Conservation and Restoration

By the beginning of the twentieth century, it became clear to many people in the Chicago Region and across the country that the rate and scale of human development was going to essentially destroy most of the region’s natural areas in the name of “progress.” At the national level, this time saw the creation of the US Forest Service in 1905 and the National Park Service in 1916. Though many people did important early conservation work in this era, President Theodore Roosevelt probably had the greatest lasting effect on the US conservation movement, if only because he was elected to the country’s most influential position and was able to put his conservation ideas into practice on a vast scale. After becoming president in 1901, Roosevelt enabled the passage of the 1906 American Antiquities Act, establishing legally protected, public lands in the forms of 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, 4 national game preserves, 5 national parks, and 18 national monuments (many of which later became national parks, such as the Grand Canyon). Overall, Theodore Roosevelt was responsible for protecting about 230 million acres of public land, though most of this public land was “protected” at the expense of Indigenous peoples who were forced out of areas they had historically used for many generations. Thus, like much of US history, even foundational ideas about ecological conservation developed in the context of white supremacy.

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Forest Preserve Districts

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Around the same time, a Chicago group calling itself the Municipal Science Club, led by architects Jens Jensen and Dwight Perkins, proposed that the most aesthetically beautiful natural area remnants left in Cook County be set aside “for the benefit of the public” in a similar model to Roosevelt’s federal efforts. After more than a decade of work, the group succeeded in creating the Forest Preserve Districts in both Cook and DuPage Counties. The first land purchase for the Forest Preserve District of Cook County (FPDCC) was a 500-acre parcel at Deer Grove in Palatine. The mission of the FPDCC was to preserve the native organisms of the region for “the education, pleasure, and recreation of the public.” Today, the FPDCC manages almost 70,000 acres of land in Cook County, which amounts to about 11.5% of the county’s total land area. There are few, if any, major urban areas anywhere in the world with as much natural land preserved so close to a city center.

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Following the lead of Cook and DuPage Counties, Lake, Kane, Will, McHenry, and Kendall Counties in Illinois and Lake County in Indiana established their own forest preserve (or conservation) districts over the next 60 years. The efforts so far have been significant and critical for preserving and enhancing the region’s biodiversity. For example, at its establishment over 100 years ago, in order to guarantee future residents a sensible balance between suburban development and natural areas, the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County (FPDDC) proposed a ratio of 25 acres of forest preserve land for every 1,000 residents in the county. Today, with a county population of about 916,000 and almost 26,000 acres of protected natural areas—13% of the entire county—the FPDDC has surpassed its goal.

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Conservation efforts in the region have often been spearheaded by a small number of committed citizens. The efforts of even a single person often leave an outsized legacy. Such is the case with Ethel Untermyer and the formation of the Lake County Forest Preserve District (LCFPD). Untermyer moved from Chicago to Lake County in 1957 and wanted to find a forest preserve so that her 3-year-old son, Frank, could explore in the woods. She was surprised to hear that Lake County, despite its relatively undeveloped landscape, had no such preserved natural areas. Untermyer decided to organize a countywide referendum to establish the LCFPD. Her first meeting only garnered four people, but she was not discouraged. Instead, she drove
all over the largely rural county and spoke with fellow residents and local politicians to garner support. People were concerned with the increasingly rapid loss of open areas as the postwar boom of suburban development crept into Lake County. Groups like the Lake County Farm Bureau backed Untermyer’s efforts, and just a year later, on election day in 1958, the LCFPD referendum passed with overwhelming support—60% of the votes were in favor of its creation. In 1961, the first preserve in Lake County was established at Van Patten Woods in Wadsworth, and Ethel Untermyer served as the first chair of the advisory committee for the LCFPD. Today, the LCFPD manages almost 31,000 acres of habitat—the second most of any county in Illinois.

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Illinois Nature Preserves

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The county forest preserve district model has been wonderfully successful at preserving natural areas, managing habitats, and leading restoration efforts of ecologically degraded areas to enhance biodiversity in the region. High-quality natural ecosystems have also been protected by the Illinois Nature Preserves system. In 1963, the Illinois General Assembly established the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission (INPC) to establish a system of high-quality natural areas representative of Illinois’ unique landscapes and ecosystems. The Illinois Natural Areas Preservation Act (525 ILCS 30) charges the INPC to “preserve, protect, and defend natural areas and endangered species’ habitats for public benefit.” A site that is designated as an Illinois Nature Preserve gains increased levels of legal protection and management. A high-quality 829-acre section of Illinois Beach State Park in Lake County was declared Illinois’ first nature preserve in 1964. Illinois was a conservation leader in establishing the INPC—the first state in the US to create state-level nature preserves with enhanced legal protections. More than a dozen states have now established similar programs.

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Restoration

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The first major attempt at ecological restoration in the Midwest began at the University of Wisconsin in 1933 with the purchase of land that was to become the Curtis Prairie. Ecological restoration is a human-directed process that repairs degradation to the biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics of natural areas caused by humans. It can be thought of as "ecosystem engineering" - an attempt to revitalize native populations of plants and animals and reestablish the important ecosystem processes (periodic fires, hydrology, etc) that can maintain natural areas at a high level of biodiversity over time.

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The first restorations were perhaps more art than science, but restoration now attempts to take a science-based approach that can be simply summarized in a four-step process:

1. Identify what caused the degradation.

2. Eliminate or reduce those factors.

3. Reintroduce key native species (starting with native plants) if possible.

4. Protect the area from future degradation, often by reestablishing natural processes, such as periodic fires.

The first prairie restoration in the Chicago Region was organized by Ray Schulenberg at The Morton Arboretum in 1962. Schulenberg essentially planted the prairie as one would a garden, visiting high-quality natural areas nearby, such as Belmont Prairie in Downers Grove, and digging out prairie plant plugs to hand plant at the restoration site. The Schulenberg Prairie began as a mere half-acre but is now 80 acres with another 20 acres of adjacent oak savanna.

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The next major prairie restoration attempted in the region took a different approach. Dr. Robert Betz, of Northeastern Illinois University, admired what Schulenberg had accomplished. However, he thought the Schulenberg Prairie was too small to contain a significant number of prairie species; he also found the hand-planting approach too time-consuming to achieve restorations on larger scales. In 1972, Betz formed an agreement to build a larger-scale prairie restoration at the Fermi National Accelerator Lab in Batavia. Instead of prairie plants, native plant seeds were planted using a modified combine and a machine designed to spread salt on roads. Lab staff and volunteers provided much of the labor. The Fermi Lab Prairie is now over 1,000 acres in size and supports over 100 species of prairie plants.

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The largest and most ambitious restoration in the Chicago Region is at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in Will County. The restoration is on the site of the former Joliet Army Ammunition Plant. It was established by federal law in 1996 with the transfer of about 20,000 acres from the US Army to the US Forest Service. The ultimate goal is the establishment of a large-scale prairie with over 600 species of native prairie plants on land reclaimed from row crop agriculture, industrial development, and military use. The management plan calls for 75% of the 20,283 acres to be returned to tallgrass prairie, and 7,000 acres are already open to the public. In 2015, the prairie approved the establishment of a bison herd on 1,200 acres of the preserve to restore a large keystone species to the prairie and to study the relationship between large grazers, biodiversity, and prairie restoration.

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Restorations do not need to start from “artificial” landscapes like abandoned farm fields. Restoration techniques can also be applied to degraded natural areas—prairies, savannas, woodlands, and wetlands - that still have some native plants and a seed-bank containing native plant seeds. Seeds from desirable native plant species can be collected from other sites and added to degraded sites to enrich the biodiversity. This approach, coupled with invasive plant removal, the establishment of prescribed burns, and the removal of engineered diversions to the site’s natural hydrology (such as drain tiles and dams), can succeed in restoring formerly degraded sites and enhancing native biodiversity. This is largely the approach that we take to restoring and revitalizing Oakton's Natural Areas.

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Ecological restorations led mainly by volunteers first began in the Chicago Region in the late 1970s along the North Branch of the Chicago River in Cook County. There, a group calling themselves the North Branch Prairie Project recruited and organized volunteers to restore many of the habitats in that part of northern Cook County. Groups like The Nature Conservancy helped organize the growing interest in volunteer restoration work through organizations such as the Volunteer Stewardship Network (VSN), which was created in 1983 in collaboration with the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission (INPC). The VSN collaborates with land-owning and -managing public agencies like the forest preserve districts on a range of different conservation and restoration efforts. The work of dedicated volunteer stewards significantly supplements the work that the forest preserve districts do themselves—thousands of hours of free labor removing invasive plants, for example. Many volunteer stewards are associated with particular sites for many years and develop detailed, valuable knowledge of the unique qualities and dynamics of that particular place. There are few better ways for a person to develop a conservation ethic, reverence and gratitude for nature, and appreciation for biodiversity than to work on restoration efforts with their own two hands.