Minnesota Trout Unlimited

HELP US PROTECT, RESTORE AND SUSTAIN COLDWATER 

FISHERIES WITH YOUR SUPPORT! 

100% of Minnesota TU Board Members support the organization financially.  This year, these volunteer leaders have pooled their pledges into a MNTU Board Challenge Match to the community.  Your gift will be matched 100% until the $25,000 match is used.  Give today to ensure your gift is matched and your impact is doubled!  Thank you!

Support Our Mission

Minnesota Trout Unlimited works to conserve, protect and restore coldwater fisheries and their watersheds.  Clean water and healthy aquatic systems are essential for sustaining trout populations, and thus are a core focus of our conservation efforts.  

Minnesota Trout Unlimited (“MNTU”) coordinates the advocacy, habitat restoration, and educational efforts of our five local chapters around Minnesota.  These volunteer chapters are the "watchdogs" of local streams, rivers, and lakes, including Lake Superior.  MNTU helps chapters and members implement stream habitat restoration projects, monitor legislation, and effectively advocate for clean water and "fish friendly" policies with federal, state, and local officials.

Minnesota Trout Unlimited receives no financial support from our national organization and must raise all of our own operating funds.  We hope you will agree, we offer a tremendous return on investment for your conservation dollar.

If you are in a position to contribute more, we invite you to give special consideration of joining the Riverkeepers Council group of supporters. Please see more information at the tab above called "Riverkeepers."

Legacy Gifts:  Many supporters consider all that trout fishing has meant to the enjoyment of their lives and choose to make a legacy gift to Minnesota TU so that others can continue to benefit from our state's beautiful waters.  For additional information, including gift language for your will, please visit our website.  

Our Work

Our work includes extensive habitat restoration projects, policy advocacy, education, and outreach to youth and veterans.  MNTU focuses the attention of state, local and federal policy makers on the needs of trout, steelhead and salmon and the watersheds and groundwater springs which support them.

For six decades our members and chapters have completed habitat restoration and enhancement projects around Minnesota, from Arrowhead trout lakes and North Shore streams through central Minnesota streams to the fertile spring creeks in southeast Minnesota, which lie within the Driftless area.  Since 2010 we have improved trout and steelhead habitat in and along 100 miles of streams and reclaimed six inland trout lakes.

Minnesota Trout Unlimited, together with local Gitche Gumee, Headwaters, Hiawatha, Twin Cities, and Win-Cres Chapters, are leading the accelerated restoration of stream habitat across the Minnesota. During this summer's field season we completed FOUR stream habitat projects including our just completed project on Mill Creek in Chatfied; and FIVE fish passage projects. 

We have been at the forefront of efforts to protect and restore Lake Superior and North Shore watersheds.  We continue to strongly advocate for adequate regulation of ballast water discharges from Great Lakes vessels to prevent the introduction and spread of aquatic invasive species into Lake Superior and Minnesota waters.  We continue to champion coaster brook trout restoration efforts, wild steelhead rehabilitation and restoration of Lake Superior’s native lake trout fishery.

As importantly, we are providing strong advocacy and a unified voice for state policies essential to protect and sustain clean, cold aquifers and streams. Just last month we submitted a petition to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture demanding they regulate neonicotinoid treated seeds. 

We also sponsor a thriving education program for Minnesota students, called Trout In the Classroom.  Now in over 70+ classrooms across Minnesota, children learn the importance of freshwater, stream ecology by experiencing the trout lifecycle first-hand in aquariums in the classroom and then releasing them in the Spring.

For more information, please visit www.mntu.org.

Thank you for supporting Minnesota Trout Unlimited!!