Vanishing natural shorelines hurt lake quality

Image of the front cover of the report

In June 2022, Paul Radomski from the MN DNR presented the ideas from this newly released paper at our MN COLA Annual meeting. This was one of the sessions in our Lake Resiliency series.

Now the Vanishing Natural Shorelines paper has been published and you can read the whole story of how the loss of natural shorelines contributes to the degrading of lake quality. Tom Nelson, MN COLA Secretary and Itasca County SWCD Board member, was a key contributor from MN COLA. We encourage you to read and disseminate this document.

As Steve Kloiber from the MN DNR has written: “The Minnesota Natural Shoreline Partnership was formed around the idea that regulatory approaches to shoreland protection have not been sufficient to stop the loss of natural shoreland. This group has chosen to focus on the idea that there is a need to change social norms around how people think of their shoreline.”

We should individually and collectively do everything we can to stop the loss of natural shorelines and reclaim lost shorelines. Let’s change the social norm so natural shorelines are preferred.