Farmers and area fishermen have joined forces doing some work at Seven–Mile Creek.
Their goal is to continue to protect fish and improve the farmland that had threatened the water the fish call home.
Fox Mankato's Brittany Larson explains their plans for the project.
Here at Seven Mile Creek people come here for many different reasons.
"I've come to this park for rasped, I've come here to play, I've had my kids birthday parties here. I love coming here I love the water. I've dedicated my career not to work in marketing that place that we love."
And it's places like these that Fishers and Farmers Partnership wants to protect while working with landowners throughout the upper Mississippi Basin to add value to farms and restore the fish habitat.
Today DNR representatives, along side with Fishers and Farmers Partnership discussed what work needed to be done at Seven–Mile Creek.
Jack Lauer says, "What we are going to look at is what measures can we do with landowners, that the landowners are willing to have some buffers, have some great stabilization projects, some water sediment control basins, things that hold the water back for a period of time, so we're not losing more soil, more sediment allowing more nutrients to get into the water."
Fishers and Farmers is a group for leaders coming together both from agriculture and conservation to find a better way to protect both the farms and the fish habitat.
Nancy North says, "We want to do it well. We want to do it right. But it's hard and it takes cooperation and it takes science and it takes knowledge and the right tools and this partnership helps to bring that together."
But it's an ongoing project that doesn't have a clear ending in sight.
Nancy North says, "We know this work will take decades. This partnership might still be working in 100 years because there's that much work to do. And so now we need to figure out how to create some balance."
Making those in agriculture and conservation work together, creating a better habitat at Seven–Mile Creek and for more than 200 fish species downstream.
