Prairie Sportsman

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Woman

I've had the Chickadee and I now have the Moose. So they're all fun to have. I think people really resonate with the plate and the image and how good it looks on their car. -

Man

I love the Moose. I love the angling one, people fishing. They all have their special places in my heart. -

Woman

I think the loon is probably my favorite. Although I'm about to put the pollinator on my car. (upbeat music) Critical Habitat Plate Program was started in 1995. It came out of a group that Governor Perpich pulled together of State Conservationists coming up with ideas on how to protect and reinvest in Minnesota's natural landscape. Easement program came out of that. And another important project program was the creation of the Critical Habitat License Plates, which was enacted by the legislature in 1997. We pay $30 or more on top of your annual car registration fees. And those dollars are matched with other private donations to protect some States, forests, wetlands, prairies, and also provide funding for our state's non-game program. The plate will stay with your car, and you can transfer it from car to car. So if you like your designer, we have eight designs now that you can change up if you'd like to. The first two plates were not artwork, the first plate was the green deer. It was sort of a silhouette at that time. They were still raised lettering on them. And so we had very limited options as far as the artwork is concerned. The Loon License Plate was the second plate, and it far surpassed sales of the first plate. Second one was a photograph, but the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Corrections were able to work together with, and they have a new machine that prints out the license plates. And so this new machine is, you know state-of-the-art, and it can print out the flat plates in a way that public safety officers can read them from a distance. (upbeat music) The species or whatever that is gonna be on the plate is chosen by the commissioners of the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Public Safety. Then we hold a contest, and it's a statewide public contest and there are fabulous artists out there. The artists are always different because usually the species it's different enough that there's different interests by different artists, right? So the pollinator played for instance, there are people who are specialists in painting pollinators or have a big interest in pollinators. The most plate was imaged by Les Kouba. And so we did not held a contest for that, it was chosen internally. The first original green dear plate did retire. And that happens when the Department of Public Safety decides that they're not selling enough of those plates anymore, so they did sunset that design. Right now, we're, we're celebrating this year over a hundred million dollars that we've generated from the plates that have purchased over 16,000 acres of land to be protected for conservation and critical habitat purposes statewide. It's not agriculturally productive, but it does provide critical habitat for invertebrates wetlands, songbirds, butterflies, pollinators, so what may be marginal and to some people is really productive critical habitat for us. The plate money has to be matched currently one-to-one, we're hoping to up that two to one with private donations. Currently, people think that we're holding on to funding or building a balance, the problem is that the plates are so successful, we're getting more money in than we can spend with the private donation. So we're building a balance. People don't want to see that neither do we. We really wanna get these dollars on the ground for active conservation. We also get some of that funding in the Nongame Wildlife Program. So all of those things that don't get gaming fish fund money and other funding sources, those things still need help. And we still need to do research and help save those species that are in greatest conservation need and species that might be in trouble to help bring them back from, you know in some cases the brink of extinction. (upbeat music) It was our program that released several trumpeter swans that were raised from eggs that were brought back here from Alaska and our goal back in the 1980s at that time, the Nongame Wildlife Program decided that they thought it would be good to have about 350 trumpeter swans in Minnesota. Our last Waterfalls Survey determined that there were over 30,000 trumpeter swans in Minnesota today. I still get really excited phone calls from people who say that they just saw a bald Eagle or they just saw loon, or they saw a trumpeter Swan. And it's what it's means to be a Minnesotan. You can pick up one of these license plates anytime you want to. You don't have to wait for your tabs to expire. You don't have to wait for anything special. You can walk into a registrar's office today and say I want Loon Plate, or I want a Chickadee plate on my car. Clearly, some of our neighboring states who have similar programs North Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, for example have a conservation type plate. However, none of them have the designs that we offer or a such a successful program. -

Narrator

Get the plate that matches your car, they're beautiful. (upbeat music)