Moorhead professor to be featured in Minnesota documentary
A 160-acre prairie restoration, funded by a Minn. trust fund, is the focus of a Science Museum of Minnesota documentary.
Bioscience professor Allison Wallace will be featured in a documentary created by the Science Museum of Minnesota. This documentary will focus on the prairie restoration at the Minnesota State Moorhead Regional Science Center (RSC), and is expected to be released in Spring 2026.
The Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR), a unique board of legislators and citizens, funded the restoration project through the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund. This fund is backed by Minnesota State Lottery proceeds and investments. It is geared towards funding activities that protect, conserve, and preserve Minnesota’s nature.
“The LCCMR has funded a lot of great projects over the years, but most of this has remained unknown to the majority of Minnesota’s citizens,” says SMM Senior Scientist Joy Hobbs.
Hobbs is an integral part of the Science Museum of Minnesota’s creation of a story map for the projects the LCCMR has funded. As a part of this, a film crew travelled to the Regional Science Center to create a mini documentary highlighting the ongoing restoration work.
“We want to generate a feeling of pride in Minnesotans for making this commitment,” she says. “We’ve yet to find another state that has something equivalent in scope to the trust fund.”
The mini documentary is expected to be published in the spring, with the full story map launching on the Science Museum of Minnesota website sometime next year. Filmmaker Jon Steinhorst and his company Midwestern Workhorse are in the process of creating documentaries for 16 of the 100 projects being highlighted across the story map. The RSC’s prairie restoration was of special consideration for a video because of the unique aspect of student involvement in the project.
“This project has a long-lasting ripple effect. Generations of students are working on this prairie,” Hobbs says.
The project to restore a portion of RSC land to native prairie and riparian forest started in 2016. The 160 acres consisted of an old golf course and farmland donated to the university nearly forty years prior.
The Regional Science Center is in a very important location, situated between Buffalo River State Park and the Bluestem Prairie, one of the Midwest’s largest and most diverse native prairies. Restoring the prairie on the RSC land also contributes to the longevity and quality of the surrounding habitats.
“Our role with our 300 acres is to increase the habitat quality to help buffer the other higher-quality habitats in this larger complex,” Wallace says.
Generous funding from the LCCMR allowed Moorhead to partner with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to repopulate the soil with native grass and plants that support small mammals, birds, and insects. This partnership also extended to experiences for students.
“During the time of the restoration, the DNR invited our students to tour their seed vault,” Wallace says. “They even sent students different species of seeds to experiment with and grow.”
While natural habitat restoration is a long process, the DNR gave the area the start it needed to work towards that goal. “We couldn’t have done it without the DNR’s expertise,” Wallace says.
The restoration also provides acres of natural land for PK-12 and university students to utilize. Schools in the Fargo-Moorhead area are able to set up programs for students to visit and experience nature hands-on.
Moorhead students majoring in the sciences regularly take trips to the RSC as a part of their class time. The land is home to many student research projects done in conjunction with professors.
“We heavily use the RSC in our programs, even in the introductory classes,” Wallace says.
The Regional Science Center restoration efforts are leaving a lasting impact on students. The RSC is providing places to study wildlife and plants, while also instilling in them the importance of restoring the natural environment.
“These last ten years, we’ve been able to bring students to the RSC and show them the changes in landscape we brought about. It’s really exciting times,” Wallace says.