The license plates are wrong: Minnesota boasts 15,000 lakes, not 10,000. And water defines the state as much as any other single element. Its lakes, with countless forested islands, are a magnet for recreation and wildlife, including more than 2,500 timber wolves. If Minnesota is canoe country, it's also powerboat, snowmobile and all-terrain vehicle country. The tensions between human-powered and motorized recreation delineate most of its conservation controversies.

Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness
For all its spectacular beauty, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness has never fully achieved across its area the most fundamental of wilderness protections: freedom from motors.
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Voyageurs National Park
Unlike the Boundary Waters, Voyageurs is full of motors. The major challenge is to achieve sensible management of motorized recreation here. And the National Park Service has found two-thirds of the Park suitable for Wilderness designation.
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Minnesota's State Forest System
Beyond its federal public lands, Minnesota boasts a state forest system of nearly 4 million acres. That's the good news. The bad news is that over 95 percent of those lands are open to off-road vehicles -- dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles.
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Minnesota's Conservation Legacy & Today's Practitioners
Conservation is a deep and bipartisan sentiment in Minnesotans. From Sigurd Olson to former Gov. Elmer Anderson, many Minnesotans have left a lasting conservation legacy on the state and the rest of the nation. Today, several state-based groups continue that work.
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