Highways for Habitat

What is it?

A statewide program to significantly increase critical roadside habitat for pollinators, birds and wildlife on state, roadsides. Native wildflowers will beautify and add to visual appeal. And there are many other important benefits to this program:

• Helps at-risk monarch butterfly, bumble bee and migratory bird species recover

• Reduce costs for mowing and herbicide treatments

• Filters and protects water, manages stormwater runoff

• Reduces soil erosion and rejuvenates soil health

• Blocks agricultural pesticide drift and improves air quality

• Moderates climates and absorbs carbon

• Provides living wind and snow breaks

• Contributes to highway safety

• Provides wildlife travel and migration corridors

• Improves and preserves Minnesota for future generations

Highways for Habitat Background

Minnesotans care about the environment, want cleaner water and more ecologically responsible practices on public lands. Pollinator, bird and animal species are disappearing at alarming rates. World Wildlife Fund reports wildlife and insect populations have plummeted by more than two-thirds in the last 50 years. The Wildlife Society reported that one in four bird species are gone in less than a lifetime. Factors contributing to species decline include loss of habitat, fragmentation of habitat, pesticide pollution and climate change. Roadsides have been identified by many scientists and wildlife organizations as potential for critical wildlife habitat and migration corridors.

Native plants have extensive root systems that absorb storm water runoff chemicals that would otherwise enter waterways and help prevent erosion – both important issues especially along rural roadways. Native grasses and flowering plants provide habitat, decrease water and pesticide drift pollutants, provide soil stabilization and erosion control, provide natural snow and wind breaks, increase wildlife corridors/connectivity, carbon sequestration, and increase driver safety and driver experience.

Scientists have been alerting us for decades about climate crisis and species decline. Monarch populations dropped 99% in the west since the 1980s. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service finds that “Ground Nester Birds nesting in highway rights-of-way are vulnerable to direct mortality due to mowing practices. Most states mow rights-of-way to maintain sight distances and for esthetic reasons. Mowing for esthetic purposes instead of vegetation control may be possible to forego.” Songbird decline is driven by loss of insect populations, pesticide use and habitat loss. Roadside herbicide spraying is costly and destroys both target and non-target plant species.

This is a historical time when climate crisis and species extinctions are upon us, and we need to take immediate actions locally and nationally.  The actions we take now will be looked upon in history as part of the solution or part of the problem.