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Strategic Riparian Resource Management
in a Metropolitan Setting: The Minnesota Valley Experience 1
Tim Kelly 2
Abstract.--Riparian lands in metropolitan areas are
often under extreme pressure to accomodate conflicting uses.
Strategic management planning provides a method for
mediating conflicts, and developing realistic objectives.
This paper discusses the performance, pitfalls, and
potential of the strategic management effort for the
Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge and Recreation
Area.
allowance for unexpected developments and
thereby not allow managers of riparian lands to
act in the most opportune ways.
INTRODUCTION
Effective Management of Riparian lands
often suffers from the manner in which the
planning for those lands is done (Bailey,
1982). The perspective taken is that it is not
the plans that are bad, necessarily, but it is
the way plans are done that could stand
improving. The bias here is that doing
planning "right" is more important than making
a technically correct plan.
Planning Hierarchy
One approach useful in resolving this
problem is to distinguish three levels of
planning. The first level is product design
planning (planning for the type, extent,
complexity and apparentness of facilities or
modifications to the resource). The second
level involves operational planning (planning
for capital, labor, and application of
technical programs such as burning or visitor
information). The third level is strategic
planning (planning for the uncertainties and
contraints facing a management effort).
Planning techniques and analytical formats
for resource management decisions are available
in profusion - models, simulations, standards,
etc. They could stand further technical
refinements, surely, but line management
performance is often little affected by doing
so(King, 1972).
Product design and operation plans are
specialized, narrowly focused plans. They may
detail methods and goals that largely are given
with such constraints as site capability,
personnel availability, engineering
specifications and program prescriptions. As a
result these plans are often detailed and quite
complex. In strategic planning, the constants
for these two previous planning efforts become
variables which direct and potentially change
the way the agency pursues its basic missi.on;
however, operations and the products they
oversee, is the way the mission is pursued.
Techniques often have an unhappy way of
seeking an application. They can become
solutions looking for problems. The result is
often either a plan that collects dust on the
shelf or one that is overly rational, where all
possible actions are guided toward
predetermined goals. The paralysis of analysis
thereby creeps in.
A weakness of such an approach to planning
and management is that it may not make
Strategic Management Planning
1 Paper presented at the Riparian
Ecosystems and their Management Conference
[Tucson, Ariz., April 16-18,1985].
2 Senior Planner, Natural Resource
Planning, Minnesota Department of Natural
Resources, St. Paul, Mn. Many people have been
helpful in developing the ideas for this paper,
most notably, Julie Kelly, Glenn Radde, Brian
Stenquist, and Paul Swenson of the Minn. DNR;
Ed Crozier and Jim Lutey of the U.S. FWS; and
Arnie Stefferud of the Metropolitan Council.
It should not be assumed that the stategic
plan is the arithmetic sum or five yea.r
extrapolation of particular product and
operation plans. Strategic management planning
is a different planning process, with very
different purposes, constraints and givens and hence different inputs from those of
functional plans. Strategic management planning
involves identifying key issues which relate to
403
the capability of operational activities and
product areas to succeed, so that those
activities 'can be related to the physical,
social, and managerial environments in which
they exist (Steiner, 1979).
Second, that the proposed courses of action
responded to the interests and values involved,
and that tradeoffs were reasonably fair.
Third, that credible two-way communication
between the project and the various interests
was established in order to find ways to
mediate and negotiate problem issues.
There are four elements to a strategic
management situation which must be addressed
either explicitly or implicitly for strategic
planning to yield effective results (Steiner,
1979). These are the expectations of the major
interests outside of the organization, the
expectations of the major interests inside the
organization, the history, condition and trend
of the resource as it relates to management
performance, and the organizational strengths/
weaknesses, and the opportunities/threats in
its environment. If one of these elements is
missing, the management system created by the
plan will not operate effectively. The result
will be confusion and/or skepticism on the part
of management and the public.
Conservation efforts in the lower
Minnesota River Valley have a long history of
citizen involvement. Both the state trail and
the refuge/recreation area were initiated and
carried through the legislative process by
citizen organizations. A number of private
interests such as private hunt clubs stable-s
and nature centers have been involved in
promoting and taking advantage hf the
recreational and wildland potential of the
area. Most of the economic activity involves
sand and gravel extraction, barge
transportation of grain, and development.
In total over 225 meetings and workshops
were held with individuals, groups and the
public. Support for the project focused on the
desire for public access and use, preservation
of wildlife habitat, and the continuation of
traditional uses such as hunting and trapping.
Expectations and attitudes resistent to the
refuge and recreation area concept were the
potential loss of family farms, the lock up of
exploitable sand and gravel resources, and
potential restrictions on residential and
commercial development.
This paper reviews and analyzes the
strategic management planning effort for the
Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge and
Recreation Area in light of these four
elements. It should be pointed out, however,
that in reality the planning process was
iterative, involving continual back and forth
analysis.
PROJECT SETTING
The Minnesota Valley National Wildlife
Refuge and Recreation Area was establj_shed in
1976 to recognize the values of wildlife
habitat preservation, environmental education
and close-to-home recreation (P.L. 94-466).
The area involves 19,110 acres along the lower
36 miles of the Minnesota River.
Agency Perspectives
An essential step to developing effective
strategy is also determining the interests of
key managers and administrators within the
management framework. Many of these values can
not be evaluated quantitatively or logically
but do influence basic long range aims and
objectives of an agency or program. One of the
most important elements in the planning process
of the valley was coordination of the counties
and municipalities. Local government exerts
the most direct influence over the land uses of
the valley. Without their assistance, the
incremental effect of land use development
decisions could make management of project
lands for wildlife or recreation impossible.
In addition the amount of coordination and
cooperation required within and between
agencies required contact with key people
within the two lead agencies. In the final
analysis support for the project took the form
of agreement that something should be done to
protect the natural character of the valley.
Opposing this was resistance to a project that
was very different from traditional wildlife
refuges and state parks in its shape and
required administration.
The Flood Plain of the Minnesota contains
an almost continuous belt of type III an IV
wetlands and shallow lakes, as well as wet
prairie and floodplain forest. MorP than two
million people in the Minneapolis-St. Paul
Metropolitan area live within a half-hour of
the refuge and recreation area. The sixteen
management units involve 38 government units
including four counties and nine
municipalities. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service and the Minnesota Department of Natural
Resources were the lead agencies charged with
developing a plan to guide future land use and
management of the valley.
A FOUR STEP STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AUDIT
Public Expectations
A first step in the planning process
involved assessing public perceptions and
attitudes toward the refuge and recreation
area. This effort focused on three objectives.
First, that the two lead agencies planning the
refuge and recreation area were acting within
their proper powers and responsibilities.
Management Performance and Trends
The third element in developing effective
strategy is an assessment about past
performance, the current situation and trends
affecting management. The abundance of
404
considerable support from citizen groups on the
river.
wildlife in the valley has been noted as far
back as the 1830's. Inventories and surveys
have recorded approximately 50 species of
mammals and 100 species of birds resident to
the valley. Approximately 275 species have
been counted during migration, twenty-two of
them waterfowl. Aerial surveys have counted up
to 40,000 waterfowl during fall migration and
twenty-six whitetail deer per square mile.
The planning process surfaced four threats
which could adversely affect the refuge/
recreation area. They were declining water
quality from the springs and seeps which feed
the lakes and fens of the area. Exclusion of
federal and state lands from regional land use
policy, resulting in an inability to enforce
detrimental changes in local planning and
zoning. The nonconforming nature of the
state's lands in the valley with existing state
recreation land classification which could
potentially lead to an inability to fund itate
projects, and finally, the complex and
nontraditional character of t~e project which
often lead to a resistence to change from
traditional administrative policies.
The recreational significance of the
valley dates back to the early 1900's and the
establishment of some of the gun clubs in the
valley. The 1960's saw the establishment of
3,200 acre Fort Snelling State Park, the 72
mile 9,000 acre Minnesota Valley Trail and the
designation of the river as a state canoe and
boating route. Considerable acquisition took
place in the valley during this time for state
facilities, as well as local and regional parks
and open space. Combined with protective
regulatory programs such as shoreland zoning,
the state protected waters program, and the
federal 404 program, approximately sixty
percent of the refuge and recreation area
involved at least some public interest. The
recreational opportunities of the valley occur
in what could be called natural urban and rural
settings. An extremely high number of scenic,
natural, and historic attributes combined with
extensive areas of natural vegetation and
screening from the river bluffs provide both
real and perceived opportunities for feelings
of remoteness.
The planning process was able to draw on
four stengths to deal with these situations.
First the planning process was able to tap and
utilize the vision, intuition and networking
abilities of the state and federal managers.
Their ability to soften the internal resistence
to the complexities of the project and gain
needed contacts with and perspectives on the
local political environment, and land use
situation was essential. Second, the
involvement of federal, state and local
governments .in the planning process provided a
more complete picture of the potential
techniques and programs which could be used to
complete the project, such as the metropolitan
surface water management program, and the state ·
critical area program. Third, the strong
citizen support provided a resource that if
organized could support the project through
political initiative. Fourth, local, state and
federal managers were, for the most part, able
to consider and adopt techniques such as
performance zoning and transfer of development
rights, to provide opportunities for both the
conservation of riparian lands and economic
development.
The trends for both wildlife and
recreation were characterized by an increasing
need for opportunity combined with an.
increasing pressure to utilize lands for
commercial purposes. This general trend is
expected to continue.
Strategic Capability
An assessment of the strategic management
situation of the valley involved identifying
favorable and unfavorable situations affecting
the project and the capability of the
management organization to deal with them.
Countering these capabilities were two
serious weaknesses. First, the lack of federal
funding to complete acquisition of the refuge
and second, the absence of a formal policy on
the state and regional levels that recognizes
the significance of the refuge/recreation area
so that coordination is required between local,
state and federal activities.
The planning process surfaced five
opportunities to establish, and enhance the
management of the refuge/recreation area.
First, was the planning process. By creating a
planning team with federal, state and local
involvement, the potential for cooperation, and
coordination, was maximized. Second, the local
units of government involved in the project
were in the process of completing comprehensive
plans of their own on \oThich future zoning and
development decisions would be made. Third,
the boundaries of the refuge/recreation area
had excluded the major commercial and
industrial areas of the valley, which
highlighted the opportunity and the need to
cluster those uses. Fourth, the valley is
dominated by the Minnesota river. The natural
floodplain and wetlands that occur there
provide a necessary buffer and storage basin
for flooding. Fifth, the project enjoyed
ENVIRONMENT AND STRATEGY
Strategic management involves relating the
management organization to its external forces.
Broadly speaking, external forces create the
environment within which missions will be
pursued, change will occur, and choice must be
made. The external forces may then be viewed
in terms of the physical, social and managerial
settings. From a strategic perspective, the
crux of an environmental analysis is to
determine what external opportunities and
constraints face management goals. Strategy
405
formulation addresses a set of dimensions which
attempt to coordinate and form a logical fjt
between those goals and the external forces.
The essence of successful strategy is to find
the right opportunity and utilize the strengths
available to the organization to pursue it
(Steiner, 1979) .
CONCLUSION
The underlying premise of this paper is
that strategic planning is a management tool
which should be undertaken either implicitly or
explicitly by agencies and individuals involved
in riparian resource management. Too
frequently, with the daily need for problem
solving, managers are compelled to focus soley
on the operational level. The need is to keep
the crises of yesterday and today in
perspective so that the opportunities of
tomorrow can be recognized. If managers are
not constantly looking for new opportunities
and favorable situations affecting their '
mission, there can be no progress toward
"reconciling conflicting uses"·, or positively
managing riparian lands. Therefore, a
regular strategic planning session could keep
the forward momentum going.
The basic strategy in place in the
MinnesotR Valley is a joint venture between
federal, state and local governments. The
coordination and cooperation achieved during
the planning process provide for flexibility
and innovation in pursuing goals, permits
informality and initiative on the part of the
agencies involved, and allows for rapid
response to problems and changes in priorities.
The method advocated in the plan for linking
the different agencies is a tier system of
plans and zoning ordinances at the municipal,
county and regional levels. These local plans
are to be consistent with the basic goals and
standards for performance detailed in the plan
for the valley. To date, all of the local
units of government have recognized the refuge
and recreation area in their comprehensive
plans and approximately half have adopted some
type of protective zoning in the form of
shoreland or sensitive land zoning.
The strategy in effect on the Minnesota
Valley National Wildlife Refuge and Recreation
Area is currently being reviewed as part of the
Metroplitan River Corridors Study. The study's
purpose is to recommend policies and actions to
optimize the recreational, fish and wildlife,
historic, natural, scientific, scenic and
cultural values of the Mississippi, Minnesota,
and St. Croix rivers within the Minneapolis and
St. Paul metropolitan area (P.L.96-607).
Research for the study implies that the current
strategy for the Minnesota Valley does not
offer long term insurance for protecting the
resources of the valley. While the study will
not be complete until June, 1985, the data and
capability does exist to address the four
strategic elements discussed earlier and
effectively mediate the institutional and
policy differences that exist in the management
environment of the valley. This is essential if
the project is to have a future.
This arrangement does have it's strategic
pitfalls, however. The success of the
management system is critically dependent on
the leadership of a few key managers. Line
staff must be flexible and willing to assume
different responsibilities and address
different sorts of problems than those found on
traditional refuges and recreation resources.
Authority relationships are constantly
changing, leading to problems of dual command
and functional coordination, and finally, the
flexibility and informality provided by a joint
venture can lead to too much independence by
the involved agencies and a breakdown in
interagency coordination.
Strategic planning, however, is not
deciding what to do in the future, it is
deciding what to do now in order to deal with
the future. In view of this, planning can not
be the responsibility of some unit tucked away
in a dark corner at headquarters. Too often
planning is assigned to an individual 't<Jho is
"in charge of planning", what ever that means.
Unfortunately the designee is usually a staff
member who "coordinates" or "leads" the
planning effort. Planning is a process, not an
effort. It can not be effective if done by
staff invulnerable to the risk of failure. The
onus to plan lies with each unit manager, the
line person responsible for driving an activity
forward. The planning function is only
responsible for giving form and shape to
managements objectives.
The strategic management effort of the
Minnesota Valley has encountered all of these
pitfalls a~d has coped with them through
vigilance, a commitment to transforming the
social and cultural setting of land management.
The primary tools have been "jawboning",
networking and an underlying philosophy which
focuses on the production of opportunities and
the performance of natural systems and
settings. The management guidelines have been
in the form of performance standards. By
establishing thresholds and parameters for
natural and recreation systems, the opportunity
exists to develop policies that are empirically
based, and defendable in terms of the health,
safety and welfare of the public. The result
places managers on the offensive and able to
respond to changes in the strategic
environment. Examples in use in the Minnesota
Valley are the recreation opportunity spectrum
and performance zoning for sensitive lands such
as wetlands and floodplains (Brown, Driver and
McConnell,l978, Thurow, Toner and Erly,1975).
This is not to say that there isn't a need
for planners in an organization. The task of
giving expression to managements opportunities,
and how they are going to be tackled is not a
static process. It is an essential element in
the iterative process which brings out the
inconsistencies of thinking, and pulls together
the different perspectives and contributions of
406
Ginn, Richard H.and James H. Burbank 1978.
Protecting Riparian Ecosystems from
Competing Urban Pressures-The Swan Creek
Experience. p.207-215. In Strategies for
Protection and Management of Floodplain
Wetlands and Other Riparian Ecosystems:
Proceedings of the National Symposium.
[Pine Mountian, Georgia, Dec. 11-13,1978].
King, David A. 1972. Towards More Effecti.ve
Natural Resource Planning. p.260-267. In
Transactions of the Thirty-seventh North
American Wildlife and Natural Resource
Conference. [March 12-15,1972] Wildlife
Management Institute, Washington D.C.
Steiner, George A. 1979. Strategic Planning:
What Every Manager Must Know. 338p.
Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., New York,
N.Y.
Thurow, Charles, William Toner and Duncan Erly
1975. Performance Controls for Sensitive
Lands. The Planning Advisory Service,
156p. American Society of Planning
Officials. Chica2o. T11
U.S. Laws, Statutes, etc. 1976. The Minnesota
Valley National Wildlife Refuge Act of
1976. An act providing for a national
wildlife refuge in the Minnesota river
valley. Public Law 94-466. In it's United
States stautes at large. 1976. 90 Stat.
1992 (16 USC 668) U.S. Gov. Print. Off.,
Washington D.C.
U.S. Laws, Statutes, etc. 1980. National Park
System Amendments of 1980. An act
providing for a committee to study the the
preservation, enhancement, protection, and
use of the designated recreation, park,
open space and historic sites along the
Mississippi, Minnesota and St.Croix rivers
within the Twin Cities metropolitan area.
Title IX, Public Law 96-607. In it's
United States statutes at large. 1980.
96 Stat. 1520 U.S. Gov. Print. Off.,
Washington D.C.
the disciplines reporting to the unit manager.
This is needed so that a coherent view of the
mission and the path being followed is shared
by the management team.
I started this paper with the statement
that th~ way plans are done could stand
improvement. I conclude by highlighting the
need for management to understand the different
levels of planning, their relationship and
their place of order. Finally, managers should
decide to plan strategically, because the plan
is the decision which directs the way a mission
will be pursued and provides a reference point
to judge what's happening in the total
managerial environment. If you don't have a
reference point you can't make evaluations and
judgements on progress or a change in the
course of management. On the other hand, if
you don't care where you are going, any road
will get you there.
LITERATURE CITED
Bailey, James A. 1982. Implications of
"Muddling Through" for Wildlife
Management. Wildlife Society Bulletin
10(4):363-369.
Brown, P.J., B.L. Driver and C. McConnell 1978.
The Opportunity Spectrum Concept and
Behavioral Information in Outdoor
Recreation Resource Supply Inventories:
Background and Application. p.73-84. In
Integrated Inventories of Renewable -Natural Resources: Proceedings of the
Workshop. [Tucson, Ariz., Jan.8-12,1978]
USDA Forest Service General Technical
Report RM-55, 482p. Rocky Mountian Forest
and Range Experiment Station, Ft. Collins,
Colo.
407