Featured in the Sahan Journal and MPR: Increased rainfall in northern Minnesota is threatening the survival of manoomin [Ojibwe for "wild rice"]. Low water levels are critical for it to thrive, but more rain and flooding due to climate change is making wild rice harvests less reliable, writes reporter Andrew Hazzard.
Other factors, including dams built to aid the logging industry, have compounded the issue by keeping water levels too high in lakes for wild rice to grow.
Hazzard spoke with Department of Forest Resources Assistant Professor Mike Dockry about how water management systems have harmed wild rice ecosystems:
"Historically, Native people in the Great Lakes region could expect bountiful wild rice, according to Mike Dockry, an assistant professor with the University of Minnesota and a member of the First We Must Consider Manoomin Research Group.
“'It was growing on many, many more lakes than it is now, and tribes were free to move,' Dockry said.
"Any one lake might have a bad harvest, but people could find another that was booming, he said. Settler-driven land use and large scale water system management geared toward agriculture has contributed to fewer bodies of water with wild rice."
Read "Survival of wild rice threatened by climate change, increased rainfall in northern Minnesota" in the Sahan Journal. The article is cross-published on MPR News.