ISD 625-Saint Paul Public Schools

In the late 1960’s, Charles Bell and Lucy Winton Bell found themselves in a unique position to do something to help address the challenges of diminishing wild spaces, water pollution, and the lack of outdoor education for children. They had recently acquired 200 acres of ecologically diverse land in Afton, Minnesota and wanted to use it to counter these devastating trends.

In 1970, Lucy and Charlie signed an agreement with Saint Paul Public Schools that would dedicate their land to outdoor science education for children. They established the Belwin Foundation (a combination of their names, Bell and Winton) and donated 225 acres of their land to it. With the arrival of students in 1971, Belwin Outdoor Education Laboratory, now Belwin Outdoor Science, was born.

Over the years, this vision has brought over half a million children to Belwin Conservancy for outdoor science education and protected hundreds of acres in the St. Croix Valley from development.

Learn more here: https://belwin.org/

Jim worked as a Special Education teacher at Belwin for over 18 years. He serves as a Naturalist for the Belwin Conservancy and helps conduct the annual bird survey. For the past six years he has been monitoring and protecting the local Blanding's turtle population.