Families Flock to KidFest!

Posted on by
Reply

By Pat Winkelman

To celebrate June as Leave No Child Inside month, the 2nd annual Barrington Area KidFest – a fun-filled event combining the 12th annual Community Kite Fly and 3rd annual Family Nature Fest – was held on Saturday, May 4 at Barrington’s Citizens Park. This free, family-oriented event was hosted by the Barrington Breakfast Rotary Club, the Barrington Park District, and Leave No Child Inside of the Greater Barrington and Lake Zurich area, three community-oriented and non-profit organizations.

One can safely say that everyone enjoyed a wonderful day of learning, nature, and kite flying. A soft breeze to lift the kites and sunshine broke through the clouds to provide the 1,300 plus event participants a beautiful day to enjoy the outdoors! Families took part in more than twenty-five nature-based and/or educational activities in addition to the popular kite fly. Thanks to the Barrington Breakfast Rotary for providing over 700 free kites for the event!

Members and supporters of the Leave No Child Inside initiative provided activities including tree climbing with the Care of Trees, archery with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, learning about mammals and an archeological dig with Citizens for Conservation, team course and street striders with the Barrington Park District, larger than life weaving with the Barrington Cultural Arts Center, bug-a-palooza with the Forest Preserve District of Cook County/Crabtree Nature Center, slack-lining with Erehwon, butterfly habitats with Barrington Hills Montessori School, Cub Scout fun with the Boy Scouts of America, speed and agility training with Davis Speed Centers, living with wildlife with Fox Valley Rehabilitation Center, “Leave No Trace” with L.L. Bean, mighty oak note cards with the South Barrington Conservancy, pond critter collecting with the Lake County Forest Preserve, foreign language games with Language Stars, making butterflies with DaVinci Waldorf School, gorilla gardening with Green Mansions Foundation, birdhouse magnet coloring with Huntington Learning Center of Barrington, and mural painting with the Northern Illinois Special Recreation Association.

Eagle Scout candidate Tommy Mitoraj of Troop 29 provided sixty blue bird houses for children to build and take home to provide new habitats for our local blue bird population. Local pediatrician, Everett Weiss provided presentations of regarding how nature and outdoor activities leads to healthier chidlren, and the Village of Barrington Hills offered free tree seedlings! The Barrington Breakfast Rotary was cooking up delicious hot dogs and brats for purchase with proceeds assisting the Barrington Breakfast Rotary’s global clean drinking water efforts. Raffle baskets were awarded to four lucky participants at the end of the event.

A special thank you from the Barrington Breakfast Rotary, Barrington Park District, and Leave No Child Inside to all of the organizations, businesses, and volunteers who made this day a success. The greater Barrington and Lake Zurich areas are fortunate to have these generous contributors.

We hope to see you at KidFest 2014, scheduled for May 3 with the rain date of May 4. If you are interested in participating in KidFest 2013 contact info@funoutside.org. To learn more about local or global Rotary efforts or to become a member, visit www.barringotnbreakfastrotary.org. For information about spending family time in nature or taking part in fitness activities, to become a member, or volunteer your time, visit www.funoutside.org and www.barringtonparkdistrict.org.

All photos courtesy of Tom Benjamin.

A Green Experiment with SSMMA

Posted on by
Reply

Cardno JFNew, one of the founding members of Chicago Wilderness, is an ecological consulting and restoration firm with more than 20 years of experience providing innovative and successful solutions to challenging environmental issues. Senior Water Resources Engineer Scott Dierks writes about the opportunities and challenges of using green infrastructure projects as part of community redevelopment plans. 

By Scott Dierks

The South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association (SSMMA) has just begun a green experiment: scrutinizing the present while imagining a green vision for the future. The SSMMA represents 42 communities south of Chicago and assists them with technical services, such as redevelopment strategies and geographic information services (GIS).  With this project the SSMMA hopes to give its member communities an alternative future that diverges from crumbling infrastructure and dwindling jobs. What this green future looks like exactly and how successful this strategy is for community revitalization remains to be seen, but it is a strategy with a basis in what the planet does best: sustain life.

The SSMMA plan is in its early stages, but the plan has already highlighted an important distinction between green infrastructure to support biodiversity and green infrastructure to support a new notion of service delivery for human communities. This is green infrastructure that replaces the grey infrastructure of stormwater pipes, black roofs, and asphalt parking lots; this is the same green that supports biodiversity, but is employed at the site level. This green infrastructure decreases runoff; reduces the risk of flooding; is more climate resilient; mitigates the urban heat island effect, improves urban soil quality; builds park and recreation spaces; produces urban farms and brings the world that supports each living being back into contact fingertip-to-plant-shoot, one budding steward at a time.

Greening the landscape to deliver these kinds of services, does not have to happen over long, contiguous green spaces, but can happen in some unlikely places –abandoned urban and industrial landscapes. These abandoned spaces are already being reclaimed by natural degradation and re-growth processes. These ideas are not without precedent, in fact, there are some wonderful examples of how they have been realized elsewhere.

The High Line was an abandoned, elevated subway line in New York City that has now been converted into a renowned, linear urban park. This space attracts people and other natural inhabitants.  It is a habitat reclamation project and an urban redevelopment gem. Residents and commercial enterprises alike claim this as an asset that attracts employees, tourists and business.

High Line Park, Brooklyn, New York. Image: Friends of the High Line

Likewise, Erie Street Plaza in Milwaukee, Wisconsin has converted former industrial waterfront property to a unique, naturalized urban space. This space has helped attract re-development interest and marks a new reclamation line between inhospitable, waterfront industry and a new, hybrid landscape. This is the new urban experience, a kind of re-birth into multi-functional green space.

Erie Street Plaza, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Image: Stoss Landscape Urbanism

The last example, the reclamation of an old steel mill in Providence, Rhode Island, has become a jobs creator.  A non-profit artists’ organization, The SteelYard is housed at this former industrial complex. This once abandoned property has become a true community focal point at which artists, artisans and crafts people can create, teach and produce events.

The Steel Yard, Providence, Rhode Island. Image: The Steel Yard.org

How can the SSMMA help their member communities make these projects happen? They do not usually just arise solely out of good will, nor are current codes and ordinances necessarily friendly to this kind of re-purposing. Green infrastructure sits at an intersection of development that relies more on biological principles than, say, the physics of fluid flow in a storm sewer. Rather than creating centralized infrastructure like stormwater ponds, this kind of site design relies on decentralized techniques – catching rainfall or runoff as close to the source as possible. This is an integration of normal development practices with a respect and deeper understanding of natural physical cycles.

This approach will require changes in codes and ordinances and a different set of standards for landscape management. The myriad ecosystem services “delivered” by a natural or naturalized landscape are best optimized by letting the landscape mature. Turf lawn matches function with aesthetic. Roots and shoots are kept shallow and biodiversity is purposely suppressed. If deep-rooted plants are allowed to flourish they sequester carbon and significantly improve soil quality. These naturalized landscapes normally do not need watering, fertilizer or pesticides, and with deeper roots and vastly improved soil quality they store more water; infiltrate it more quickly and at the same time retain more plant-available water far longer than turf grass.

So: not only do codes and ordinances need flexibility for the purposeful creation of these new (formerly ancient) landscapes, but there is an educational component that is required for planners, designers, regulators, developers and the public, in general. As the landscape architect Joan Nassauer  puts it, we need to make true ecological value visible and understandable. Development based on or consistent with real ecological value can be truly sustainable development.

Part of the challenge of the SSMMA project will be to provide a broad set of tools to help this process along. The SSMMA and its member communities will also look opportunistically to implement these kinds of projects. But opportunities abound – vacant lots, crumbling concrete, and on-going capital improvement plans. These are places where green can begin to replace the grey, and foster more re-growth in south suburban Chicago communities.


About Scott Dierks
Scott leads Cardno JFNew’s design and engineering services on watershed management and ecological engineering projects. His green infrastructure design work includes stormwater and wastewater treatment and re-use and aquatic ecosystem restoration. Scott has 20 years of engineering experience, including numerous hydrologic, hydraulic, sediment transport, and water quality monitoring and modeling projects. He also has extensive experience writing and administering numerous grants, including Clean Michigan Initiative, Clean Water Act Section 319, and other public and private foundation grants. Scott will be a guest presenter at the upcoming Bioretention Summit at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, IL on June 17-18. 

 

Bioswales: An Alternative to Storm Sewers

Posted on by
Reply

Chicago Wilderness Corporate Council member Gewalt Hamilton Associates, Inc. (GHA) is an 80-member professional civil engineering firm with three Chicago area locations. Learn about one of GHA’s green infrastructure projects that helps manage stormwater runoff and prevent flooding at a high school. 

By Marie Hansen and Heather Miller, GHA, Inc.

Niles Township High School District 219 serves more than 4,800 students within two campuses in northern Cook County. With one of the first five schools in the US to earn LEED certification for an existing building, the District has been a leader in sustainability and environmental stewardship for more than a decade.

Challenge
At the south end of the Niles West High School campus, the District Office backs up to the athletic fields. During a storm, rainwater flows south off the fields and towards the Office parking lot, pooling in the garage. The result is frequent flooding – even during minor storm events.

Traditionally, this type of drainage problem would be resolved simply by installing a series of pipes and inlets through which the flow stormwater would be directed off the site. However, in this particular situation, the traditional approach presented two major problems.

First, the athletic fields are situated within ten feet of the problem area and would be significantly disturbed by the construction activities involved with installing this type of underground improvement.

Second, the cost of the pipe and inlet infrastructure materials exceeded the District’s budget for this project.

Cross-section of a typical bioswale

In search of a solution to this persistent problem, the District opted for a more environmentally friendly application which aligns with their sustainability goals. As an alternative stormwater management approach, GHA designed a series of bioswales through which stormwater is collected and redirected away from the District Office.

Bioswale at the Niles West High School and District 219 Office campus

Solution
Similar to rain gardens, these shallow depressions consist of a soil mixture overlaying a gravel base, with a perforated drain pipe. This construction promotes infiltration of water, rather than the runoff typical of compacted soil. The swales are enhanced with native vegetation which also helps increase infiltration and slow the rate and flow of stormwater as it leaves the site.

Not only was the cost of constructing the bioswales considerably less than the traditional storm sewer alternative, this approach provides several other advantages.

The use of green infrastructure adds beauty to the site. As the plantings mature and become established, they will provide a habitat for birds and butterflies.

Native vegetation helps filter out pollutants, thus improving stormwater quality. Small weirs were also added to the bioswales to help decrease the flow rate, which allows more time for filtration as the runoff is conveyed through the series of swales.

The slowed rate of discharge promotes some stormwater to seep back into the ground, replenishing groundwater supplies. This infiltration process decreases the amount of stormwater leaving the site, which reduces demand on the municipal storm sewer system.

An established bioswale with a colorful display of native flowers and grasses

Results
Two years after planting, the bioswales are well on their way to becoming fully established, as roots deepen and the plants mature. Even during this year’s heavy April rains, the District Office avoided flooding in all areas, with only a minor pooling in the lower level garage dock.

Not only did this application of sustainable design solve the District’s drainage problem, the bioswales provide additional benefits. By reducing runoff, improving stormwater quality, and recharging groundwater supplies, these beautiful swales enhance the campus and offer a tangible representation of the District’s commitment to reducing their impact on the environment.

 

Being Ahead of the Storm!

Posted on by
Reply

The record rain fall and subsequent flooding events in April emphasize the importance of incorporating green infrastructure initiatives at the site, neighborhood, community and regional scale. Throughout May, we will feature blog posts by Chicago Wilderness members that highlight green infrastructure projects in the Chicago area. Thanks to Huff & Huff, Inc. for kicking off the blog series with a before-and-after account of a constructed rain garden project in Deerfield, Illinois.

By Huff & Huff, Inc.

During the Storm
On April 18, 2013, Chicago area residents woke up to heavy rains and thunderstorms. By 7 am, two to three inches of rainfall fell and water levels began to rise to extreme flood levels surging onto roads and into residential basements.  Huff & Huff, a member of the Chicago Wilderness Corporate Council, wondered how the rain garden at Deerfield functioned during this major event.

A Year Before the Storm
In 2012, The Village of Deerfield received an Illinois EPA 319 water quality grant. This grant allowed a 50% reimbursement, up to $10,777, to help control non-point sources of water pollution. The Village decided to install a rain garden to reduce the discharge volume and pollutant load to the local storm sewer system tributary, and thus to the North Branch of the Chicago River. Curb cuts were incorporated into the design, directing stormwater into the rain garden from both the parking lot and the street to capture the runoff. The parking lot serves as one of the commuter parking lots for the Deerfield Metra train station. Huff & Huff staff designed the rain garden, inspected the excavating and construction process, and volunteered over 25 hours to install 1,520 native plants by hand.

Deerfield Rain Garden volunteer getting his hands dirty! Photo by: J. Reynolds

A rain garden is a shallow depression planted with attractive native grasses, flowers, and sedges where rain water runoff is collected and allowed to recharge groundwater and encourage evapotranspiration. Rain gardens help to naturally filter out pollutants from impervious surfaces such as roads, roof tops, and driveways. Sediment, organic pollutants, oils, pesticides, as well as bacteria from pet waste are removed from the water before percolating back into local groundwater aquifers. The deep roots from native plants help to prevent flooding by allowing 30-40% more water to infiltrate into the soil when compared to a traditional turf lawn.

Thirty-two species of plants and one shrub species were selected for the Deerfield rain garden based on their ability to handle extremes of wet and dry periods, and variable amounts of sunlight. Examples of species planted include prairie cord grass (Spartina pectinata), cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis), marsh blazing star (Liatris spicata), obedient plant (Physotegia virginiana), New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae), and queen of the prairie (Filipendula rubra).

Volunteers installing plants in the Deerfield rain garden. Photo by J. Reynolds

After the Storm
A week after the great flood of 2013, the Village of Deerfield staff reported that they were pleased to see how well the rain garden performed after the storm and that no problems were encountered. This was attributed to routine maintenance including clearing the inlet grates of debris. “Normal routine maintenance is critical to the success of the designed intent,” explained Jeremy Reynolds, Project Manager of the Deerfield rain garden project.

Rain gardens help to reduce the volume and velocity of storm water flow. This reduces flooding on streets and helps to control capital investment costs related to increasing the size of storm sewers needed in the neighborhood. After the floods of April 2013, it is easy to understand how both functions will benefit a community. Next time you are in Deerfield, stop by the rain garden at Sunset and Elm Streets to see the possibilities for your future green infrastructure projects!

Restoration Map: A Tool for Conservation Volunteers

Posted on by
Reply

The mission of The National Audubon Society is to conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the earth’s biological diversity. The Audubon Chicago Region saves wildlife and habitat, and to keep it safe permanently we are hard at work creating a local culture of conservation. Though a small staff is ready to step in where necessary, most of Audubon’s work is done by hundreds of volunteers including citizen scientists, land stewards, advocates, and more. Everyone is invited to help out. Karen Glennemeier, Science Director with Audubon Chicago Region, shares information about a great mapping tool that volunteers are using to track their restoration efforts. 

Photo by Jim Schultz

By Karen Glennemeier

Audubon has developed a new mapping tool that allows land managers, stewards, and monitors to communicate their work and their findings to each other, easily and freely. Developed by Will Freyman and hosted by Audubon’s Habitat Project, the tool is called Restoration Map. It’s based on the Google Earth plug-in and allows stewards and managers to map the locations of management actions year after year. It also allows monitors to map the locations of their monitoring and the species they’ve found. And, when you overlay the two together, things really start to get fun!

For years, local conservationists have struggled to find the best means of recording and communicating their work in a way that allows the community to make the best use of it. With more and more partnerships working to do effective conservation, this kind of communication is becoming ever more important, and more difficult. Maps are an obvious means to do so, but until recently it’s been difficult to share and update maps in a practical, useful way.

Enter Will Freyman, a tech-savvy restoration volunteer who approached steward Stephen Packard last year, asking how he could put his skills to work for conservation. The two of them worked closely for months, developing ideas, trying prototypes, working out bugs. They shared the test site with stewards, monitors, and scientists, asking us to use the site and tell them what was working and what additional tools would be helpful. The result is an open-source program that provides unprecedented opportunities for collaboration among conservation practitioners.

We early testers soon learned what a jewel we had in our virtual hands — it was great! After mapping the locations of vegetation transects, bird monitoring points, and frog listening points, Will uploaded the datasets, which allowed us to click on a point to see the frogs, birds and number of plants at each spot. Then we mapped the locations of last year’s burns, seed spreading, and weed control. When we overlayed these maps, we could start asking – and answering – questions about how birds were responding to burning, which seeds from our seed mixes were coming up first, how our weed control was working, and how frogs were affected by all of the activities.

Below are screenshots of a site showing the different types of data that can be mapped. To view Restoration Map, go to www.habitatproject.org/restorationmap. Please note that you have to download and install the free Google Earth plug-in on your computer. For additional information and to find out how to enter your own information, contact Will Freyman at willfreyman@gmail.com or visit http://restorationmap.org for more details and instructions on how to use the map.

Deer Grove East Forest Preserve.

Circles are the centers of 25-m diameter woodland vegetation plots. Lines are 100-m long vegetation transects. These were monitored in 2012.

These polygons show areas that were burned in 2011. We can learn how the plants – and the birds and frogs (see below) -- are responding to burning over time.

Polygons are the locations where local seed was spread in 2012. We can look at vegetation data from nearby plots to see how long it takes our seeds to take root.

Circles are the centers of 25-m diameter woodland vegetation plots. Lines are 100-m long vegetation transects. These were monitored in 2012.

The larger, yellow dots (extending east on the map) show bird monitoring locations. The six smaller, green dots toward the northwest are frog monitoring locations, where we can view detailed results with a click of the mouse.

Serosun Farms: Preserving Farmland & Restoring Habitats

Posted on by
Reply

Serosun Farms is a new farm and sustainable community development in northern Kane County. Located about an hour northwest of Chicago near the suburban edge, it is an ambitious, rural, mixed-use development project. At its core, Serosun Farms is a farmland preservation effort as it will serve as a demonstration site, laboratory, and learning center for a number of critical farm and natural resources issues. Some of these issues include shifting to sustainable agricultural practices; redevelopment of local farming capacity and local farming support infrastructure; integrating habitat and biodiversity management into farming; and other habitat and biodiversity management related issues.

Serosun Farms community is currently implementing the first stage of its long-term plan. In order to achieve their goals, they created a new zoning strategy in conjunction with Kane County to allow limited development to support farmland preservation at the suburban edge. For families no longer in the farming business, the new zoning allows them to preserve a significant portion of their farm and family heritage, while still reaping the value of the land assets they have created for their children’s and grandchildren’s benefit. The core farmland and open space will be placed in permanent agriculture easements, and the farmsteads will be retained and restored to support the agricultural, equestrian and community needs.

The first stage of Serosun Farms will include over 408 acres across three farms, of which 75% of the land will be preserved as open space and farmland on the farm estate. Approximately 150 acres of estate land will be in restored natural areas, 150 acres will farmed, as well as an additional 50-100 acres of leased land adjacent to the estate that will be managed as part of the farm. The nonprofit foundation with the same name, Serosun Farms, will manage the educational and volunteer programs focused on natural resource conservation, and engage community members in these activities.

Volunteers removing invasive species.

Local Partners and Volunteers
Since the beginning, Serosun has partnered with a number of local and regional groups to help achieve their goals. As members of the Chicago Wilderness Corporate Council, Serosun Farms has used the Chicago Wilderness Biodiversity Plan as a guide to develop specific plans and goals. As well, Serosun uses the Conservation Foundation’s Conservation@Home program as a guide for the landscaping and design of all home sites, as well as adapting it to the farm and commercial sites.

And of course, they love to get people involved! On Saturday, April 13, Serosun hosted the Chicago Wilderness Corporate Council Day of Service spring event. From 9:00 am to noon, 15 volunteers braved the cold – and snowy – weather to help Serosun Farms remove invasive species around the farm. This restoration activity and others are part of the large-scale project to restore the 40-acre savannah woodlands.

Youth volunteers with their find!

On Saturday, June 8, Serosun is hosting an event to celebrate Leave No Child Inside Month, an initiative to encourage kids and their parents to connect with nature through outdoor activities. This will be the first Leave No Child Inside collaborative event held in Kane County. The events are open to everyone! Visit www.chicagowilderness.org or www.serosunfarms.com for more information and come out to Serosun Farms to learn how you can help restore nature!

Planting the Seeds of the WHS Learn + Play Gardens

Posted on by
Reply

The third blog post for our April series Getting Outside to Volunteer features Andi Cooper, Director of Business Development at WRD Environmental. Andi is working on a project to transform the campus at her son’s school into a the WHS Learn + Play Gardens. One of the most important steps was to bring together a dedicated group of parents, teachers, school administrators, and students to help make this dream come true!

WHS Edible Garden construction volunteers hard at work. Photo by Andi Cooper.

By Andi Cooper

It’s a chilly Saturday in April, and I’m standing with my family, our principal and 15 parent volunteers on the grounds of my son’s elementary school, in Lombard, Illinois. It’s a big day. We’ve all gathered to install the first piece of our vision for the grounds of William Hammerschmidt School (WHS) – the WHS Edible Garden, made possible by support from DuPage FORWARD.

A gaggle of children run around as we prepare to get to work. “I’m amazed at the size and expertise of the build team,” observes one parent. “With architects, engineers, and tradesmen, we could build almost anything!” And we will. While the huge boxes surrounding us today will become six raised beds (one for each grade level at WHS), a garden shed and two park benches, this garden is only one part of our huge dream – The WHS Learn + Play Gardens.

The Edible Garden Build Team. Photo by Brigitte Baur.

Ambitious Beginnings
A year and a half ago, the school principal and a few parents decided to create a road map to transform the school grounds using a green-schoolyard approach.

Our dream is to inspire students to get outdoors, connect to nature and move their bodies – hence “leave no child inside.”  It includes extending the curriculum beyond the school walls and into the landscape with a butterfly garden, outdoor classroom, and science plaza.

As the mother of a WHS second-grader and a landscape architect, this project is near and dear to my heart, prompting me to volunteer to chair WHS Learn+Play Gardens. I’m supported by my employer, WRD Environmental, whose mission is to help our clients create sustainable, healthy environments.

WRD is helping three Chicago high schools convert nearby vacant properties into outdoor science labs. It also has helped Western Avenue Elementary School, in Geneva, Illinois, create an Edible Schoolyard.

We at WHS are inspired by Western Avenue, which has realized its dream of a beautiful edible garden and created a garden curriculum. There’s talk of having the two become “sister garden schools,” with trips to each other’s gardens, shared resources and student pen pals.

Like Western Avenue, WHS plans to grow pumpkins and gourds this first year and celebrate with a fall pumpkin festival. But before we can harvest those pumpkins, we need to plant the seeds!

Get Growing
One of the first tasks of the WHS Edible Garden/Outdoor Education Committee was to organize the logistics of preparing for the seedlings, which included the decision that students will grow them indoors and transplant them into the Edible Garden.

So two parents led the WHS Student Garden Club in a session to make newspaper pots. One fourth grader leveled with me about all the hard work she and her classmates put in, saying, “We made 150 newspaper pots during Garden Club … so every student can plant something. It was sort of hard because some of the newspaper came undone, so we had to redo them.”

WHS Student Garden Club prepares planting pots. Photo by Brigitte Baur.

Teachers are rallying behind the Edible Garden, too. One is excited to contribute her classroom’s “worm tea” to each bed and to help other teachers start composting in their classrooms. Another organized a fundraiser for which students and their families created over 110 unique garden stones that will be installed in the Edible Garden this spring.

Realizing the Dream
Back at our workday, as I look around at all the parents assembling raised beds, hammering the boards of the shed and bolting back rests onto the benches, it gives me hope that the rest of our WHS Learn + Play Gardens dream will be realized.

The rain begins, a light sprinkling that doesn’t slow us down, but sends our children running for the huge, discarded boxes, whooping and hollering. They build their own cardboard village and call to each other, laughing as their make-believe stories unfold.

WHS students build a cardboard village . Photo by Andi Cooper.

I pause to watch them, and in my mind’s eye, their cardboard houses become the overhang of a leafy branch, a stand of native grasses, or fruiting trees. I imagine them playing hide-and-seek among the shade trees, learning about the solar system or the history of our town while captivated by the great outdoors.

Spring is peeking around the corner, teasing us with snippets of sunshine and liberal doses of rain. Today we wrap our arms around ourselves and pause in the chill air to watch our kids take shelter from the rain.  One day, in the very near future, we will pause on these newly constructed park benches, soaking up the autumn sun as we watch our children dig in the soil and harvest their very first pumpkins.

Citizens for Conservation: Volunteers in Action

Posted on by
Reply

“Saving Living Space for Living Things” is the motto of Citizens for Conservation (CFC), and the organization achieves this through protection, restoration and stewardship of land, conservation of natural resources, and education. As the name suggests, the lifeblood of the organization is citizen volunteers who participate in a range of activities – administrative, restoration, monitoring, and fundraising – to keep the CFC moving forward. As such, we invited Citizens for Conservation to share some of the recent volunteer efforts, and we hope it will encourage everyone to Get Outside and Volunteer!

Photo by Donna Bolzman.

By Sam Oliver, Staff Director

Yes, it’s time to get outside and volunteer! These are the days that ignite our restoration souls, and there is something for everyone to do in April.

Restoration volunteers do it all, of course. In April, some restoration groups are still cutting buckthorn to free native trees from the clutches or clearing gravelly terrain to help support prairie plants that love dry conditions. At the end of the day, volunteers burn the piles of buckthorn, gathering around the fire for rest, refreshment and camaraderie.

Citizens for Conservation recently completed brush cutting season free from weather conditions that have in the past created occasional delays for the volunteer workday schedule. The lack of snow early on in the season allowed for easy parking at spots that were problematic in other years. The never-ending goal of keeping brush at a deer-unfriendly level drives the workload in our area preserves.

This season, Citizens for Conservation completed seven controlled burns in a ten day span. This ambitious controlled burn schedule was achieved due to the commitment of thirty-five individuals who came out for the burns. As this is the most difficult and tiring restoration work, we are particularly thankful to the team members who take on the important responsibilities of drip torch managers and back-pack water carriers.

As we work to enhance biodiversity in our region, we are constantly thinking about ways to increase our capacity and improve our methods and techniques. This season, we added extra equipment at the burn sites to enable more volunteers on the fire lines, and provided water and oranges to keep everyone hydrated. We also added signage along the roads to alert motorists of the burns.

In the last couple of days, one of the many benefits and joys of spring volunteering just occurred: two rare grassland birds were spotted at the restoration properties. Volunteers conducting a burn at Grigsby Prairie spotted a short-eared owl flush up and a marsh hawk was seen floating over the burned areas at Flint Creek Savanna, looking for its next meal. As a volunteer and leader of the restoration activities, it’s very rewarding to know that these rare birds are using our preserves as food and rest stops along their migratory routes.

With burn season over, Citizens for Conservation is launching the spring restoration workdays. Every Thursday and Saturday from 9:00 to 11:00 am, experienced and new volunteers can participate in restoration activities such as sowing legume seed, rescuing native plants, and planting sedges. These, and the controlled burns are all vital to the continued success and expansion of CFC’s award-winning restorations.

Photo by Donna Bolzman.

The volunteers working in the field may very well be some of the same volunteers who are throwing themselves into preparations for Citizens for Conservation’s annual Native Plant, Shrub and Tree Sale. Now in it’s 17th year, the sale is anticipated by gardeners near and far who are seeking to enhance the biodiversity of their backyards and local communities. CFC receives advance orders from return crowds and new gardeners eager to increase the biodiversity of their own properties.

Native plants increase the biodiversity because they don’t require fertilizers or pesticides, thereby providing healthier habitats for insects and animals and costing less money to maintain. Native plants also provide food and shelter for birds, butterflies and other wildlife and the deep fibrous root systems firmly anchor soil to help conserve water and prevent erosion.

Join us on Saturday, May 4 from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm at the CFC headquarters located at 459 W. Highway 22 in Lake Barrington, Illinois (across from the Good Shepherd Hospital) to learn about native plants and bring some home to your garden! And of course, CFC could not host the native plant sale without the dedicated group of volunteers who share their knowledge about the types of native plants to plant in specific landscapes.

April has some of the best jobs for volunteers because these jobs are filled with promise, the promise of good things to come.

An Old Pair of Gym Shoes

Posted on by
Reply

In the spirit of Earth Day, this month we invited Chicago Wilderness members to share stories about personal or professional volunteer experiences that improve the health of nature and our communities. Benjamin Cox, President, Friends of the Forest Preserves and Co-Steward, Dan Ryan Woods, starts off the April series with a short reflection on his experience as a long-time volunteer leader.

Photo courtesy Benjamin Cox, Friends of the Forest Preserves.

By Benjamin Cox

Someone left an old pair of gym shoes in the grass next to our Metra Train platform, which happens to be a stone’s throw from Dan Ryan Woods – one of the only preserves of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County in the City of Chicago.

That pair of shoes had been there for months. At times they were buried in long grass or partially hidden by fallen brown leaves and even covered with a dusting of snow. On this day, they were once again all too evident.

A couple weeks ago, I was early enough for the train – not to mention the warmer weather made it much easier to wait on the unprotected platform – that I had the time to pick them up and throw them in the garbage along with a couple of bottles. Litter really bothers me. But bottles, bottles are just waiting to be a huge problem to clean up if they are broken.

Noticing what I had done, a neighbor that is often also at that stop, said, “You’re a good neighbor. If we all did that the world would be a much cleaner place.”

He’s right.

For many years it has been my personal philosophy that just picking up three pieces of litter will make a difference. Let me explain. A great hike through the hills in the oak woodland at Dan Ryan Woods, for example, can quickly be ruined by focusing solely on litter and working hard to pick it all up. But, if I commit to just picking up three pieces, I can be at peace with having done my part today.

I can still enjoy my hike in the woods where we’ve been holding monthly workdays for more than 10 years. I know I did something. And, I can take solace in knowing that at some point I can join a group of volunteers and focus on a bigger clean up if needed.

Most of all, I know that leading by example does have an impact.

Using Controlled Burns to Restore Natural Areas

Posted on by
Reply

In the last week, you may have noticed an increase of photos on Facebook about controlled burns or perhaps even seen one in progress at a forest preserve or other natural area. In the Midwest, early spring and fall are the seasons for controlled burns – also called prescribed burns – and they are managed by natural resource professionals and trained volunteers to help restore natural areas.

Members of the Chicago Wilderness alliance are dedicated to protecting the lands and waters on which we all depend, which involves actively restoring and managing natural communities. Historically, naturally occurring fires helped maintain the native habitats in the Chicago Wilderness region. Today, controlled burns help control invasive vegetation and stimulate the germination and growth of many native plant species. To promote the safe and correct practice of controlled burns, Chicago Wilderness hosts trainings to provide individuals with the knowledge and experience necessary to safely join the crew of a prescribed burn.

Chicago Wilderness Controlled Burn Photography at Bemis Woods, Cook County. © Carol Freeman

Organizations throughout the region provide daily updates and educational materials about controlled burns to explain why this process is important for the natural environment. Below is a list of the forest preserves in the region and please visit the Chicago Wilderness Restoring Nature webpage for more information.

Photo courtesy Forest Preserve District of Cook County.

Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts about volunteer programs and opportunities that get you outside and contributing to the health of nature!