In 1907, the state legislature passed a bill that designated Itasca State Park as a State Forest and assigned Park management to the state Forestry Board. The legislature also granted the Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota permission…
Hunting and fishing were important to the daily lives of Minnesota’s early residents as a source of food and income. For the most part, pioneers could hunt and fish all they wanted as very little regulation existed that addressed “taking”…
In February of 1916, Thomas Sadler Roberts, associate curator of the Zoological Museum, released the first of what he termed “Occasional Papers,” a series of bulletins issued from the “Zoological Division of the Geological and Natural History Survey.” The content…
An excerpt from My Life in Natural History, by Walter J. Breckenridge, former preparator (1926-1946) and director (1946-1970) of the Bell Museum of Natural History, illustrated by images from the Bell Museum records at the University Archives: “Back in the…
A few months ago we shared images of a baby moose from 1901 and highlighted the work being done by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to manage the rapidly decreasing moose population within the state. You can stay…
Within the past few days, I have seen multiple reports of the demise of the Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) – the official State Butterfly of Minnesota. Multiple local media sources have reported recently that extreme weather conditions in the south…