Most conservationists know about Henry Thoreau, John Muir,
Jens Jensen, Dwight Perkins, May Theilgaard Watts, Rachel Carson, and Aldo Leopold. But two recent
Great Contributors deserve to be better known. Below are some stories (and
lessons I learned) from decades of experience with them.
In the seventies and eighties, these men, Dick Buck and
Roland Eisenbeis, orchestrated a “modern synthesis” of the two elements that
make up the forest preserve vision. “Recreation in nature” had been the
original core idea. But over the decades, “recreation” and “nature” had drifted
apart. In Cook County especially, the Forest Preserve District (FPD) had put
its recreation resources almost entirely into bike trails, mowed play fields, golf courses, picnic
pavilions, cement swimming pools, and artificially stocked fishing
ponds with trees cut away and paved “beaches”. The money spent on “nature”
was pretty much bottled up in little “nature centers” with animals in
small, smelly cages, “maple syrup festivals” (i.e. pancake breakfasts that attracted lots of voters and politicians), and kids programs.
I got to know Eisenbeis in 1977 when I wrote a letter claiming
that rare prairies in the forest preserves were in desperate need of care. I
offered to recruit people to help.
Superintendent of Conservation, Roland Eisenbeis wrote back
saying, roughly: ‘We know where the real prairies are, not
the old fields you’re talking about, and we take care of the real ones just
fine, thank you very much, good-bye.’
I didn’t give up but gave talks to groups, called influential people, and led tours, asking people to support the “prairie project.” Over the next few weeks and months Eisenbeis got calls and letters from diverse people who supported the proposal. Two supporters were Dr. William Beecher, Director of the
Chicago Academy of Science, and Charlotte Adelman, an influential lawyer. This
was politics. I had a feel for politics from my history of 60s activism. Eisenbeis
understood it from his perspective as an upper-level decision-maker in a major Cook County
organization.
One day I got a call from Charlotte Adelman who said "congratulations" and, in response to my confusion, explained that she'd received a letter from Eisenbeis approving my proposal. A letter to
her? Why not to me? Perhaps he’d thrown my letter away long ago? In any case, I
quickly called him, trying to come across as an intelligent and
easy-to-work-with person. I got the sense that he knew the District was failing
its prairies, and it bothered him. He said I could recruit people to cut small
brush – and gather seeds to plant where the brush had killed the prairie plants. We
(the resulting North Branch Prairie Project) sent him regular reports on the
great work we were doing.
The first big test for Eisenbeis came the next summer. The
prairies we were restoring had previously been mowed (for misguided aesthetic reasons?
or casual recreation?). Even in their first unmown summer, they were dramatic
with gorgeous blooming prairie flowers. But in July, the District staff mowed
them all as usual, despite the commitment to us.
After one year without mowing, the northwest corner of Miami Woods Prairie looked like this. |
After the mowing, it looked like this. Would they keep doing it? |
Although no one would ever say it in so many words, I
suspected that the mowing was intentional sabotage of the Conservation Department
by the Maintenance Department. These two did not get along. Eisenbeis advocated
for more environmentally sensitive land management, but he had no authority
over it. The Maintenance Department ran the mowers, picked up the
garbage, left ruts and banged up trees. Unlike Conservation, Maintenance staff were all
“patronage” political appointees. The Maintenance chiefs had broad
discretion on decisions in their regions. Some were good, some poor, but none wanted
Conservation bossing them around. Perhaps some influential neighbor who
liked the mowed look had called the Alderman, who then called the Maintenance
department boss, who assumed that the Alderman would have more clout than the
Conservation Department.
We prairie volunteers were crushed. The mowing could have
been the end of the project. But as much as I was bothered by the mowing, I was
thrilled with the outrage and “ownership” that came from so many people who now
loved these precious prairies. Dr. Beecher, Atty. Adelman, and many regular
voters weighed in with the District. Perhaps one of the most important calls was
by the Democratic Ward Committeeman for the Sauganash area. (Folks from the
Sauganash Garden Club and the Sauganash Park Improvement Association were early
supporters and volunteers. They stirred him up.) A call from the Ward
Committeeman meant that we had serious Cook County political support.
Eisenbeis called and asked to meet me on site. Early volunteer leader Larry Hodak joined us for the negotiation, or
confrontation, or whatever it was going to be. As it turned out, Eisenbeis
showed up with four additional heavy hitters:
John Mark: Maintenance Superintendent for the North Branch
Division of the FPD
Sam Gabriel: Chief Forester for the FPD
Joe Nevius: Asst. Chief Landscape Architect for the FPD
Prof. Robert Betz: national expert on prairies
We agonized through great Dramas and Deliberations as we visited four different prairie areas.
There were two principal results. First, John Mark
seemed to learn that we prairie people couldn’t just be ignored. (In time, this
hard-working good man grew to like us.) And Joe Nevius was probably convinced
to tell his boss, the powerful Dick Buck, that the areas should be formally mapped
as prairies and that Buck, Chief Landscape Architect, should tell Maintenance
to leave them alone, which he had the power to do.
In those days, Buck and Eisenbeis ran the “lands” and “nature” parts of the FPD. (Of course, most of the personnel budget was “Maintenance” with
its huge patronage work force. Arthur Janura, the General Superintendent, dealt
with politicians, corruption, budgets, etc.)
Here’s another example of mentoring by Eisenbeis that has stuck
with me. General Superintendent Arthur Janura opposed buying
Wolf Road Prairie, the largest high-quality black-soil prairie in the state. I
was a leader in the campaign to convince County Board President George Dunne to
over-rule his Forest Preserve chief and buy it. With the campaign in full swing, one day Eisenbeis called me. An important election was a few days away, and Dunne wanted my help in removing the
contentious Wolf Road issue from the next day’s Board meeting. "He’s agreed to
buy it," Eisenbeis said. "Could you tell the opposition that you support
removing it from the agenda?"
But, for reasons he couldn’t explain, neither Eisenbeis nor
Dunne was willing to put anything in writing or speak to the press about what
had become a contentious issue. I feared (perhaps wrongly) a double-cross
after the election. In a series of increasingly tense phone calls, I insisted
on something official, and Eisenbeis repeatedly promised to get back to me, negotiated with Dunne
or someone, and called me back, each time with not enough of an improved offer. It grew more and more tense. Finally he called back to say, "The President says that if you inform the
press, we will informally confirm the promise with them."
That made sense to me, to the great relief of Eisenbeis. And
it was then he then gave me the advice that has come back to me often. I wonder what I would have said to the press if he hadn’t coached me. I
certainly had in my mind a great many stories from “the battle to save Wolf
Road Prairie” that would have made juicy copy for reporters.
But my attitude changed totally when Eisenbeis said,
"Remember, Steve, when you talk to the press on this: It’s a wonderful
world, and we’re all working together."
After we hung up I found myself laughing. His coaching was so much the opposite of what I would have done. It was hard for me to do. Perhaps I'm a slow learner. But it seemed so wise - and was expressed so well. As it turned out, following his advice resulted in an editorial in the Chicago
Sun-Times that rang with glowing praise for Dunne’s statesmanship in buying the
prairie. Such a ‘thank you’ from us would earn conservation many favors
from Dunne’s office for years to come.
On the other hand, when we prairie folks finally met Buck in
person, a whole new world opened. Half a dozen of us North Branch Prairie Project
leaders met Eisenbeis and Buck in the FPD Board Room. Eisenbeis was caring and
lofty. Buck was practical, logical, and get-things-done. We had requested the
meeting to review our work in a letter that listed a half dozen requests. As we
went down the list, the District turned them down, one after another. When we
finally got to the last one (allow us to manage Somme Woods Prairie?), we were feeling
rather beaten and hopeless. But to this one, the District said, yes. (We were
thrilled as this site was then much bigger than all our others put together.)
Buck sized us up. We had taken “no” for an answer on most issues with good
grace. He started to teach us practicalities, for insiders.
The FPD was not an easy work environment for people who cared. Eisenbeis for decades tried in his own way to maintain standards within an organization that then seemed hopelessly riddled with patronage and corruption.
He fought for his Conservation Department to be able to hire quality people –
rather than just hacks with political connections. The pressures were great,
and many good people fell apart. One naturalist led inspiring field trips when he was sober,
but increasingly the tour bus would pull up in front of his vine-draped cottage, and the
assistant tour leader would assess how badly the man staggered down the
walk. Often the decision was to close the bus door and drive off, leaving him to
stagger back to his house.
Eisenbeis told me of another official often being too
drunk to speak at scheduled community events. At least the fellow would have the sense to send Roland up to the podium in his place. But then the drunk supervisor would sit in back the
whole time loudly muttering slurred comments like: “He douszzn’t knoooow wha
he’zz talkin’ abouuuu!!!” Eisenbeis would just carry on.
We stewards puzzled over how the FPD worked. At one meeting, after Eisenbeis made a
certain comment, Buck burst forth angrily with “What did you give 'em that
for!?!?” None of us volunteers quite understood what we had been “given.” FPD
politics were complex. Nor did we see Eisenbeis as the favorable and Buck as
the unfavorable official. We very much saw Eisenbeis as the guy who understood conservation
and our goals and Buck as the guy who understood how to achieve them. We didn't want to do anything that Buck thought was a bad idea. Buck’s outburst
also led us to see these discussions as having real consequence. Both men represented the District, and their decisions could be relied on.
Buck worked to educate us, without giving away details that
would result in blow-ups. Some of our suggestions were too hard to achieve for
a wide variety of reasons: union rules, internal politics, special concerns of
local politicians, and certain kinds of commitments that we’d be wise not to
delve into too deeply.
He would warn us about his boss: “Janura thinks you're trouble. I don’t. But he does.” I took that coaching to mean that Buck wanted
us to understand what our various actions and requests were costing us and him. Buck was
willing to help with what could practically get done. He was not interested in
lofty sentiments, losing campaigns, or wasting energy or time. At one point,
other environmentalists were loudly criticizing the District over some issue.
Buck told me, “You’ve got to stop that.” I replied that those critics weren’t
us. He said sharply, “Oh yeah, I mean stop your friends and relatives.” This was a
metaphor; he was comparing us to elements of the Democratic political machine.
I asked if he really thought our "prairie folks" were the same as the environmentalists criticizing the FPD on some other issue. He responded, “You say they’re different. I say they wear
the same size shoes!” That ended the discussion. He was unreasonable on
purpose. I thought about it and understood him to be saying, “Don’t give me a
logical argument. You want to be successful in this world? I’m telling you that
the people who count see these green critics as you; they’re hurting your cause; and you need to deal
with them. Figure it out!”
One time Buck dragged me into his office to show me the framed photo over his desk that, he said, summarized the forest preserves. The old,
black-and-white, faded photo showed some heavy-set ethnic women swinging
together on a swing set in a picnic area. They had happy faces. “That’s what
it’s all about,” he said. The preserves were a place where
working people could relax and be happy.
Buck worked very effectively to get more land bought and to
develop a trail system on which people could hike and bike through nature. He
told stories about how legendary General Superintendent Charles “Cap” Sauers
planned and plotted for the future of the District’s woods, wetlands, and
prairies. But fundamentally the District depended on the will of the five
million citizens of Cook County. How many of them cared about the quality of
the ecosystems?
Eisenbeis and his predecessors wrote and published weekly “Nature
Bulletins” for 20 years, ending in 1964. They discussed birds, oaks, prairies, and
mushrooms (including how to cook them) – encouraging people to “take a walk … pack a sandwich in your pocket … travel light.” But the old-time nature-study mentality seemed to be fading. One District staff naturalist told me of lobbying Eisenbeis
for more resources to save prairies from brush. According to the naturalist,
Eisenbeis replied, “I could count on one hand the number of Cook County voters
who care about prairies.”
But both men had open minds. They changed as they saw hundreds
of volunteers becoming stewards of the District’s best prairies, savannas,
woodlands, and wetlands. Thousands showed up at our “Wilderness Days” and “Prairie
Conferences.” Newspapers and TV celebrated the dedicated volunteers and the preserves they protected. Buck and Eisenbeis worked together to
promote this new constituency and protect it from politics.
On the other hand, Buck would go only so far in accepting
public participation in decisions. He believed that professionals had to decide.
The needs of the preserves were too complicated. “You don’t ask people,” he
once told me. “You do it to ‘em. When it’s good, they’ll like it.”
When Buck retired in 1988, John Dwyer (U. S. Forest Service)
and I were the only “outsiders” invited to the little retirement party. When Buck
got up to speak, this brass-tacks-practical man used words that seemed deeply
searching about the fundamental vision of the District. He was turning over his
leadership to his assistant, Joe Nevius. He wondered out loud about how the
vision he worked for would fare in the days ahead. He even questioned whether
Nevius really believed it or had just been going through the motions to please
his boss. Buck did not articulate that vision. Lofty words were not what he was
about.
Rickard Buck photo by Daily Herald |
I believe I saw each of these generous mentors only once
after they retired. Buck utterly surprised me at the kick-off of a big new
restoration project for the Poplar Creek preserves in 1989. After I spoke, a
crowd of people gathered to ask questions or offer to volunteer. One
non-descript bearded older man waited patiently until most were gone. When I heard his voice,
my jaw dropped and eyes bugged out in realization that the man behind the beard was THE Dick
Buck. His eyes sparkled at my surprise. He clearly liked this new
big project. We had a great little talk, although he seemed not to want to say
anything about the District.
With Eisenbeis, I don’t remember where or when we spoke, but
I remember his words distinctly. (Note: all the quotes in this piece are
approximate. They’re what I remember after all these years.) I kept trying to
ask the retired Roland if he could now give details about curious puzzles from over
the years of trying to work out various problems. He was patient but gave away
few secrets. Finally, in a friendly way, he said: ‘Steve, a person can’t talk about
this stuff. They’ll get you – one way or another. They’ll go after your
pension! I’ve seen ‘em do it!’
With these two gone, we conservation volunteers and partner
organizations no longer had the counsel we needed to avoid mine-fields. The political
explosion called “The Moratorium” followed – and a lot of hostility between
some staff and some conservationists. I wondered how Eisenbeis really felt about how we muddled through the resulting mess.
Recently, after his death, his family suggested that the Chicago Tribune talk
with me to get quotes for Roland’s obituary. That suggests something.
Richard Buck died at 76 in 2006. Roland Eisenbeis died at 99
in 2017. Both of them live on – in a Forest Preserve District that benefited from vision and improved competence thanks
to their spirit and work.
The “Next Century Plan” is a Forest Preserve vision for the
next 100 years. It's the pro-nature, pro-public, forward-thinking plan
that Roland Eisenbeis and Richard Buck would both have been proud of.
Eisenbeis obituary: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/obituaries/ct-roland-eisenbeis-obituary-20170519-story.html
Buck obituary: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dailyherald/obituary.aspx?n=richard-lee-buck&pid=20174993
Next Century Plan: http://nextcenturyconservationplan.org
Two bonus photos:
Companion photo to the one by Larry Hodak, above. In a more degraded part of Wayside Prairie, discussing whether the North Branch Prairie Project had a future. From left: Larry Hodak, Sam Gabriel, Robert Betz, and Roland Eisenbeis. Larry is a leader of the North Branch Restoration Project to this day. Both he and I thought it important to document this event.
You looked just as idealistic and determined in the 1970’s as you are today. I can see why they let the ‘prairie folks’ manage Somme Woods Prairie. They were probably thinking, “Give them something to keep them busy so they stop asking us stuff.” I don’t think anyone anticipated how much the initial effort would grow.
ReplyDeleteI think people doing habitat management should realize that the backward steps the ‘prairie folks’ faced are not unusual when an area is managed by a bureaucracy. My local parks department (or their contractors) continues to spray herbicide on restoration areas to no discernable benefit and often mows during the dormant season before the conservation department has an opportunity to burn.
One rather ironic outcome of the yearly mowing is it makes the areas easy for the geese to access. The geese then repeatedly graze on all the grasses, sedges, and even the spiderwort. The ironic part is one of the selling points for planting prairie species along the pond was it would deter the geese. I’m sure the geese would be deterred if the area could escape mowing for a season.
I am hopeful that eventually signs will get posted along the restorations telling park district employees and contractors to not spray or mow without first consulting the conservation department. It may take many more thousands of dollars of damage and a mower or two getting stuck in the mud before signs get posted. However, I hope it won’t take too many more mishaps before the parks department consults its conservation staff before doing things.
I enjoyed reading these reflections. I did have a couple meetings with Roland Eisenbeis. I never met Dick Buck.
ReplyDeleteThe FP seems more responsive (less insular) now. I wonder if it is or if they have just learned to project a responsive image.