Author: Jeff Strate

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An Eden Prairie resident since 1994, Jeff has served as an organizer for local open-space initiatives and get-out-the-vote parks referenda. He has also served on the Eden Prairie Human Rights and Diversity Commission, conservation area task forces, the Southwest Light Rail Community Advisory Committee and the Board of Directors of the Minnesota Land Trust. Jeff studied journalism and mass communication at the U of MN and has been a producer/writer and occasional on-camera figure in the Twin Cities, New York, Boston, and Trenton. Jeff has written for websites and magazines and has produced award-winning access programing through Southwest Community Television (SWTV).

Light rains held back last Friday afternoon in Birch Island Woods, leaving a damp, overcast gloom. But it was Minnesota’s Arbor Day, and the conservation area’s trees were brushed with the fairyland greens of April. Its small parking area was packed with cars and pickups. At one end of it, an assembly of 20 or so adults and a few kids wrapped in jackets stood on bare, woodland duff littered with twigs and broken branches. Executives and staff from New Wave Design, an advanced computer tech company on Viking Drive, had committed to planting 500 tree seedlings over three acres…

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