How leadership, collaboration, personalities, dedication, and vision
founded a "community of conservation."
On February 18, 2014, the board of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County approved an ambitious plan to restore robust ecological health to 30,000 acres of distressed woodlands, prairies, and wetlands scattered among the neighborhoods of the most populous county in Illinois. There had been nothing like it in history. According to the approved (but not yet funded) plan, the ecological restoration budget would increase to $40M per year. Four hundred trained and expert volunteer stewards (up from about 68 today) would be the principal healers of nature, on the ground, season in and season out. Five hundred full-time paid interns would learn and contribute. Thousands of citizen scientists and steward volunteers would have the honor and pleasure of devoting parts of their lives to healing nature. How did this stewardship revolution begin?
CHAPTER ONE
“We
wanted to change the world. But we wanted to do it as fun. While evil forces sought
to wreck the planet, we acted locally. Our hands were saving counterparts of the
rainforest – that we could touch. We made it a part of our lives, doing good,
one seed or weed at a time.”
North Branch Prairie
Project volunteer
Some of the inspiration and models for the North Branch
Prairie Project came from 1960s movements for civil rights, peace, and cultural
liberation. In the spirit of “participatory democracy,” on August 6, 1977,
thirteen people (initially recruited at a Sierra Club meeting) began to assemble
every Sunday, working with our hands to restore a nearly lost ecosystem.
People around the world now read our history. But the
written story dearly needs some “Myth Buster” debunking. We were new in ways
that most writers didn’t get.
Thus this account starts with a disclaimer. One part of the
myth in so many books was that of The Leader manipulating an “army” of
conservationists. The reality was so different from that. Yet I’m writing this
memoir from the perspective of the person who got the credit or blame for the
Great Leader-ism. I’m going to try to
tell this story from my perspective while doing my best to include what I can
of the stories of so many others who, overall, were much more important.
Yes, the model North Branch
Prairie Project got started as a
few to ten people a week responded to the initial invitation. They contributed because they believed it was time, and the mission was good. So, watch what
happened. Robbie Sweeny was the first group leader to emerge from these
recruits. One day she said, “You have too much to do. Can I take over the
herbicide?” For us, as a group, that was the real beginning.
Robbie was ex-military. She’d been a WAC or WAVE or other (then
somewhat unusual) female soldier. What’s going on with a young woman who
enlisted for a while and then dropped back out? This is a person who was
looking for something. Indeed, we all were.
Larry Hodak had come to know a bit about prairie in college.
Now he was an architect, or soon would be one, having to deal with a lot of
complicated office politics. In contrast, prairie was something pure that could
be his avocation. Thirty-eight years later, he’s still a leader. Initially, he
also wanted to include some landscape architecture in his resume. (Whenever
volunteers could connect something to their career goals, we all tried to
facilitate. It just made sense.) He brought to us the sketches, ideas, organization,
intensity, and vision that an architect can have for things that don’t yet
exist. He brought Chris, his wife or soon-to-be, who had advanced social skills
that Larry, Robbie, and I lacked. She helped establish a comfortable tradition
of food sharing; she leavened social cohesion.
Our spirit was not the doom and gloom of many activists
then. One day Chris and a few other young women were cutting dogwood with
loppers. The exercise required spreading arms wide and pumping them back
together with the force that cut the invasive shrub. It reminded Chris of an
(innocent? satiric?) exercise. She and the others soon chanted, “We must! We
must! We must increase our bust!” as the dogwoods fell, amid gales of laughter.
While doing good, we goofed.
Pete Baldo became our “Quartermaster.” He was good with
tools, and he felt pity for the unsharpened, unlubricated, disorganized mess Robbie
and I brought each week. He took them over. The quality of both our work and our
experience bumped up a couple of notches. Pete lived in far-off DuPage County
where his day job kept the Argonne Labs electron accelerator running. Just as
his day job was “cutting edge physics” – we all felt at least some vague confidence
= that we were “cutting edge ecology.” Physics had big machines and billions of
research dollars. But we were like Galileo building the first telescope out of
whatever he could find. The ecology of ecosystem restoration was so new that we
could be on the cutting edge with rakes, paper bags, and loppers.
Donna and Iris usually came together. Donna had the world’s
most beautiful teeth and taught dental hygiene. As our first fall’s seed
gathering season drew to a close and winter threatened, some of us might have
wondered whether we’d see each other again next spring. Donna and Iris
proclaimed the need for a mid-winter social, and organized it.
We had the last workday of our first year on December 18th
1977. According to our logbook, nine people cut brush. Our first 1978
workday was six people on April 9th. What happened to our group that winter, aside
from Donna’s potluck, if anything? I don’t remember. Decades later, we work all
winter long.
There was an influential much older woman whose name I can’t
even remember (now, 38 years later). But she came most weeks and casually
mentioned her classes with May Thielgaard Watts (perhaps the person most
responsible for launching the Chicago region’s citizen naturalists, a
generation before us). We made sure that this older woman was part of our group
decisions, which we made during break times. We wanted to be “the people” and
open to all, as displayed in the 1918 Forest Preserve District vision documents.
Some people somehow had copies of them and brought them, and we marveled and
discussed. From time to time, an older member of the group died. We began to
think of ourselves as an institution that outlives people. That too felt right.
Duke Riggen brought us art and peace. A working guy with a
working family in a working neighborhood, Duke didn’t own a car. He commuted to
his job by the el. Somehow he heard about us and borrowed a car to try out a
workday. Then he bought a car so he could keep coming. He didn’t tell us that.
He just showed up and started to learn. Sometimes during seed collecting or
brush cutting we’d feel otherworldly as the sounds of heaven circulated among
our ears. Over time we realized that those sounds were Duke, sneaking into a
thicket and playing a flute celestially, to nature and to us. This too is
leadership, and we were happy.
One day Robbie didn’t show. Her husband, Ross (who’d joined
us later) said that she’d intended to come but their neighborhood had been
“poster-ed” with anti-war flyers the night before, and Robbie felt it her duty
to spend the morning taking them down. I said, wryly, that Chairman Mao
wouldn’t have approved; that it’s anti-democratic to suppress speech; that the
right thing for Robbie to do would be to post her own counter-arguments
alongside the ones that troubled her. Ross, while working as an engineer, was
studying philosophy in the University of Chicago’s “Basic Program,” and he
would have been happy to consider the ethics. But the point, he said, was that
Robbie was sending a message. She wasn’t sure that she still fit in with this
group. She’d detected anti-war in our jokes; perhaps we’d seemed anti-military
and anti-her? The message from Ross meant we’d work harder to make sure that
everyone felt welcome and fit in.
Gail Schmoller propelled us to fame. She gathered seeds,
yes, that was appreciated; she cut some brush, okay. But one day she had a
proposition. Gail had a career goal – and a career need. She dreamed of building
a public relations business. The way you rise in that field, she said, was to
do exemplary work, build contacts, and get known. “The North Branch is quirky
and interesting,” she said. “If you let me, I’ll write press releases, plan
photo ops, and cultivate writers and editors. That will help us both. Deal?”
She did this free work for a couple of groups, but we were
the stars. Through the eighties and early nineties we would be regularly
featured from various angles in the Sun-times, the Tribune, in many national
magazines, and on TV. (But this gets us ahead of ourselves.)
David Painter (a carpenter) organized an inventory through
which the more botanical among us contributed to site-by-site lists of all
plant species. He started campaigns to seek out and restore target species that
we failed to restore through our regular seed gathering. Preston Spinks (another
carpenter) invented great “gismos” to make our work easier and grew rare plants
side by side with tomatoes and beans in his vegetable garden – for propagation
initiatives. Rufino Osorio (community organizer) brought spectacular Puerto
Rican food, taught us botany classes (even though he was just out of college,
and all his nature expertise was self-taught), and got us to pay respectful
attention to mushrooms. Some of the hardest working leaders were John and Jane
Balaban. He, a high-school teacher, and she, a hospital pharmacist, kept
records, became experts at identifying difficult plants (especially sedges),
and taught legendarily fine classes in many subjects.
Experts advised us too, and we increasingly needed them. Forest
Preserve staff provided leadership in ecology, human relations, and beyond. More
detail on the experts can be found at http://vestalgrove.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-history-of-collaboration.html.
CHAPTER TWO
In Chapter 2 we are supported (briefly) by the Illinois
Nature Preserves Commission. The main myth hovering over Chapter Two (that
needs Myth Buster debunking) is that we of the North Branch were Horatio Alger
characters – thinking up our brilliant work all by ourselves. We were
rebellious American frontier individualists, if you believe the histories.
What failures we would have been – if we’d done as promoted
(or castigated) by the journalists! It’s troubling to think that dedicated
young people around the world may be trying to duplicate this foolish paradigm.
Were we part of the cutting edge? Oh yes, but we studied and proposed and
listened from within the community of conservation professionals and
scientists. Did we resist pressures to shut up and conform, and did we thereby
discover and invent good new stuff? Okay, sure. But we did a lot more apprenticing
and learning than rebelling. Many cutting-edge mentors around us were key.
In the late seventies, the Illinois Department of
Conservation was finishing up a study that would change the world of nature. It
was called the Illinois Natural Areas Inventory, and it defined the concept of
a natural area. Through this many-year, many-hundred-thousand dollar study, we
learned that only 7/100ths of
1% of the land of Illinois was natural. Really? That’s pathetic and horrifying.
What’s more, the precious few surviving remnants were being destroyed and
degraded at a sickening pace.
The study was part, as some studies are, of a bureaucratic
strategy to defend a dull, passive agency from a courageous and bold one.
Really? Can a government agency be creative and courageous? Most people would
say, never. The Illinois Nature Preserves Commission was an exception that
tested the rule.
George B. Fell of Rockford had been founding director of The
Nature Conservancy. A visionary and initiator, he was not cut out to lead the
Conservancy into maturity, so he then returned to an earlier interest and started
the nation’s first modern state Nature
Preserves System. He got the needed laws passed and rounded up influential
people to accept appointments from Governors for this new commission.
Rarely was any agency as pure and determined as the early Illinois
Nature Preserves Commission (INPC) under General Secretary George Fell and his
get-things-done-guy Jerry Paulson. At that time, the big old, dull agency was the
Department of Conservation (DOC) – mostly “hook and bullet boys” focused on
hunting and fishing. DOC controlled the state parks and hunting and fishing
areas with a big budget and staff. INPC had no land, tiny budget mostly from
private contributions, and three or four staff people. But its influential (volunteer)
commissioners and supporters strove to get the best ecosystem remnants in
Illinois legally “dedicated” as preserves. Once the dedication documents had
been signed by the Governor and the landowner (whether a forest preserve
district, the DOC, or even private individuals), the INPC had the power to
prevent logging, building, hunting, or do whatever it took to save nature.
Someone else still owned the “property” – but the INPC had authority over the
nature. Advocates had been hounding the hook and bullet boys to set aside parts
of state hunting areas as nature preserves (thereby ending hunting and such
management as plowing for “wildlife food plots” to increase numbers of deer and
ducks). The promise of the Inventory was that the DOC would no longer need to
defend itself from unreasonable demands, limiting its losses to fewer, smaller
areas.
How does the North Branch fit into this? Jerry Paulson had
been hearing more and more about the admired work on the North Branch and set a
goal of hiring me to be Director of Public Information at the INPC. At that
point I would become the public advocate for the soon-to-be-released Illinois
Natural Areas Inventory.
Jerry had finagled a large grant (many times the previous
budget of the INPC) from the Joyce Foundation and hired me and half a dozen
others. Wow, for the first time in my life I had a respectable job doing what I
believed in. We half a dozen “Field Reps,” stationed around the state, were to
advocate, organize, negotiate and whatever it took to get the INAI areas
protected from destruction and dedicated into the Nature Preserve System. I
write “our job.” I didn’t want to be just Pub Info Director. I wanted
hands-in-the-dirt site-by-site conservation work. Jerry was worried I’d spend
my time on the North Branch Prairie Project. But I convinced him I could do
that in my free time, do my Public Information work, and at the same time do
the Field Rep work for the Inventory areas.
As it turned out, the greatest concentration of natural
areas in Illinois were in our Chicago region. Many were hitherto neglected
sections of forest preserves. For those, the greatest threat was weeds and
brush, as on the North Branch, and my
charge for those was to seek approval for North Branch like management plans
and organize communities to conserve them.
Thus I continued to go to most North Branch workdays on
Sundays while scheduling new events at other sites on Saturdays. My North
Branch friends were honored to be seen as a model. And some of the leaders saw
this as a fine opportunity for them to explore for themselves the additional parts
of the leadership that would be increasingly opened up by my absence. And I was
increasingly able to bring state-of-the-art expertise, such as it was.
Indeed, now I was personally at the heart of this
first-in-the-nation push to find and protect the remnants of true nature. In
order to educate people about it, I got to go to all the meetings where the
principles and strategies were discussed by the professors and conservation
staff. In order to protect the top priority areas, I was eagerly aided by the very
scientists and professionals who knew all that our culture knew – and what we
didn’t know.
As I learned all this (so I could write articles, give
interviews, illustrate slide talks for community groups), I also brought the
principles and techniques home to the eager stewards on the North Branch. Saws,
loppers, and seed bags in hand, these increasingly experienced “citizen
scientists” had an odd advantage over most sites where this work was now
starting to be done. The others were so important that everyone worried about
making a mistake. Free experimentation was out of the question on the last
finest “gems of nature.” But most North Branch sites were degraded enough not
qualify for the Inventory. They were perfect for trying options that the
experts wondered and argued about among themselves. And the FPD staff were naturally
relieved that this work (that they didn’t feel they had time or staff for) was now
being supervised by official staff of the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission (me,
still the same person they knew and got along with, but official, if anyone
asked) – and advised by the most respected experts possible.
It didn’t hurt that I was a hard worker, an eager listener,
and dedicated. When I helped out on my first controlled burn with seasoned
experts, I spent much of the time asking the leaders of the various parts to explain
fine points of what they were doing. The next burn I attended, I was in charge.
Too quick? Yes, except I’d learned enough to know that the North Branch burns
were no-brainers except for smoke management, and all that required was good
judgment. I’d burned these same sites repeatedly with (less trained and
experienced) FPD staffer Chuck Westcott. He appreciated us volunteers and tried
to make time for our projects, but he had so many other responsibilities that most
needed burns didn’t get done. He was committed to the cause and frustrated by
lack of time. The key moment came when he recommended to his boss, Superintend
of Conservation Roland Eisenbeis to “let Packard and the INPC take over,” and
Eisenbeis agreed.
Soon, all the North Branch Prairies got their burns under
the best conditions. They got good PR for it too. Crucial to our success was
the presence of so many excellent North Branch volunteer leaders. We might burn
six sites in one day. Experienced volunteers who’d managed to get time off from
their jobs knew how to collaborate and divide responsibilities. To do a classic
“circle burn” required two teams, each having one crew boss, one person who
spread the fire (often the boss), one person with a water back pack to pounce
on any flames heading in the wrong direction, and a couple of “fire swatter”
wielders including one who “mopped up” and patrolled the down-wind side. Other
crews might “prep” a site before the main crews arrived – and stay behind after
they left, ostensibly for more mop-up, but mostly to talk with passers-by who
wondered what this was all about. The more people who learned what this was
about – the more friends and community we enjoyed.
In time I was leading crews in eight counties. Since there
were only a few good burn days in most years, I needed identify, train, and
empower as many fine leaders as possible. These people included agency staff
and volunteers. On the North Branch, increasingly the burning got done without
me. That worked well, given the pool of fine leaders (especially including
engineer Ross Sweeny and construction company owner Neil Peck).
During this period I’d go to all the North Branch workdays I
had time for. But now there were the Palatine Prairie Volunteers, the Friends
of the Fen, South Suburban Prairie Project, and others that I had organized and
empowered. I kept in touch enough to continue to learn from what all these little
communities were developing (committee structures, newsletters, social events,
management techniques, teaching initiatives) so that I could pass ideas on to
the other congregations.
Then, disaster. The Illinois Nature Preserves Commission and
Natural Land Institute jointly bit the dust. The powerful old Illinois
Department of Conservation finally rid itself of the uncompromising crusades of
George Fell. The Illinois legislature eliminated the entire budget for the
Commission, and Fell and the entire staff were unceremonially let go[1].
CHAPTER THREE
It seemed like the entire structure of the idealistic world
we’d found might be gone in an instant. Fortunately, after some agonizing
weeks, like the cavalry to the rescue, The Nature Conservancy hired all the
Field Reps. For years the Conservancy had been buying threatened woods,
wetlands, and prairies and turning them over to various public agencies for
good management. It had promised its funders and donors that these lands were
permanently protected by the INPC. So it found some emergency funds to save the
staff temporarily, a move acceptable to its most important partner, that same
DOC, since with George Fell gone, we small fry weren’t much of a threat,
especially as not-for-profit staff rather than INPC staff.
The Conservancy at that time was a mix of youthful idealism
and muscular, entrepreneurial creativity. Director Ralph Brown, a hard worker
and fine leader, said to me essentially, “I want you on my staff. I don’t
understand quite what you do, but I know it’s highly regarded, and we’re under
pressure from our national office to upgrade our stewardship. Go ahead, do it.”
The INPC had previously rejected suggestions for a volunteer
steward initiatives as too non-professional. But in the wake of losing its
entire staff, the Commissioners quickly approved a joint INPC/TNC “Volunteer
Stewardship Network.” We sent out an emergency appeal for help. In Sierra Club
and Audubon newsletters – and through every other outlet we could find – we
told the scandalous story of the sacking of the INPC staff and begged for
reinforcements. I started with a list of the most important Nature Preserves
and Inventory areas (potential preserves) in northeastern Illinois. In the first
year an impressive sixty woods and grasslands got volunteer stewards, most of
whom with our coaching started building communities of restoration volunteers
and advocates.
Some “stewards” didn’t work out. Environmentalists up until
that time were largely protestors. Despite our coaching, some “stewards”
thought their jobs were to write excoriating letters to staff, itemizing their
management failures, expressing lofty ideas in inspiring language, and
contrasting the staff’s failures and incompetence. That wasn’t helpful. Few
agencies had the budget or ecological knowledge to restore health to the gems
they happened to own.
Our coaching to stewards was simple. Start a positive
relationship with the staff. Respect that they’re busy. Report problems in a
friendly way and offer to help. You’ll probably get turned down at first. Fine.
Stay friendly and positive. Keep at it. Don’t give up. When at last you’re
approved to start some good initiative, keep it as simple and painless for the
overworked staff as possible. See that they get positive recognition from
yourself and other taxpayers and constituents who appreciate the preserve.
Celebrate success.
With so many sites, so many owning agencies, so many
ecosystem types, and such complicated organizational relationships – we at
Nature Conservancy could give only very partial coaching. The stewards had to
work with staff and the best available experts to develop their own goals and
work plans. Fortunately, pretty much every expert in the region was on the list
of consultants we distributed, and pretty much all were generous with their
time. Everyone believed in the goal.
It made life a lot easier that most of the sites had the
same few simple problems for the stewards to get started on. Invasion by
buckthorn sickened every site in the region. Learning to identify it, cut it,
and herbicide the stump was all a volunteer initially needed. Once the
buckthorn had been cut, the ecosystem gave great feedback. Suppressed
wildflowers and grasses (and often baby oaks) once again flourished. If you
could muster the energy, approvals, and helpers to restore ten feet by ten
feet, you were thanked by a garden of rare plants. If you managed 100 by 100
feet, you were thanked by butterflies, birds, walking sticks, and often
friendly and interested passers-by, who in turn thanked us too.
For a dozen or so most important sites, I was on the phone
and meeting with people every weekend to help, discuss, and coach. My most
important jobs were two: suggesting contacts and giving honest praise. But for
most of the sixty sites, I’d never seen them and never met any of the people
involved. For those, I personally responded in writing to sixty written reports
from the stewards, three or four times a year.
For example, tidbits of exchanges from vague memory from one
site:
SPRING REPORT: The flowers are
beautiful. I did identify a little buckthorn, but I don’t know about those
barrels dumped in the ravine.
SPRING RESPONSE: Really? Barrels? Look
recent? Can you tell what’s in them?
SUMMER REPORT: Yes, I checked
again; they look recent. No labels on them. Some are open and empty. Some are
sealed and heavy.
SUMMER RESPONSE: Have you asked the
preserve staff if they know about them? Do you know any group or individuals
who could help drag them out for disposal?
FALL REPORT: The staff was happy
that we rounded up some volunteers and lent us all work gloves. We hauled
barrels and junk to the parking lot, and staff trucked them away. I got the
impression that the staff figured out where the junk came from, and we won’t
see any more dumping. But we’ll keep an eye on the place.
FALL RESPONSE: Great work! What’s
happening with those buckthorns?
Over the years many stewards grew to be respected
conservation leaders in their local communities. We met them at our “field seminars,”
winter workshops and conferences (with breakout sessions taught by both
experienced stewards and the region’s best experts).
Dr. Robert F. Betz of Northeastern Illinois University was a
leader and inspirer. We cherished visits during which he’d observe and comment
and recommend. Ray Schulenburg, Dorothy and Doug Wade, George Fell, Floyd Swink
and many others inspired and educated us through writings, speeches, and field
tours of North Branch and other sites. Many of us went wherever we could go to learn
and report back. The Northern Illinois Prairie Workshop (at Fermilab in March
1978) provided a powerful model, and we stewards then helped organize this
important exchange every two years. It and its successors (Currently “Wild
Things: a chicago wilderness conference for people and nature”) continue to
this day, drawing 1,624 participants in 2015).
But as those early numbers of volunteers and sites climbed
and climbed, we sought more education resources. One initiative was “Prairie
University.” On the course catalogue, the college seal showed a buffalo wearing
a mortarboard and tassel. The seal’s legend read “Populus In Horto” or similar
Latin silliness. The courses included all those we offered to the stewards
along with the most fitting among the offerings of the Morton Arboretum, Field
Museum, Chicago Botanic Garden and various colleges. At that time these powerful
institutions actually offered little of much use to stewards, but we included a
few so that the staff there would notice that those offerings would draw more paying
students. Soon the staff were asking how they could get more of their classes
listed, and we’d then have the opportunity to explain what we were looking for.
Educational opportunities grew. Major institution began paying more attention
to ecosystem restoration.
Remember Gail Schmoller? Our prairie PR entrepreneur grew as
we all did. Every time a steward faced disaster and produced a miracle, she
helped put together a press release celebrating the ecology of the needy site,
the steward, and the drama. Local newspapers always ran these, and the Tribune
and Sun-Times sometimes did. We sponsored appreciation and awards dinners every
winter, often at the Brookfield Zoo’s Discovery Center. An inspiring (brief)
speaker would be followed by twenty or so (brief) awards to creative and heroic
conservationists. As the award paragraphs were read, the audience would throb
with electricity and pride. This is one way we learned and motivated ourselves.
Following the dinner, Schmoller would send press releases to the local papers
of every recipient – celebrating not just the person but also the glories and
needs of the until-then-unknown local woods, wetland, or prairie. That was a
way stewards met new neighbors and volunteers, and gained stature in the
community.
How powerful had this all become? When we launched the
Poplar Creek project, we found out. National experts increasingly said that
conservation and restoration had to advance to larger sites if we were to save
habitat for significant animals and not just little gardens of rare plants. We got
together with the Cook County forest preserve staff and cooked up something
bigger. Soon the FPD board had approved “Restore and Restock” – the expanded
program. We (TNC and FPD) jointly announced a big kick-off at our first site, six
hundred acres of Poplar Creek prairie and oak woods.
We had never done anything like it before. Dr. Robert F.
Betz of Northeastern Illinois University, the dean of prairie conservation,
would give the keynote – if anyone showed up. We had advertised for people:
“Might you be ready to volunteer for something big?” After Dr. Betz’ speech,
anyone up for it would be invited to take a hike with me, kick the tires of the
ecosystem, and find out who might perhaps want to volunteer.
To our amazement 80 serious and bright-eyed people came. I
watched them as Betz described the vision and the challenge. Quickly I enlisted
a couple of experienced tour leaders for a change in plans. When the applause
died down, I announced that, given the miracle of 80 people, we were changing
plans.
“Who’d like to forget the tour and meet now to plan for this
larger group, to start next week?” I asked. A dozen people raised their hands.
“Great,” I said. “I’m turning over this larger meeting to (somebody who’s name
I don’t remember) who’ll get everyone’s contact info and organize the site
tours. And, for you wonderful dozen, let’s meet under that tree away and focus,
right now.”
We stood in a little circle while I very briefly re-capped
the vision and what was needed. I asked, what are your skills, and what might
you want to take responsibility for?
Tom Waugh said, “I can lead brush cutting crews. I’ve done
it.”
Hilda Joy said, I’d edit the newsletter.”
Ed Taisich and Diana Granitto both offered to help lead seed
collecting.
Mark Simon said, “I used to do controlled burns professionally.
I’ll lead that.”
Rick McAndless said, “I’ve been a steward. I could work with
the newer leaders to see that the work gets coordinated.”
Barbara Hill said, “I’ll manage a database so we can keep
track of members.”
Carly Kreider had heard about the kick-off, couldn’t come,
sent her husband to get info, and showed up at our first organizational meeting
saying, “I’m VP for a local tech company. The people part of this is already amazing.
It can blossom more. I’ll find greeters, recruiters, some PR folks, and I’ll organize
refreshments and parties and socials to build spirit.”
It was like “instant community.” And they truly did creative
and ambitious jobs at all these things – coordinated by the wise leadership of
Rick and Carly. Some of the team were married; some weren’t. It didn’t make a
difference. They did their Poplar Creek jobs with the dedication and focus.
Twenty-five years later, celebrating their anniversary, honors were bestowed on
some who’d been leaders from the beginning, side by side with new leaders who
continue to sign on. You could see, way back then, that it would be so. The
people were likeable and competent. The time was right. Stewards got married to
each other, had kids, and brought them up partly as members of their steward
communities. The quality, size, and public support for Poplar Creek and many of
these ecosystems grew and grew.
Were all the groups this collaborative? Hardly. Often dominant
“Alpha” types came to hold the reins (and then reigned and reigned). In those
cases, I’d do my best to encourage less hierarchy and more collaboration. From
time to time I’d offer my favorite appropriation from the Tao Te Ching: “If leaders are terrible, people wail and
gnash their teeth. If leaders are merely poor, people say ‘Our officials are great,
and our lives depend on us faithfully doing as they direct.’ If leaders are excellent,
people say ‘Life is good; we’re doing this ourselves’.” As religions and Little
Leagues have long shown, somewhat authoritative leadership can be productive
and rewarding, just not as liberating of good energies as could be.
In the early nineties, facilitating all this work at more
than 100 sites in six counties were still just two or three of us at the
Conservancy and slivers of staff time from the land-owning agencies. More was
needed. We created regions (a county or a part of a larger county), each one of
which had a Regional Steward, Regional Ecologist, Regional Administrator, and
other leaders depending on needs and skills. All counties and many smaller
agencies recognized the need for more conservation staff. They hired staff to
do (with tractors, chain-saws, and front-end-loaders) the work that stewards
had been doing so impressively with their hands, powered by hamburgers or tofu.
They hired people to monitor the species and make ecological plans, even though
this field as yet had few professionals to choose from. Often they hired
volunteers.
Yet there were dangers within the growing potential. We also
needed something politically broader and socially deeper. Our attempt at that would
come to be called “Chicago Wilderness.” I named it and started planning it two
years before it was launched. But even within The Nature Conservancy, there
were hazards. I almost got fired a couple of times, since I didn’t pay adequate
attention to our own bureaucracy. National leaderships of big conservation
agencies regularly come up with new priorities, and the staff fails to
re-orient at their peril.
Fortunately, an opportunity arose. At first the Volunteer
Stewardship Network was tentatively approved by national as an experiment.
Later, during one of my near firings, some national leaders claimed that such
“grass-rootsy” work was not what the professional and business-oriented TNC
wanted. Our director and regional office decided to scrap the VSN, and only a
strong response from the Illinois board saved us[2].
Not long after, with new state and regional directors, the national invited a
presentation to the national board. Now it turned out that our work looked like
it would fit into a new major national initiative. It would be called the Last
Great Places, and it was truly a TNC revolution in the VSN’s direction. The
principles were that 1) the Conservancy needed much larger areas to seriously
conserve and restore ecosystems, animals, and processes, 2) to do that the corporate-based
Conservancy would need to get much more involved (as distasteful as it might
be) with government agencies, and 3) to do that we’d need public support and
politics.
That year, the Conservancy gave us in Illinois its annual
award for the nation’s best stewardship program, as a model for the Last Great
Places. We made plans to announce Chicago Wilderness, jointly to restore
200,000 acres of federal, state, and local conservation land with some of our
developing Prairie University partners and others including the Field Museum,
Brookfield Zoo, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, all the Forest Preserve
Districts, and twenty-five others.
It was barely in time. We were changing the world in major
ways – gaining powerful friends and and powerful enemies. Does our kind of participatory democracy work in
the political big leagues?
·
April 11, 1996: Cook County President John
Stroger announces Chicago Wilderness at a press conference at the Field Museum.
·
May 12, 1996: Front page story in the Chicago
Sun-Times (“Half Million Trees Face Axe”) launches sustained anti-restoration
campaign in the media (and behind the scenes).
·
September 1996: That same President Stroger
imposes a moratorium stopping all restoration in Cook County. A similar
moratorium in DuPage County is already in place.
But that drama will be the subject of Chapter 4.
WHAT’S COMING (some day)
Chapter 4: Anatomy of a Moratorium
Chapter 5: Chicago Wilderness (good news, bad news)
Chapter 6: Rescuing the Grass Roots (Audubon, Friends of the
Forest Preserves, Stewards Council, and others)
Chapter 7: The future?
Note written in January 2018
I have to admit that Chapters 4 through 7 still haven't been written, as such.
But the issues and dramas are partly covered in the post "After the Miracle" at: http://woodsandprairie.blogspot.com/2016/05/after-miracle.html
I have to admit that Chapters 4 through 7 still haven't been written, as such.
But the issues and dramas are partly covered in the post "After the Miracle" at: http://woodsandprairie.blogspot.com/2016/05/after-miracle.html
[1]
This little written-about melodrama is worth a chapter or a book of its own. But
perhaps all that fits here is that the DOC careerists and bureaucrats had been
biding their time. INPC had frustrated hook and bullet plans again and again.
Indeed George could be very hard to work with, for anybody (including the DOC’s
excellent, dedicated, and practical younger conservation staff). But the
opportunity for revolt came when the Commission stood up to an influential club that
wanted to use part of a nature preserve. The club asked its State Rep for help.
Without opposition from the DOC (and likely with encouragement), the
legislature zeroed out the INPC’s budget. George could see it happening before
the rest of us and talked about vultures circling.
[2] Conservancy staff that devoted parts of their time to the
northeastern Illinois VSN included Gillian Moreland, Jill Riddell, and Laurel
Ross.
Thank you so much for everything you have done and continue to do. Your post was fascinating and I look forward to reading the rest with great interest.
ReplyDeleteYour smart, strategic, and generous work is remembered by me, in a big way. Thanks again. Hope all is well with you too.
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