Help Monitor Minnesota’s Loons This Summer On Local Lakes

The Loon... our Minnesota State Bird... is truly a beautiful bird.

Are you a fanatic about Loons? If you're truly loony tunes about loons, the Minnesota DNR could use your help.

THE MINNESOTA LOON MONITORING PROGRAM

The Minnesota Loon Monitoring Program needs volunteers to collect information about loon numbers on over 600 Minnesota Lakes. If you like getting up in the morning and can count, you can be part of this program, as long as there is a lake available in your area.

What's so important about collecting this data?

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The MLMP is a long-term program that collects this information because loons need really clean water in order to catch food, so by monitoring loon numbers, it can give us an indication if a lake has good water quality, and it helps us help them in case things start changing.

THE IMPORTANT DATA

Selected volunteers visit lakes on their list one morning over 10 days in the summer. Their job is to get two numbers. First, count the number of adult loons they see on the lake, and then count the number of juvenile loons, as accurately as you can.

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The volunteer observations are then shared with the Minnesota DNR. Through the years, hundreds of volunteers have provided this important data, and to this point, the Minnesota DNR has over 20 years of collected data on more than 600 Minnesota lakes, about our loon populations!

The valuable information helps the DNR keep up with changes in population, which gives them indications of possible problems that could hurt our loon numbers before it happens.

HOW TO BECOME A VOLUNTEER

First, you want to see if there are any lakes available in your area or where you would be willing to travel to. You can check the area map for available lakes by clicking HERE.

Lakes that are in GREEN are available. When I viewed the map, some lakes that were still available between St Cloud and Willmar included the following:

• Bear
• Cahoun
• Downs
• Ringo Lake
• George
• Woodcock
• Swenson.

The lakes around Brainerd are all completely covered already.

If you're a nature lover, and you'd like to learn more about this program, or any of the other volunteer opportunities through the Minnesota DNR, you can click HERE.