Conscious Choice: Chicago Wilderness Catches Fire

May 1996

Chicago Wilderness Catches Fire

New Collaborative Effort Aims at Restoring 200,000 Acres Locally

by Mary Kate Hogan

Threads of smoke rise through the oak and ash trees at Swallow Cliff Woods, an 800-acre site in the Sag Valley District of Cook County Forest Preserve. Volunteers in bright yellow firefighter’s suits spray the ground with drip torches to fuel the fire. Nearby a yellow and orange Seppie—a machine that’s part tractor, part bulldozer—plows through branches and bushes that are still bare on this sunny April afternoon. The Seppie crushes at an amazing speed of one to three acres a day, leaving behind a trail of dust, twigs, and wood chips.

To an outsider, it might look like deciduous destruction. But what these people are doing is actually helping to restore Illinois’ unique natural habitat.

“Fire was the lifeblood of the prairie and the savanna,” said Bruce Boyd, executive director of the Illinois Nature Conservancy. But public preoccupation with stamping out fires has removed a natural fertilizer and a process that helps eliminate non-native species. “That lack of fire began to affect our oak habitats,” said Ralph Thornton, land manager for the conservation department of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County.

Through projects like this one at Swallow Cliff Woods, conservation groups have been working for years to restore Chicago prairies, woodlands, and wetlands. But recently a larger, joint effort called Chicago Wilderness was formed. After two years of planning, in April 34 conservation and nature organizations launched a collaborative effort to restore, protect and preserve the Chicago Wilderness, 200,000 acres with some of the most pristine tallgrass prairies and oak woodlands in the world.

The groups include the Cook, Will, and DuPage County forest preserves, the Chicago Department of the Environment, Lincoln Park Zoo, the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, Nature Conservancy, Openlands, the Chicago Park District, and the Sierra Club. “The foundation for the Chicago Wilderness has really been in place for some time,” said Jerry Adelmann, executive director of Openlands Project. But, he said, “It’s the first time in our region that we’ve gotten so many diverse players together and reached a consensus on a regional plan.”

According to James R. Lyons, an undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “There are a lot of programs out there, but there’s not a common vision. We need to place priority on those areas we need to protect.”

Not since the early 1900s when Daniel Burnham introduced his plan for integrating parks and greenways around Chicago, have groups collaborated on such an innovative conservation initiative. Yet, by pooling resources, the organizations will be able to protect the area’s unique natural habitats, beginning with 28 new conservation projects. The U.S. Forest Service has provided $700,000 to fund the initial projects, including a biodiversity recovery plan that will identify strategies for sustaining the region’s rich variety of native species and natural communities. Other projects will restore prairies, woodlands and wetlands, including the Des Plaines River Corridor and the principal streams flowing through the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, the largest tallgrass prairie east of the Mississippi. Chicago Wilderness educational programs will boost awareness about biodiversity.

Member groups will organize wilderness walks and talks “so that our children don’t learn about their natural environment only from textbooks and slide shows,” said Cook County Board President John H. Stroger, Jr. “(They will) know what it’s like to run in a real forest, not just the asphalt jungle.” From Goose Lake Prairie southwest of Joliet, the land to be restored stretches north to Chiwaukee Prairie in Wisconsin and southeast around the shore of Lake Michigan to the Indiana Dunes.

“When conservation planners looked around the world to decide where are the places of most importance, they settled on the tropical rainforest, they settled on the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. They also looked at the Chicago region,” said Steve Packard, Director of Science at the Illinois Nature Conservancy. “The Chicago region is a surprise to many people.” But the region was included in a 1995 list of “Last Great Places” in the northern hemisphere and it contains a concentration of rare plants and animals, including 181 species listed as endangered or threatened in Illinois.

These rare species rely on native ecosystems of oak woodlands and prairies. The systems have become overrun with non-native plants due in part to public efforts to stop fires, which provide the forest’s natural protection and fertilizer. The fires clear away leaf litter and weeds that block the sun and keep grasses and other plants from growing. “Prescribed burning” experiments have been conducted at Swallow Cliff Woods, an 800-acre site in the Sag Valley District of the Cook County Forest Preserve, and at Waterfall Glen in DuPage County. The areas are cleared of shrubs and weeds and a year or two later undergo controlled burning.

“Restoration is a process of evolution. It’s not an exact science by any means and it has taken trial and error,” said John Oldenburg, superintendent of grounds and natural resources for the DuPage County Forest Preserve District. The new collaboration provides the “ability to start looking at landscape management—to go beyond a small area and look at large land patches,” Oldenburg said.

Following more than 10 years of restoration efforts at Waterfall Glen, about 50 kinds of native plants bloom there in the summer and 20 different species of birds have moved into the area, said Wayne Lampa of the DuPage County Forest Preserve District. “If we don’t replicate those ecosystems, they’re going to die out,” Lampa said.

Sometimes, part of the problem is simply identifying and mapping areas in need of preservation and restoration. An important ongoing project that addresses this issue is called the Greenways Plan which was co-authored by Openlands Project and the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission. Greenways are corridors of open land that follow the course of rivers, railroads, utility lines or other natural or human pathways. Examples include bike trails, streams flanked by forest preserves, and the parks stretched along Chicago’s lakefront. Greenways provide great places for recreation, such as bicycling, hiking, canoeing, and fishing. Home to many plant and animals, greenways offer protection from flooding and natural filters that trap pollutants before they reach waterways.

The Greenways Plan identifies 1,600 miles of greenways in northeastern Illinois and establishes the priorities that guide Openlands Project’s work on greenways. “It is really preparing the region for the next century,” Adelmann said. “Because of all the units of local government in northeastern Illinois, there haven’t been many opportunities for them to come together and think about the green infrastructure.”

Openlands will establish special protection and management for the stream corridors. The group is also working to secure protection for a greenway corridor between Calumet Park on Chicago’s South Side and the Shabonna Woods Forest Preserve and the West Fork of the DuPage River.

Openlands has been involved in preservation of the Midewin Tall Grass Prairie, 19,000 acres connected through greenways. The group recently established a corporate council to help with the project. Companies that own land near the prairie, Inland Steel, Dow, Amoco, and WMX, serve on the council. By offering the expertise of their staff, volunteerism of their employees, and possibly financial resources, these companies will help the project to progress.

Another Chicago Wilderness project will restore wetlands at a site called Prairie Wolf Slough. The site was identified in 1994 by Friends of the Chicago River, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Lake County Forest Preserve District, National Restoration Conservation Service, and Lake County Storm Water Management Commission. Beginning in May, volunteers will plant vegetation at Prairie Wolf Slough, an orphaned farm field east of Waukegan Road near Bannockburn Green Shopping Center.

Volunteers, including students from Highland Park and Deerfield, plan to put in about 50,000 plants, said David Ramsay, project coordinator for Friends of the Chicago River. The project will “show how to restore wetlands and ecosystems along the river to protect and enhance valuable wildlife habitat, improve water quality, create trails and locate a wetlands that can serve as an educational site for local schools,” Ramsay said. In Phase 2 of the projects, the groups will construct a walking and biking trail that extends south to Deerfield High School and connects with a new development in Highland Park.

Of course, the success of the Prairie Wolf Slough project and all Chicago Wilderness efforts is highly dependent on volunteers (see sidebar). More than 5,000 people currently offer their time to the Volunteer Stewardship program to help with restoration, and Chicago Wilderness is looking for more. Julie Sacco, volunteer coordinator at Openlands Project, began working with the Volunteer Stewardship Network six years ago. “I was already an environmentally aware person, but I didn’t know how to put that into practice,” Sacco says. Then she participated in a nature walk: “I attended and I was hooked.”

Sacco’s work has focused on the Palos Preserves Restoration Project in Cook County. She has been trained in prescribed burning. “It can be a very frightening tool, unless you know how to manage it,” Sacco says. “I was one of these doubting Thomas type people—I had to see it to believe it. It was an amazing sight to come back to a site that had been burned, and three weeks later see small plants sprouting. Two months after the burn you would not know that there was a fire there.”

Through Chicago Wilderness, conservation groups are recognizing that their efforts should be interconnected, much like the ecosystems they’re trying to save. “You keep in mind the impact of the work you’re doing,” Sacco says. “The woodlands are connected to the wetlands are connected to the prairie are connected to the savanna.

“For once I saw I can think globally, but actually work very locally.” And the work done to protect these natural habitats is sure to reach beyond Chicago’s backyard.

Volunteering for Chicago Wilderness

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