Illinois Beach: new volunteer Strike Force, Dignitaries, and big Anniversary

 

It one of the most diverse and important Nature Preserve in Illinois. It's also grievously afflicted by malignant invaders. It needs more Friends.

 

On August 28^th, many conservation notables will be featured at a celebration of the 60^th anniversary of the founding of the Illinois Nature Preserve System in 1963. We'll also celebrate the first Nature Preserve – Illinois Beach. And the Nature Preserves Commission is expected to vote to add another 186.42 acres to this 1080-acre Nature Preserve. When signed by Commission Chair George Covington and Governor Pritzker, this protection will be permanent. 

Does green politics not impress you? It should, because biodiversity – and the planet generally – desperately need friends, in other words, politics of a sort. The Earth is lost if we can’t assemble a working consensus on how to live here.

So, starting in July, a new group has been doing what we can to help out.

Thus, this post joins the sublime with the ghastly. Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves believe good-hearted people will rise to rescue Illinois' most sublime and needy landscape  – the prairies, savannas, and marshes with millions of rare animals and plants that grace Illinois Beach Nature Preserve. There’s nothing like it. Grade A prairie that stretches away from you to the horizon. Uncountable rare orchids, gentians, birds, pollinators, and other marvelous obscurities. Beset with malignant invasives.

 

At this historic moment, Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves are helping launch something long-needed but not possible. The new initiative doesn’t even have a name yet, because those who form it should be part of the naming. Suggested so far: “Green First Responders.” “Eco Strike Force.” “Triage Group.”

 

Much of the above is over-brief. More details below.  

 

Dead River divides the preserve in two. The expanse north of the river is so vast that you can see only a small part of it in a day’s hiking on 17.3 miles of trails. South of Dead River, the biggest part, is almost always empty of people. No trails. It’s off limits to all except those with special approval for science or stewardship. Do you want to see it? Stick with us; we’ll go there. 

 

Here's Grade A (very high quality) black oak sand savanna. Wild lupine in bloom – spiced up with touches of orange puccoon and pink phlox. Not visible are the rare Karner blue butterflies that depend utterly on the lupine as food for their caterpillars. There is less of this high quality ecosystem every year. It needs us to help. 

 

High quality natural ecosystems are rare in Illinois (and the midwest generally) – compromising 7/100ths of 1% of the original. The largest very high-quality ecosystem in Illinois, 1,079 acres (including both sides of Dead River) are permanently protected as a Nature Preserve. But lot’s more is prime and worthy. The savanna shown above is outside the Nature Preserve. That will change on August 28^th when the Commissioners, Governor, and all will add more acres to the permanently-legally-protected preserve. 

 

When you look close, most of the preserve is gemlike:

But horrifyingly many patches look like this:

A killer plant wipes out all. Legal protection is not enough. Invasives are rampant in many areas. The malignant above is crown vetch. It destroys everything. The prairie survivors among it here are prairie dock (top left), two leaves of some rose, and toadflax (white flowers, top right). All else has vanished under the assault of the killer vetch.

Expanding patches of crown vetch and other invasives blight many areas. The solution is doable. A team of dedicated and resolute people could wipe it out. We've succeeded at worse-infected sites. (You or someone you know could be a part of it.) 

 

When you leave the savanna and walk across the prairie, the magic changes form but remains as intense. Lead characters above are sand coreopsis, blazing star, and Indian grass. 

Examples of super-rare plants you may see here and there are downy yellow painted-cup and clustered orobanche. But crown vetch, buckthorn, and reed canary grass, “the three horsemen of the invasives apocalypse,” could slaughter all. We will stop them. 

 

North of Dead River (top of photo) is the part of the preserve with trails. To the south is uninterrupted wilderness, savanna (left) and prairie (right).  The stripes are beach ridges deposited by wave action on the shore of the retreating Glacial Lake Chicago over thousands of years. 

At the moment this aerial photo was taken, the River is “Dead,” in the sense that it does not flow. The outlet to Lake Michigan is blocked with sand, deposited by lake currents. With any heavy rainfall, the river water rises, overtops the sand bar, rapidly erodes it away, and the river comes to flowing life, emptying into the lake, and then the wave-driven sand, sooner or later, blocks the river mouth again.  

We stewards of nature deserve our own powerful and sustained forces. Thanks to Friends director Amy Doll, it has gotten dramatically easier to help - fewer hoops to jump through. Key parts of stewardship require a cumbersome-to-get herbicide license. Now we can offer people a one-hour training. If you complete the training successfully, which any competent person can do, you get certified and field-trained for this needed, easy, safe stewardship. Melissa Grycan, a Natural Heritage Biologist with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, teaches. She’s assisted by Friends field rep Jonathan Sabath (who has already taught this new, one-hour course and certified new stewards at Kishwaukee Fen). 

In our experience, when Friends facilitates, people rise to the occasion. Some great “new people” may become long-term stewards at Illinois Beach. Others may decide to build this new iniative as a “hot shot team” that aids various preserves, wherever most needed to make a key difference.

 

No long-term commitment. Just see if it works for you. Perhaps you'll help design and build part of “a next generation” of nature-saving stewards.  

 

To find out more - contact Jonathan Sabath, Ashley Wold (one of the Peregrines), or Stephen Packard.

Or fill out this form?

And finally, 

if blessings are ecologically appropriate, 

bless all who help our rare, irreplaceable Nature Preserves! 

Acknowledgements, Apologies, and Secrets

 

Thanks to Mike MacDonald for all the gorgeous photos. 

A meaningful present to yourself and others is Mike’s thrillingly beautiful book - which can be reviewed and purchased through this link. 

Also check out Mike's compelling "immersive exhibit" at the Peggy Notebaert Museum.

And there's a 48 second video of the exhibit and its people here. 

 

Credit for caring for Illinois Beach goes to early advocate H.S.Pepoon (1920s), George Fell (1960s), generations of Illinois conservation staffers, Illinois Dunesland Preservation Association, and special homage to volunteers including Illinois Beach steward Don Wilson and Hosah Prairie steward Kathy Garness. Also, we hope, one way or another, to you. 

 

The crown vetch photo above is the only one in this post not from Illinois Beach. It's from a different invasives victim site, Palatine Prairie. It's a photo that tells the story well. (For the start of our Illinois Beach campaign against crown vetch, see our July 22 results.) 

 

Secret: A man-made erosion atrocity has been washing acres of rare, very-high-quality ecosystem into Lake Michigan. Advocates, organizers, lawyers, and others are needed to support efforts to reverse that. This issue would take more than a short post to explain. More on current efforts in future posts here. 

Chemical control of invasives: The chemicals used in stewardship are safe for humans. They're designed to kill plants. Unlike in agriculture, we use them in small quantities and target them carefully. In this form there's minimal risk to people.  But, for the biodiversity of Illinois Beach, they're a matter of life or death.

Thanks to Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves for their leadership on so many new initiatives, including the Peregrines and the new Illinois Beach celebration and task force. 

Thanks for proofing and edits to this post by Jonathan Sabath, Ashley Wold, Amy Doll, Christos Economou, and Kathleen Garness.