Loons inherit $1.8 million

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Iva Weir loved loons so much that she left all of her cash - about $1.8 million - to help protect Minnesota's official state bird.

The schoolteacher spent her childhood and summers in her native Minnesota, captivated by the loon's echoing wails, hoots and yodels in the wilderness. She left her fortune to the Nature Conservancy in Minnesota to conserve the imperiled bird's habitat.

The gift is one of the largest ever given to the conservancy in Minnesota for the preservation of a single species.

''Overwhelming generosity? I'll say it is,'' Peggy Ladner, director of the Nature Conservancy in Minnesota, said Monday. ''I was thrilled.''

Weir died in 2006 in Corvallis, Ore., at age 85. Her will stated she wanted her estate to ensure that the loon maintained a healthy presence throughout Minnesota. The loon officially was designated the state bird in 1961.

About $1 million of Weir's money already has been used to help conserve and manage more than 1,000 acres along the conservancy's Lake Alexander and Ordway-Glacial Lakes sites in central Minnesota, Ladner said. The group intends to acquire more land to help preserve the iconic bird.

The actions come at a time when experts say loons are dying by the thousands across the Great Lakes region because of bacterial diseases. Loons have not suffered die-offs in Lake Superior, a major flyway, but officials are watching the region.

The black-billed bird symbolized Minnesota to Weir, Ladner said.

Weir was born in Moorhead in 1921 and grew up in Bemidji, where she attended college. She also taught in International Falls. She later moved to Oregon and continued to teach until retiring in 1984.

But Minnesota never left her heart. Weir often returned during summers to see family and capture the sights and sounds of the loons.

Her niece, Chris Weir-Koetter of Bemidji, often took her canoeing, said Chris Anderson, a Nature Conservancy spokesman. When her niece spread Weir's ashes across the Mississippi River, three loons flew overhead, Anderson said.

So, where did the benevolent Weir, a schoolteacher for nearly four decades, get her money? ''She saved most of her salaries. She lived a frugal life,'' said Anderson, adding that Weir was a longtime Nature Conservancy member. ''She loved our lakes, our work and wanted to help us out.''

Minnesota has roughly 12,000 loons, a population second only to Alaska's, according the state Department of Natural Resources. The DNR says threats to the birds include ''human disturbance and pollutants such as lead and mercury.''

Ladner said the birds may be in decline because of growing lakeshore development and recreational needs. ''I wouldn't say we have a loon problem yet,'' she said. ''But as our population grows and seeks recreation, we need to be conscious of a species such as the loon.

''As long as we can respect the space, people and loons can get along just fine.''

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