Deadline Nears - The Passion of Bell Bowl Prairie

LATEST NEWS:

• A lawsuit to stop the bulldozing was announced at a press conference yesterday (October 27th). See press coverage at: https://www.wifr.com/2021/10/26/environmentalists-fight-save-bell-bowl-prairie-land/ and https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/environment/ct-rockford-airport-expansion-bell-bowl-prairie-injunction-20211027-y645c342rzbvfnacmiwo2qm5re-story.html

• The rally that was planned for the airport today (October 28) was partly canceled by the local organizers due to weather – however, there will still be a vigil at 4:15 pm at the same location (60 Airport Drive, Rockford).  If you attend, dress for rainy weather.  (https://www.facebook.com/events/287854939825798)

 

• Friday, Movie showing, 6:30 pm at the Nordlof Center in Rockford (118 N. Main Street, Rockford) 

• Saturday, People for the Prairie, 12:00 pm at the Nordlof Center in Rockford. March/Walk for the prairie to follow at 2 pm.  

 

ORIGINAL POST:

If you want to contact someone influential or attend the rallies to save Bell Bowl Prairie, now's the time!

The Chicago Tribune published an especially passionate and insightful plea to Rockford airport officials (see below).

It's worth a read.

But it left out one important perspective - an explicit consideration of Bell Bowl Prairie biodiversity. Yes, prairies in principle deserve better treatment than we have given them. They do good for air, water, and carbon sequestration. But little Bell Bowl is more than a few additional acres of ecosystem services. It's also an irreplaceable gene pool, unmatched anywhere. This little site harbors species and genetic alleles of many plant and animal species (along with soil micro-organisms) of potential high importance to medicine, agriculture, science, ecosystem adjustment to climate change and many other purposes. (See links below.) 

Column: Rockford airport officials have the chance to shock us — by doing the right thing for a prairie

By REX HUPPKE

CHICAGO TRIBUNE | OCT 25, 2021

I’m offering members of the Chicago Rockford International Airport board a chance to make themselves famous. A chance to do something wholly unexpected in this day and age: The right thing.

Surrounding the Winnebago County cargo airport is the Bell Bowl Prairie, a frozen-in-time natural wonder that shows — in what is admittedly now an odd and inconvenient location — what Illinois once looked like when it was prairie land teeming with native plants and proper insects and critters. You know, before we all came along and mucked everything up.

The airport is expanding so it can ship more of the things we need and surely a good number of things we don’t need but want to buy anyway. That expansion, on Nov. 1, will lead bulldozers right over the Bell Bowl Prairie. When natural prairies meet bulldozers, the bulldozers always win. And we, who should be stewards of the prairies, lose.

Holly Jones is a restoration ecologist at Northern Illinois University. She recently said on Northern Public Radio: “Illinois is the prairie state, but we’ve lost 99.99% of our prairies to development and agriculture.”

That makes our state’s nickname — “The Prairie State” — a lie. We should be sued for false advertising, or at the very least ashamed for decimating the thing that made us ... us.

Jones continued: “Prairies are critical to peoples’ health and well-being. They scrub toxins out of the air and water, absorb floodwaters, and their deep soil root systems hold carbon more reliably than forests do in many instances. Bulldozing one more patch of prairie to make a wider runway at the airport is shortsighted. It robs future generations of the opportunity and health benefits prairies provide.”

Thus far, airport officials have balked at pleas from academics, environmental groups and individuals to save the Bell Bowl Prairie. In fact, the only reason the prairie is not presently plowed under and on its way to becoming a road or building or something decidedly un-prairie-esque is because federally endangered rusty patched bumble bees were found foraging in the prairies earlier this year.

Airport officials agreed to stop work on the area until Nov. 1, which is after the foraging season. It was nice of the airport to do that, much in the same way it’s nice to offer someone a meal before you send a 111,000-pound, 450-horsepower Caterpillar D9 in to bulldoze their home.

(If you’re reading this and you’re a rusty patched bumble bee, I encourage you to continue foraging, as you seem to be the only thing keeping the prairie intact.)

I reached out to officials at the Rockford airport and asked if they would please not destroy a rare ecosystem. I even asked really nicely.

In response, they sent me a statement that reads like it was written by a team of lawyers taking turns pouring motor oil on a nest of endangered piping plovers: “Chicago Rockford International Airport (RFD) went through the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Environmental Assessment process” blah blah blah, “RFD followed all guidelines and rules set forth by the FAA, Federal, state, and local government,” yada yada.

Look, I’m not accusing the airport of doing anything legally wrong. I’m just asking them to do something that’s actually right.

Many have written eloquently about this 5-acre, high-quality patch of virgin gravel prairie and its more than 150 species of plants and birds and bees. But capitalism tends to roll over eloquent descriptions of environmental wonders like the aforementioned Caterpillar D9 rolls over rare native plants.

So let’s cut to the chase: This prairie doesn’t have to be destroyed. There are reasonable alternative options, and even if they cost more money, WHO CARES? The cargo business is booming these days, and the airport isn’t going to go under if for once — FOR ONCE! — the people on the bulldozer side broke down and decided to do the right thing.

There is no gray area here. When faced with destroying one of the few remaining patches of native Illinois prairie or LITERALLY WIPING IT OFF THE FACE OF THE PLANET TO MAKE YOUR AIRPORT A LITTLE BIGGER, the right answer — morally, ecologically and even from a public relations standpoint — is to save the patch of prairie.

Preservation is not some cute but idealistic idea. It’s a necessity, and the “preserve” part of that applies not just to plants and animals. It applies to all of us.

What I’m asking here is for the airport board to shock the world by doing the right thing, even if it means slowing the expansion a bit. Trust me, if the board saves Bell Bowl Prairie, people who care about this sort of thing — and, for the record, that should be all of us — will have scraped chins from their jaws hitting the floor in abject shock.

And I will do everything possible to make sure the world hears about and appreciates how Chicago Rockford International Airport chose to put the environment ahead of its own expansion. I will write a column hailing the airport and its board for showing the kind of leadership people in this country are desperate to see. I will shout, in every medium I can find, that the people we sadly expected to do the wrong thing finally came through and boldly did the right thing.

I will also personally fist-bump each of you or, if properly masked and vaccinated, and with your permission, give you a hug.

Robbie Q. Telfer, a conservationist and adult learning programs assistant at the Morton Arboretum, wrote in a recent Tribune op-ed: “Wherever you live, a Bell Bowl Prairie is facing a bulldozer. With each wild space that is scraped off the planet, we lose countless memories and richer futures. So here’s a future we could build instead: Make our ancient remnants the living, beating hearts of habitat restoration. Stitch every old bit back together with tallgrass thread. We can become the Prairie State again.”

C’mon, airport people. Break the mold. Think of the remarkable good that can come from one unexpected decision.

Be the catalyst for change, not the inhibitor. Save Bell Bowl Prairie! 

Sign up here to receive Rex Huppke’s columns by email as soon as they are published.

rhuppke@chicagotribune.com

Blog Post Notes:

There are alternative plans that would keep Bell Bowl Prairie safe and allow for the same amount of airport expansion. 

Sorry I didn't know how to make the Tribune's links work in this hurried post, but you can get them at the Trib itself. 

For previous Strategies for Stewards posts on Bell Bowl Prairie see:

https://woodsandprairie.blogspot.com/2021/10/bell-bowl-update.html    

and 

https://woodsandprairie.blogspot.com/2021/09/biodiversity-vs-bulldozer-soon-in.html

Prairie advocate Michael Swierz, who has brought great energy to the campaign to save Bell Bowl, contributed the following poem, which sums it all up nicely: 

Bell Bowl Prairie

Prairies are precious
Prairies are rare
Prairies need people
Prairies need care

Bell Bowl is Rockford's
last old growth.
Airport or Prairie?
We want both.

Acknowledgment

We who care about the prairie owe a debt of gratitude to the people who have brought new energy to this campaign when they found out about it, so late in the game. These people include Jack White, Cassi Saari, Michael Swierz, Matt Evans, Sam Chavez, Domenico D'Alessandro, Amy Doll, Don Miller, Elsa deBecker, Christos Economou, Katie Kucera, and others.

The basic historical thanks go to George and Barbara Fell, the Natural Land Institute, and Sinnissippi Audubon Society, who watched over Bell Bowl Prairie for decades. The history of current Bell Bowl planning debacles should be researched, written, and learned from. Some say there are scandals here.