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Mendota Heights Natural Resources Commission names 2025 Oak Award recipients for sustainability leadership
Summary
The commission presented 2025 Oak Awards to Meghan Bernard (Canopy Award), the Two Rivers Live Green Club (Leaf Award) and Eagle Scout Wes Hendel (Acorn Award) for school-district sustainability work, student-led watershed and waste projects, and a pollinator planting project, respectively.
The Mendota Heights Natural Resources Commission recognized individuals and groups for local natural-resources leadership at its March 11 meeting by naming the 2025 Oak Award recipients.
Manager Krista Spreiter described the Oak Awards program, created in 2023 to honor leadership, education/outreach and projects that advance natural resources in the city. The Canopy Award went to Meghan Bernard, Sustainability Manager for School District 197, for leading the LiveGreen program across district schools, coordinating student projects, implementing recycling and energy-saving measures and converting about 10 acres of turf to native prairie. Spreiter noted Bernard is also one of six national recipients of a Leader in Sustainability Fellowship from the U.S. Green Building Council.
The Leaf Award was given to the Two Rivers High School Live Green Club for student-driven initiatives in 2025, including a Clean Rivers campaign to protect watershed health, waste-reduction audits, habitat-restoration seed-bombs distributed on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, and civic outreach to state and federal legislators. The Acorn Award recognized Eagle Scout Wes Hendel for leading a pollinator-planting project at Ivy Hills Park that established roughly 250 square feet of pollinator habitat, planted 215 native plants, involved more than 20 volunteers and included buckthorn removal near a stormwater pond.
The commission approved the three recipients without further action noted; presentations and public recognition will be coordinated by staff.
