The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board’s draft plan for Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles was released for public comment on January 25, 2023. It includes this vision, established by consensus among members of the Community Advisory Committee:
“Lake of the Isles and Cedar Lake, as part of the Minneapolis Chain of Lakes Regional Park, contribute to a vital, urban natural ecosystem with unique experiences that protect, connect, and sustain people, wildlife, and natural resources, while maintaining the health of the lakes.”
But despite exhaustive community engagement and exorbitant cost, the draft fails to provide the clarity and leadership that our park system needs to achieve this vision during an unprecedented era of climate change, declining biodiversity and growing demands from more people.
The outcome seems to be more about a scripted planning process than a workable planning document. The draft plan is primarily a recitation of a lengthy process that generated a wish list of ideas and individual site plans not tied together as a whole.
Lack of Environmental Urgency
The plan lacks any sense of urgency to protect natural areas too long neglected. With few exceptions the woodlands, shorelines and waters have become consumed by invasive species literally poisoning and choking the life out of the ecosystem. The plan fails to confront the deteriorating condition of these parks and does little to elaborate on its promise of a “unique restoration approach and recommendations.” Instead, while excluding essential details for meaningful land rehabilitation and restoration in Cedar Lake Park, the plan is exhaustive in designing new streetscapes, biking and walking paths, and amenities.
The 2014 Natural Areas Plan assigned the natural resources around these lakes ecological quality ratings of C to D. Those rankings are likely worse now, as invasive species have further tightened their grip on these areas. But the plan marginalizes and rationalizes these poor rankings, describing Cedar Lake Park, for example, as “the wilder, more natural park setting.” “Wilder” suggests these areas are untouched by humans, which is far from the truth, as the land is more accurately described as unmanaged and neglected, with problems ignored.
Nature Is an Afterthought
As part of a regional park, these lakes and surrounding parkland are intended to provide nature-based recreation, which depends on a healthy and sustainable ecosystem. The plan fails to establish a hierarchy that affirms nature as the foundation upon which all else rests, including circulation, amenities and programs. Without a framework that places nature first, the vision is undermined. Projects become incremental, driven by which projects get funded the most or soonest, and by power and political will with winners and losers. The “wildness” approach leaves nature behind to continue toward ecosystem collapse.
The Community Put Nature First, Why Didn’t the Park Board?
Not for lack of voices from engaged community members and other park users does the plan fail to address urgent environmental imperatives. Nor does this failure reflect ignorance about the threats of climate change and declining biodiversity; both threats are acknowledged in the Park Board’s Comprehensive Plan and Ecological Systems Plans. If those other high-level plans shape plans for these individual parks, the evidence is missing.
The draft plan also does not align with the Park Board's Natural Areas Plan, which directs the Park Board to “bring an ecosystem perspective into all land and water management” and to produce detailed Natural Resources Management Plans that refine natural resources data as the basis of detailed, site-specific recommendations and prioritization of restoration projects. According to the Natural Areas Plan, “defining management units in larger parks should be done after more detailed site-specific Natural Resource Management Plans are completed.”
House of Cards
Clearly, the Cedar-Isles plan needs to prioritize ecological health as necessary and foundational. The plan cannot effectively guide long term improvements to these parks without recognizing the failing health of these ecosystems and must directly contend with the ecological crises that threaten the sustainability of the lakes and surrounding park-land.
A natural resource management plan is needed for the project area before recommendations are adopted or implemented, which would necessarily engage ecologists more fully in the planning process. This approach must be elevated as the highest priority and used to prioritize other recommendations in the Cedar-Isles plan, if we are to protect these vital ecosystems to ensure the preservation of natural resources for current and future generations.
Failure to correct these short-comings is like building a house of cards on a failing foundation of natural resources on parkland.
