what other review process ensures that electrical intensity, grid impacts, and related infrastructure requirements are adequately considered?

Why this matters: A facility could potentially remain within the City’s physical size limit while its electrical demand increases substantially over time.

Cumulative impacts, concentration, and maximum capacity.
The proposal appears primarily to evaluate data centers individually. But several facilities located near one another could collectively create the electricity demand, water consumption, backup-generation capacity, noise, and infrastructure impacts of a much larger facility. Should the City establish a cumulative-impact review that considers existing and approved data centers within a defined geographic area? And, if cumulative impacts are relevant, should the City also define an acceptable maximum capacity or concentration for that area, based on infrastructure capacity, environmental impacts, and compatibility with surrounding uses, rather than allowing additional facilities to be considered indefinitely on an individual basis?

Why this matters: Without considering the capacity of the whole, a series of individually acceptable facilities could eventually produce the equivalent impacts of a much larger data-center complex that the City might never have approved as a single proposal.

Noise at the actual receptor.
Data centers require substantial cooling and mechanical equipment, some of which may be located on rooftops. Noise experienced by residents on upper floors of nearby buildings may be quite different from noise measured at street level or near the property line. Sound analysis should consider the actual location and elevation of affected residential receptors, nighttime conditions, and the cumulative effect of multiple mechanical systems and nearby facilities.

Why this matters: Several individually compliant sources could potentially combine into a persistent background-noise environment that diminishes residential quality of life and undermines the City’s objective of maintaining downtown as a desirable place to live.

What does the 175,000-square-foot limit actually measure?
The proposed limit applies to “white space,” while substantial supporting infrastructure—cooling systems, electrical equipment, batteries, generators, and rooftop equipment—may fall outside that definition. The City should clearly identify what is and is not included in the size calculation and determine whether white-space area alone adequately represents the overall operational scale and impact of a facility.

Why this matters: A nominally limited data center could have a considerably larger operational footprint and impact than its regulated white-space area suggests.

Relationship between the 20-foot interior setback and supporting equipment.
Requiring server rooms to remain at least 20 feet from an exterior wall provides separation from the building perimeter, but it is less clear how this protection relates to rooftop or other supporting equipment located outside the server-room envelope. The ordinance should ensure that its protections cannot be undermined simply because significant operational equipment falls outside the definition of server or white space.

Why this matters: A setback intended to protect surrounding uses may provide limited protection if some of the equipment producing the greatest external impacts is not subject to the same spatial protections.

Infrastructure capacity and responsibility for costs.
Data centers can require substantial electrical, water, sewer, cooling, and emergency-response infrastructure. The City should identify how additional infrastructure requirements will be evaluated and who will bear their costs. Existing residents and businesses should not inadvertently subsidize infrastructure expansion primarily required by unusually intensive users.

Why this matters: Without clear allocation of responsibility, private development demands could result in public infrastructure costs or system constraints that are borne more broadly.

Economic-development benefit.
Data centers may be valuable digital infrastructure, particularly if they support Minneapolis businesses, research institutions, healthcare, financial services, AI, or other emerging industries. But those benefits should be identified rather than assumed. What businesses or industries does Minneapolis expect data-center capacity to support locally, and what permanent employment, tax revenue, building reuse, or other measurable economic benefits are expected?

Why this matters: Minneapolis could otherwise assume significant infrastructure and environmental burdens while much of the economic value created by the computing capacity flows elsewhere.

Public benefit proportional to public impact.
Ultimately, the question should extend beyond whether an individual data center can satisfy individual zoning requirements. Minneapolis should also consider whether the public benefits of data-center development are proportional to their collective demands on electricity, water, infrastructure, land, the environment, and surrounding neighborhoods.

Why this matters: Once substantial infrastructure is committed and a concentration of facilities becomes established, changing course may be considerably more difficult than establishing appropriate limits and expectations at the outset.

Thinking About the Whole

The proposed ordinance necessarily regulates things zoning can readily measure: location, square footage, setbacks, building configuration, and permitted uses. Data centers, however, are unusual because their operational intensity may not correspond closely to their physical size.

That distinction becomes even more important when multiple facilities are considered together. A limit on the size of each facility does not necessarily establish a limit on the total intensity of data-center development within an area.

That brings me back to the ecological perspective. We know in natural-area restoration that looking at individual elements in isolation can obscure what is happening to the larger system. The same principle seems relevant here. Electricity, water, infrastructure, businesses, housing, residents, public finances, and the environment interact. An impact that appears manageable when considered one facility at a time may look quite different when considered cumulatively.

Before adopting these regulations, Minneapolis should be confident that its framework answers a larger question:

Does the ordinance adequately address the intensity, cumulative impacts, and maximum appropriate concentration of data centers—not simply the physical size and impacts of each individual facility?

The purpose of asking these questions is not to argue that data centers should not be in Minneapolis. They may become important infrastructure for the city’s future. Rather, this is an opportunity to establish thoughtful rules before their scale and concentration are determined by individual development decisions.

If we are going to think about data centers as part of Minneapolis’ future, we should think about the whole ecosystem—natural, social, and economic—and establish what a healthy balance looks like while we still have the opportunity to do so.

Today, thankfully, it is raining.

It’s a welcomed rain that’s not a passing shower or a sudden downpour. It’s the kind of long, steady rain that seems prepared to stay for the day. After our stretch of hot, dry weather, it is hard not to celebrate it. The ground is receiving a slow soaking. The air has cooled, and it feels like we’re a bit safer again.

A rainy day can feel like a pause in restoration work. I know I had planned to get out there and put in another few hours today. But instead, it’s a day to stay inside read and reflect a bit on what’s going on out there.

Ad in doing so, I am reassured that the restoration has not stopped.

The work already completed is helping determine what happens to this rain. Where dense stands of buckthorn have been reduced, fewer invasive leaves and roots are competing for water, sunlight, nutrients, and growing space. Rain has a better opportunity to enter a recovering plant community to nourish native plants, support soil life, and move through the ground toward the deeper roots below.

The forest is making use of yesterday’s work.

What Rain Gives the Forest

Rain is more than water falling from the sky. It is one of the ways an ecosystem feeds itself.

When rain reaches the forest, some is caught by leaves and branches. Some evaporates. Some moves across the surface into low areas, wetlands, and streams. Some filters into the soil, where it becomes available to plant roots and the vast community of organisms living underground.

Plants absorb water primarily through their roots. That water helps keep leaves and stems firm, carries dissolved minerals from the soil, and transports materials throughout the plant. It is also part of photosynthesis, although much of the water a plant absorbs is eventually released through tiny openings in its leaves during “transpiration”. I learned a bit more about that word today. That’s the process cools the plant and helps draw more water and nutrients upward from the soil.

Rain also stimulates life that we rarely see. Fungi, bacteria, insects, worms, and other decomposers become active in moist soil. Their work breaks down organic matter, releases nutrients, builds soil structure, and supports the relationships upon which plants depend.

Some water remains near the surface, where grasses, wildflowers, seedlings, and shallow-rooted shrubs can reach it. Some penetrates farther into the ground, replenishing deeper soil moisture and, under the right conditions, contributing to groundwater.

How much of the rain becomes useful to the ecosystem depends on what it encounters.

A slow, steady rain generally has more opportunity to soak into the soil than the same amount of water delivered in a brief downpour. Healthy soil, fallen leaves, roots, and varied vegetation help slow the water and hold it within the landscape. Compacted soil and bare ground may shed water more quickly, allowing it to carry soil and nutrients away.

The plants already occupying the site matter, too.

Rain Enters a Living Competition

Rain does not fall on a forest and become equally available to everything growing there. It enters a living competition.

Before water can soak deeply into the soil, it passes through an upper layer crowded with roots. Each plant captures what it can. And when an invasive species is unnaturally abundant, they can claim a disproportionate share of the resources passing through the ecosystem.

This is part of the problem with Buckthorn.

Buckthorn frequently forms dense thickets with extensive roots concentrated in the upper soil. While I appreciate that those shallow root systems without a taproot make Buckthorn easier to pull, those roots are well positioned to capture moisture from smaller rains. They drink up the water before many other deeper root trees get a chance. At Cedar Lake Point Beach, I expect that’s’ what’s made some of the Cottonwoods, especially those that blew over this past year, weaker and more vulnerable. Buckthorn also leafs out early in spring and retains its leaves late into autumn, giving it a longer season in which to collect sunlight, grow, and draw water from the ground.

One Buckthorn plant may not consume an extraordinary amount of water. The larger concern is the cumulative effect of hundreds or thousands of shrubs occupying the same woodland. Together, they create persistent demand for water, light, nutrients, and space.

Water is only part of that competition. Buckthorn also occupies physical space, alters growing conditions, and casts dense shade. Its presence makes it harder for native plants to become established and harder for a forest to produce the next generation of canopy trees.

That means removing buckthorn does more than eliminate an unwanted plant. It reduces a persistent demand on the woodland’s limited resources.

Restoration Creates Opportunity

By reducing invasive vegetation in our restoration work, we reduce some of the barriers preventing a natural community from receiving and using its resources well. Fewer Buckthorn and other dominant invasives such as White Mulberry leaves mean less shade over the forest floor. Fewer living roots mean less belowground competition. Fewer fruit-bearing plants mean fewer seeds available to create the next generation of invasion.

The openings we create give native plants a better chance to respond. Rain can reach the soil beneath those openings. Sunlight can find emerging leaves. Native roots can occupy newly available space. Seedlings that have been waiting, or plants that we intentionally return to the site, have a better chance to survive.

Removal alone does not instantly produce a healthy woodland. A space left open can be occupied again by Buckthorn, White Mulberry, or by another invasive species. Long-term recovery may require repeated follow-up, protection of young native plants from hungry deer and other animals, and the return of native grasses, sedges, wildflowers, shrubs, and trees. Even so, the benefits do not begin only when the restoration is complete.

They begin as soon as the native plants face less competition.

Progress Is Part of the Restoration

We tend to picture restoration as a dramatic before-and-after transformation: first, a woodland choked with Buckthorn; then, an open forest floor filled with native plants.

Most restoration does not happen that way.

It progresses hour by hour and step by step at a time. One section is opened while another remains dense. Cut stumps send up new growth. Seedlings appear where mature plants once stood. Brush piles grow faster than the restored plant community beneath them.

It can be difficult to look at an unfinished project and recognize success. Our attention naturally goes to the Buckthorn that remains rather than the Buckthorn that is gone.

But a project does not need to be finished before it begins to do good.

Every buckthorn cut back has fewer leaves capturing sunlight and releasing water through transpiration. Every root system weakened has less stored energy available for growth and reproduction. Every fruit-bearing invasive plant removed represents fewer seeds. Every small opening gives rain, light, nutrients, and space another opportunity to support native life.

A weakened invasion is less damaging than an unchecked one. A smaller thicket places less pressure on a woodland than a larger one. An area partially cleared offers more opportunity than an area never touched.

Cut, Shuck, Pluck, and Huck

I describe the process as “cut, shuck, pluck, and huck” in a way I think people can visualize. Cut the trunks and stems. Shuck the resprouted branches. Pluck the plant by the roots. Huck the remains onto the pile and dispose of ff-site.

It is a memorable name for physical and repetitive work, but it also describes something ecologically meaningful. Each action takes away part of the invasive plant’s capacity to dominate the site.

This work is related to what land managers call critical period cutting, or the high-cut or high-stump method. The four steps are consistent with and a translation of the University of Minnesota’s research-based “Critical Cut Method.” The approach involves cutting buckthorn while leaving a visible length of trunk, then returning to remove the new leaves, branches, and stems that the plant produces.

The first cut may not kill the buckthorn. It does, however, take away the leaves through which the plant collects energy. Buckthorn responds by drawing on energy stored in its roots to produce new growth. When that regrowth is removed at the appropriate time, the plant loses both its new leaves and some of the energy it spent creating them.

The Buckthorn may still be standing. Its roots may still be alive. New shoots may still appear. But its capacity and impact has been weakened. Repeated cutting requires persistence. It is not a single dramatic act of eradication. It is a process of steadily reducing the plant’s capacity to recover until it can no longer maintain itself.

That makes each return to the site part of the restoration.

The Value of an Unfinished Day

On a rainy day like today, we are reminded that ecological recovery does not happen only while our hands are on the tools. Rain continues the work in ways we cannot. It enters the soil, awakens microorganisms, moves nutrients, cools leaves, fills roots, and supports plants throughout the landscape.

Our role is not to control that entire system. Our role is to help remove some of what prevents the system from functioning well.

Today’s rain is falling on places where Buckthorn still stands. It is also falling on places where Buckthorn has been cut, weakened, pulled, or removed. It is reaching native plants that have more room because someone cleared a patch last week, last month, or last year.

That work retains its value even when the entire site has not been restored.

So those who perform ecological restoration can take pleasure in the patch that’s been cleared, even while Buckthorn remains beyond it. We can take satisfaction in the trunks and stems cut today, even knowing that we will return to cut the regrowth. Notice what has changed, not only what remains to be done.

Good work is not the enemy of a great restoration. It is how a great restoration comes into being.

Every cut reduces competition. Every opening creates possibility. Every return builds

upon the work that came before. And today, while the tools are put away and the rain falls steadily, the forest is already benefiting from our progress.

Today was go time. After a few weeks of discussion, planning, making plant and site selections, picking up plants, and scheduling time together, our mini-team of Brian, Jen, and I got together at 7am to for about 3-1/2 hours perform this litoral edge planting on Cedar Lake Point Beach.

First of all, a special thanks to Brian for conjuring up the plan. He kept saying, "What about this, and that," I mostly said, "Great! Sure! Let's!" And thanks to Keith at the Cedar Lake Park Association who responded to the plan not only with financial support in purchasing the plants, but with encouragement and hope

.I wrote about life’s dynamics at the litoral edge in a previous blog post. And today was about applying a thoughtful application of knowledge to action. All together, we planted 122 plants in an approximately 6’ wide by about 10’ deep project area. Five plant species were planted in essentially rows, each associated and suited to these kind of micro site conditions. That was the plan, on this steeply graded area that included:

• 32 - 3” Sprengel’s Sedge (Carex sprengelii) - for the Upland edge. It’s a woodland sedge that prefers mesic to dry-mesic soils. It is the natural upper edge of the planting that abuts the gravel trail

• 18 - 4” Woolgrass (Scirpus cyperinus) - for moist but occasionally flooded soil conditions. This one thrives in moist soils and tolerates periodic flooding but is happiest slightly upslope from permanent saturation. Its heigh also creates a nice visual transition.

• 18 - 4” Blue Flag Iris (Iris versicolor) - fot wet meadows. Likes consistently moist soil but performs best with its crown slightly above prolonged flooding. Provides showy flowers. This was was a no brainer given we’ve seen these irises pop up along the shoreline since our restoration work cleared are for it to return naturally.

• 18 - 4” Green Bullrush (Scirpus atrovirens) - for the saturated shoreline. This is an excellent transition species for wet soils just above standing water. It has a strong root system for stabilization.

• 36 - 4” Lake Sedge (Carex Iacustris) - for frequently submerged/water’s edge. This grows in shallow water and saturated soils. The root system grows into the shoreline serving as a great filter to help create a cleaner lake.

In the end, we had more plants that we could fit into the compact 6’ x 10’ project area, So, as we got into the water’s edge side we softened the edge and expanded it as appropriate

.Protecting the Project Area
A forturtuate aspect of this site is that by virtue of being a part of a peninsula, a virtual bay protects the shoreline from heavy waves that can disturb litoral edge plantings.

This shoreline also being a popular fishing spot, we selected a portion that is pretty hard to access. But just in case, we piled deadwood at its ends and waterfront edges to help delineate it. We also posted some temporary posts with strings and a Volunteers Working restoration sign to identify it. A more resilient fencing will be installed in the coming week. We need to protect it from people, wildlife, and pets. Incidentally, I was talking with an interested neighbor about the project before we began. Her dog started chewing on the unplanted grasses and we both realized, wow, this area is tasty and does need protection.

An always fun part of the project work are how many people running, walking, and biking along take a moment to thank us for the work. I had a nice conversation with a fisher, discussing how we need to block off areas for their access but it is in the interest creating cleaner lake and fishing conditions. He was very grateful, saying he's fished this are since he was 8 years old and now at 38, he treasures this area. At some time, we will want to have more conversations with those who fish the lake, gaining more of their support to clean up their lines, hooks and waste. While that topic is for another time, we hope that any and all of those who use this lake appreciate how we need to all protect it if we want to keep it for future generations.

For this project, protecting it will mean keeping it watered and monitoring its progress. Hopefully it might become a model that we can repeat around the whole peninsula and perhaps lake with modifications as needed by specific site conditions.

Days like these are also a reminder that our urban forests are doing an enormous amount of work for us. Healthy trees shade our parks, cool our neighborhoods, store carbon, support wildlife, and make our city more resilient to a warming climate. There is no denying that climate change is taking place, and while each of us looks for ways to help, one of the most effective tools we already have is all around us: healthy natural areas.

That raises a question I’ve been thinking about. If healthy woodlands are one of our best natural climate tools, shouldn’t restoring them be considered climate action?

Unlike many climate solutions that require people to change their daily habits, restoring healthy forests allows nature to do what it has evolved to do. Healthy woodlands cool the landscape, absorb carbon, protect biodiversity, improve water quality, and become more resilient over time. Rather than replacing other efforts, ecological restoration should be viewed as working alongside them.

Within the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, two departments have the ability to influence the health of our urban forests. The Natural Resources department directly restores ecological systems but has the funding to actively manage only about one-third of the park system’s roughly 1,200 acres of natural areas. Forestry, funded at roughly ten times that level, focuses primarily on maintaining the urban tree canopy by removing hazardous trees and planting new ones. Both play important roles, but together they also represent an opportunity.

I was pleased to see Forestry crews working on the Cedar Lake Point Beach peninsula yesterday, removing most of the eleven elm trees that had been marked for removal. I still need to confirm this with Forestry staff, but I assume these trees were removed because they had died and posed a safety risk to visitors. Protecting people from falling trees is, of course, an important responsibility.

But while watching their work, I couldn’t help noticing something else.

Most of those dead elms stood within a woodland that is becoming increasingly dominated by White Mulberry. Unlike the native cottonwoods, basswoods, hackberries, and other trees trying to regenerate in this space, White Mulberry spreads aggressively, shades out native seedlings, and gradually changes the character of the woodland. In many places it is becoming the next major ecological threat.

Seven years ago, Buckthorn was our greatest concern. Thanks to thousands of volunteer hours contributed by Park Stewards across Minneapolis, that threat is steadily being reduced. Here at Cedar Lake Point Beach, after seven years of persistent work, Buckthorn no longer defines the woodland the way it once did.

White Mulberry, however, presents a different challenge.

These trees have grown too large for volunteers to address under our stewardship agreements. Believe me, I’d happily tackle them with a hand saw if I were allowed. But appropriately, those decisions belong to trained professionals with the right equipment and expertise.

That brings me back to Forestry.

If Forestry has the skills, equipment, and capacity to remove invasive White Mulberry while creating the conditions that allow native trees to recover, perhaps this is an investment worth making. If additional resources are needed, perhaps restoring degraded woodlands deserves to be viewed not simply as park maintenance, but as climate resilience.

The potential is already there. These woodlands want to regenerate. Nature already knows how to heal itself when given the opportunity. Sometimes it simply needs our help removing the barriers we’ve created.

Healthy natural areas are more than beautiful places to walk. They are living infrastructure. They cool our city, support wildlife, strengthen biodiversity, and quietly help us meet the environmental challenges ahead.

If we truly believe healthy ecosystems are part of the solution to climate change, then helping them become healthy again may be one of the smartest investments we can make

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This morning’s dog walk had to be an early one. The oncoming heat wave means our 95-pound Ted needs to get his exercise before the sun begins to bake. It’s hard to complain about the weather here in Minneapolis when the news is filled with stories of extreme heat, earthquakes and other disasters around the world. I never take for granted the gentle breeze coming off Cedar Lake or the welcome shade of our remarkable tree canopy.

The Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board staff were out early too. That’s nothing unusual. Our Park Keepers are almost always out by 7 a.m., emptying trash cans and making their daily rounds. This morning, though, I happened to run into one of the Forestry Department arborists at Cedar Lake Point Beach. We’d met before, so it was a good opportunity to catch up while he was taking inventory and marking trees for removal.

He explained that elms are their primary focus right now and that eleven had been marked for removal. Looking at a freshly cut branch, he showed me the dark brown streaking inside the wood—evidence of Dutch elm disease. Once the disease reaches that stage, the tree is beyond saving.

I admitted that, until he pointed them out, I had barely noticed how far gone those trees really were. Their crowns were almost completely bare. Seeing them through his eyes reminded me that removing them wouldn’t diminish our precious canopy. They were no longer providing much of one.

Before leaving, I thanked him for his work. He smiled and thanked me in return, saying how much he appreciated the efforts of Park Stewards across the city. Then he said something that meant a great deal to me.

“I’ve been working this area for 21 years,” he said, “and I’ve never seen Cedar Lake Point Beach look better.”

Those few words made a lot of volunteer hours feel worthwhile.

I told him I hoped we might someday replace some of the lost trees with oaks. Earlier on my walk around the north side of Cedar Lake, I’d photographed what I thought was an unusual acorn. He laughed, looked at the photo, and explained that it was simply an acorn in its early stage of development.

He then pulled up the Forestry Department’s approved planting list for this site on his tablet. He explained that, in places like Cedar Lake Point Beach, Forestry works closely with the Natural Resources Department and respects the work of Park Stewards when planning future plantings. That was encouraging to hear.

Of course, I couldn’t resist making one more request. I asked whether Forestry might someday help remove some of the many invasive white mulberry trees that dominate parts of this area. Every mulberry removed creates another opportunity to plant a native tree.

He smiled and gently reminded me of Forestry’s priorities. Dead and hazardous trees have to come first.

I understand that completely.

In recent conversations surrounding the closure of portions of streets for additional greenspace, one phrase keeps surfacing: climate change.

The logic seems fairly straightforward. Reduce space for cars, encourage walking and biking, lower vehicle miles traveled, reduce emissions, and help the climate. And perhaps in some ways that works.

But the more I hear the conversation unfold around projects like Hennepin Avenue and Lyndale Avenue, the more I find myself asking a broader question: Are we measuring the right things?

A great deal of today’s urban climate thinking has been influenced by European transportation models focused heavily on reducing vehicle miles traveled, often referred to as VMT. Reduce lanes. Slow traffic. Remove parking. Encourage density and transit use. Eventually fewer people drive.

In theory, fewer vehicle miles traveled should mean lower emissions. But there is also a great deal of uncertainty buried inside those assumptions.

The Uncertainty Inside Transportation Assumptions

How much traffic actually disappears versus simply reroutes elsewhere? How much congestion and idling increase in adjacent corridors? How much additional circling, longer routing, or diversion onto neighborhood streets occurs? What are the long-term impacts on commercial corridors and access? How much mode shift realistically occurs in a city with Minneapolis’ climate, geography, and transportation patterns?

These are incredibly complicated systems.

And while transportation redesigns have become increasingly popular culturally and politically, popularity is not the same thing as long-term scientific proof of net climate effectiveness across entire urban systems.

That does not mean these projects are wrong. Many may improve safety, walkability, transit access, or quality of life. Some may indeed reduce emissions over time. But much of the climate argument still relies heavily on predictive modeling of future human behavior.

At the same time, we already possess decades of scientific understanding about the measurable environmental benefits of healthy ecological systems themselves. And at best, that conversation often feels secondary.

The Missing Climate Conversation

I sometimes wonder if we have become so focused on measuring transportation behavior that we have largely failed to consider the ecological performance of the natural systems already sitting right in front of us.

Let’s look at our park system’s natural areas. It contains roughly 665 acres of dry mesic forest, mesic forest, and altered woodland systems. These are the places where biodiversity can thrive and where climate change can be impacted. Unfortunately, according to ecological assessments, most of this land currently functions in degraded condition due to invasive species, fragmentation, poor regeneration, and long-term ecological stress.

A woodland can still look green while functioning far below its ecological potential.

Recently I also learned about something called Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), now being used in England as part of development policy. The basic idea is simple: development projects should leave biodiversity in a measurably better condition than before.

Whatever one thinks about the policy itself, the underlying premise is important: biodiversity and ecological function are increasingly being treated as measurable climate infrastructure.

That’s significant and confirms ecological restoration is not simply aesthetic landscaping. It is performance improvement for living systems.

Healthy Ecosystems as Climate Infrastructure

Research from the University of Minnesota shows that healthy woodlands continuously store carbon while also cooling urban temperatures, absorbing stormwater, stabilizing soils, filtering pollutants, and supporting biodiversity. The University of Minnesota Extension has estimated that Minnesota forests store roughly 75 tons of carbon per acre on average, while the Minnesota DNR has identified forests as one of the state’s few net carbon-offsetting systems.

These are not speculative behavioral models. These are measurable ecological functions.

And unlike many transportation interventions, healthy ecosystems continue performing whether or not human behavior changes perfectly. They cool cities. They absorb stormwater. They stabilize soils. They support biodiversity. They store carbon. And they improve resilience.

What Restoration Might Mean

To illustrate the possible scale, I ran some figures that may not pass academic rigor and peer review but were pulled together from different sources try to offer some context. Woodlands essentially offset carbon emissions equivalent to removing between 1,000 to 5,000 vehicles miles traveled per acre. Given the substandard condition of these woodlands, let’s assume they are performing at 50 percent or 500 vehicle miles traveled per acre annually. Minneapolis’ 665 acres of degraded woodlands would therefore equal about 332,500 VMT per year, or roughly 22 average vehicles.

Now imagine those same woodland systems restored toward healthier ecological function through invasive removal, native regeneration, soil recovery, and long-term stewardship. If their climate performance increased toward the top end of the range of 5,000 VMT per acre annually, the result would approach 3.3 million VMT annually, or roughly 222 vehicles.

These are not measured Minneapolis outcomes per se but application of assumptions to scientifically determined ranges. They are scenario estimates intended to illustrate scale.

But even as illustrative comparisons, they suggest something important: Improving ecological performance across existing natural areas could potentially increase climate benefit dramatically without requiring massive behavioral change from the public.

Healthy ecosystems are already functioning climate infrastructure. The question is whether we are investing seriously enough in their performance.

To be fair, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board does not directly control most street reconstruction projects. Those are primarily city and county transportation decisions. At the same time, Park Board leadership and several commissioners have increasingly supported transportation-related climate initiatives, including recent resolutions connected to “Open Parkways” and broader street redesign efforts intended to reduce automobile dependence and encourage alternative transportation modes.

That makes the larger question worth asking:

If local governments are increasingly aligning around climate-focused transportation policy, should there not also be a comparable level of urgency, visibility, and investment directed toward improving the ecological performance of the city’s own natural systems?

The Funding Imbalance

And this is where the imbalance becomes difficult to ignore.

The South Hennepin Avenue redesign is estimated in roughly the $32–36 million range. The proposed Lyndale Avenue redesign is likely to cost tens of millions more.

Meanwhile, the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board’s Natural Resources department — responsible for roughly 1,200 acres of woodlands, wetlands, prairie, and shoreline ecosystems — operates with funding only about $700,000 annually.

In other words, one major street redesign project may equal decades of ecological restoration funding. If healthy ecosystems truly function as climate infrastructure, what does that say about our current priorities?

A Question of Balance

This is not an argument against bicycles, transit, or walkability.

It is simply a question of balance.

If we are serious about climate resilience, perhaps we should spend less time arguing only about how to reduce driving and more time asking how to improve the ecological performance of the natural systems already embedded throughout our city.

And perhaps that is a conversation that should be shared more broadly among the many local governmental bodies now increasingly focused on climate change

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In the hours between ecological restoration fieldwork at Cedar Lake Point Beach, I've been drawn into the task of writing a story to be published in the June issue of the local Hill & Lake Press newspaper about a topic resurrected by the current MPRB commissioners. The topic is about a proposed redesign of a small MPRB-owned parcel in the Uptown retail district called The Mall.

As detailed in the story that I won't get into here, the lead justification for the $2 million park improvement project is that closing portions of streets owned by the Park Board would add green space to the district. And that any added parkland area is reason enough; that additional parkland is a step in favor of battling the climate crisis.

For context, this project adds just 0.2 acres of green space. That's smaller than most neighborhood "triangle parks" throughout Minneapolis.

Adding green space is a worthy objective when simply stated and justified, and in isolation sounds reasonable. But when things are considered too simply, they fail to acknowledge complexities of reality, context, and unintended consequences. And in this case, the neighbors surrounding these proposed closed streets are stating to the planners and commissioners as clearly as they can within the public process that The Mall green space is more complicated than a traditional neighborhood park. It's about traffic circulation, access, safety, and more. The question is yet to be answered whether park planning staff and commissioners are open to listening to and fully considering the implications of this project, or will feedback be limited to insignificant design buffs and shines of an immalleable finished product.

But as I've listened to both sides of this debate and trying to understand the nuances, I keep returning to questioning the supporters stated core purpose of this proposal.

If the park board truly wants to do what it can to cool the planet and create more habitable places by adding green space, might they also if not first consider working with the green space we as a public already possesses?

MPRB already owns about 1,200 acres of what is classified as Natural Areas. Just 400 of those acres are classified as Managed Natural Areas. That leaves 800 acres that are unmanaged or at best passively managed. Those 800 acres are lying in wait, for restoration, care, attention and the potential to be converted from ecologically unhealthy and humanly unusable space to what could become healthy green space for the very purposes justified by spending $2 million to add 0.2 acres at The Mall.

Fellow MPRB Park Stewards have been collaborating to get the idea that Natural Areas need more attention and sense of priority when it comes to MPRB budgeting and agenda priorities. The 1% for Natural Areas is far less amount than this redesign of The Mall project alone.

I can do a separate blog post about the details behind that initiative. But the point is, investing in MPRB owned properties that are in dire need of improvement is a highly effective and efficient approach to add to the inventory of healthy and usable parklands. We need more than symbolic gestures that add 0.2 acres of green space that disturb the functionality of our urban network. We need actions that seriously improve existing green space for nature, humans, and more significantly contribute to the battling climate change.

April in Minnesota might be one of the toughest months. It teases us. Last week we felt hints of warmth, just enough to make it feel like we were turning a corner. And then today it was back to 19 degrees. The landscape is still largely gray and brown, caught between seasons, not quite ready to let go of winter.

And yet, this is the time when the first signs begin to appear. Not the season itself, just hints of sight and sound.

This afternoon, walking through The Conservancy on the northeast side of Cedar Lake, I came across the first real color I have seen this year. A small patch of blue. It popped. It stopped me more than I expected, and I had to take a picture. And then I realized it was Siberian squill.

And then, almost immediately, another thought followed. This is not what we are trying to grow here.

Siberian squill is one of those early bloomers that shows up before most other plants have even emerged. It takes advantage of this brief window before the tree canopy fills in, when sunlight still reaches the forest floor. It is easy to see why it spreads. It feels like spring. But it is not native to these woodlands, and if left alone, it can crowd out the species that belong here, the ones that are part of a healthy woodland ecosystem. So I found myself reacting: The color, welcome. The plant, not so much.

I’m still learning how to read the woods, and I’ve been hearing more and more from friends about “ephemerals.” I found myself asking, is this one? As it turns out, the word ephemeral simply means short-lived, something that appears briefly and then disappears. In ecology, spring ephemerals are those early woodland plants that emerge before the canopy closes, bloom quickly, and then retreat underground for the rest of the year. They are easy to miss, but they are also some of the most telling plants in a woodland. Not because they last, but because of what they indicate.

The native ephemerals we hope to see here, trillium, bloodroot, Dutchman’s breeches, spring beauty, are not just beautiful. They are evidence. They tell us that light is reaching the ground in the right way, that soils are intact, that the relationships beneath the surface are functioning well enough to support them. In that sense, they are small, passing signs of a deeper health that we cannot otherwise see.

As I kept walking, it was hard not to sit with the fact that we do not yet have enough of that, at least not consistently. There are places where the system is still too closed off, too dominated by invasive growth, for those native ephemerals to return in any meaningful way. It made that first flash of color feel a little deceptive, at least if I had not paused long enough to ask what it really meant.

It would be easy to read the squill as reassurance. Spring is coming. Nature is doing its work. Everything will take care of itself. But that is not what I’m seeing in these woods.

What I see instead is potential. And the reminder that potential does not fulfill itself.

These woodlands do not return to health simply because the seasons turn. They recover because people show up and do the work. Because buckthorn is cut back. Because overgrowth is cleared. Because light is allowed to reach the forest floor again. Because soils are protected and space is made for native plants to return. Without that, the system does not reset. It continues on the path it is already on.

And so those early signs begin to take on a different meaning. They are not the outcome. They are not even the beginning. They are more like an opening, a brief glimpse of what could be there under the right conditions.

By the time I made my way out of The Conservancy, I found myself looking differently at everything around me. I was reminded and encouraged that the gray and brown are not empty. It felt like a place with something just beneath the surface. Not visible yet, but possible.

Maybe that is what April in Minnesota is really about. Not comfort, but a reminder. Renewal does not happen passively. It is within reach, but it requires action. What we are seeing now, these small, fleeting signs, are not the season itself, but signals of what might come if we are willing to do what is required to bring it forward. (Or we could continue to ignore it and allow the invasives to progress in destroying and eliminating our ecological systems.)

Even in the cold of today, I found myself thinking, hope springs eternal. But for now, it shows itself only in brief, ephemeral ways.

I have spent a lot of time over the past few years working at and around Cedar Lake Point Beach, cutting buckthorn and opening up areas that had been overgrown for years. In doing that work, I have run into a pattern that has been hard to ignore.

There are things that clearly need to be done in our natural areas and parklands. Cuttings need to be removed. Sand needs to be replaced on the beach where erosion and use have taken a toll. Benches and picnic tables need repair or replacement. Trees that are half fallen should be taken down before they become hazards. These are not large or complicated projects. They are the kinds of things that could be contracted out and completed without much difficulty. And yet, they often do not get done.

It is not because they are unknown, and it is not because people do not care. It is because there is no clear path to move them forward.

Over time, neighbors and park users have asked me a simple question: can we just donate the money and get this done? Sometimes it is a few thousand dollars, sometimes more, but enough to make a visible difference in a specific natural area. And my answer has usually been the same. I don’t really know.

That uncertainty has been sitting there for a long time. Even when there are funds available through groups like the Cedar Lake Park Association, there is often no straightforward way to implement projects like these. The concern behind that is understandable. We do not want a system where natural areas in neighborhoods with more resources are repaired and maintained while others fall further behind. But the result is a kind of standstill. We see the need, we have people willing to help, and sometimes we even have the money, yet the work does not happen.

At the same time, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board has been discussing priorities, and one of the top priority is the need to identify new revenue sources. Typically, that search looks outward to state funding, federal programs, or large philanthropic partners like the Minneapolis Park Foundation. Those sources matter, but they often come with constraints. Funding is tied to capital projects, infrastructure, or specific initiatives. Rarely, it seems, are funds available to supports the ongoing care, repair, and ecological management needs of natural areas.

So we end up with a disconnect. The needs are local, sometimes painfully visible, and immediate within specific natural areas, while the funding is distant, structured, and often directed elsewhere.

This raises a simple question. What if we made it easier for people to act on what they see in the natural areas they care about, and at the same time addressed the concern about equity across the system?

Call it Twin Giving. Or maybe something like a Twin Care Fund, or simply Care for Natural Areas. The name matters less than the idea behind it.

If someone raises or donates money to address a need in a specific natural area, that contribution could be split evenly. Half goes directly to the locally identified project, and half goes into a dedicated fund managed by the Park Board to support natural areas in underserved neighborhoods.

In other words, every act of local giving within a natural area carries with it an equal investment in the broader system of natural areas.

In a way, it works like a reflection. What begins in one place does not stay there. It carries outward, taking shape somewhere else. Not as an abstract idea, but as real work on the ground in another part of the system.

This is not about charity layered on top of a project. It is built into the structure from the beginning. You take care of your place, and at the same time you help take care of the whole.

What makes this approach seem compelling is that it has the potential to unlock specific action without ignoring inequity. People who are willing to step up no longer run into a dead end, and the system does not rely on uneven patterns of giving to determine which natural areas improve. Instead, fairness is embedded in the act of giving itself.

It also reflects something fundamental about how natural areas function. No landscape exists in isolation. Water moves, seeds disperse, wildlife travels, and ecological health is interconnected across the system. A funding model that recognizes that interconnectedness is stronger and more aligned with how these places actually work.

If the goal is to identify new revenue sources, this is one that starts close to home. It does not depend on large external funding streams or new taxes. It has the potential to build on something that already exists, which is people who care enough to notice and are willing to act. Whether we call it Twin Giving or something else, it turns that care into a structured source of support that benefits the entire system of natural areas, not just the places that already have momentum.

This kind of approach would require thoughtful design, including clear guidelines, transparency, and a fair method for identifying which natural areas in underserved areas are most in need. But those are solvable challenges.

What matters first is recognizing an opportunity. We already live in a system where people are willing to give. And I have no idea of how much this system might generate. The question is whether we can design a system that allows that generosity to work for all of our natural areas.

In the Twin Cities, is this an idea worth trying?