Many communities in Minnesota exist because of rivers. Rivers provide a link between people and communities up and down the river.
Thriving communities depend on and are sustained by healthy rivers in many ways.
To varying degrees, the rivers of Minnesota are at risk. Although we value rivers for all the diverse uses they sustain, we use rivers in ways that have diminished them. Most river uses are regulated, which suggests that rivers themselves are protected. All of our uses of rivers, their shorelands, and their watersheds have effects that may alter the uses that they sustain. For example, whenever the natural vegetation or land form near a river is changed, the river and its ecosystem changes.