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Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Morton Grove Prairie Nature Preserve Rises Again!

Morton Grove Prairie seemed mostly gone. Years of minimal stewardship had left most of the site without prairie plants or animals. Instead the occasional visitors mostly walked through head-high brush and stands of tall goldenrod. 

This sad story was told in a post in October 2023.

Whose fault was it? Not the Morton Grove Park District that owned it. This good agency had no ecosystem scientists on staff, unsurprisingly, and they responded to what minimal input they got. Keeping rare Nature Preserves healthy in most cases is too hard without multiple inputs - including public participation and support. 

Now - an amazing comeback was recently reported by the stewards team empowered by Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves. 

It is reproduced below:

It Takes a Village to Save a Prairie

Admiring a Year of Good Stewardship ... Inspiring the Year Ahead 

March 18th 2024 - a new chapter begins for Morton Grove Prairie. 
A new community of neighbors assembled by Friends and the North Branch Restoration Project starts to battle the brush.


On April 3rd, 2024 the neighbors were joined by the Peregrines - a travelling Friends group of stewards mostly in their twenties and thirties. Gray dogwood, brambles, and willow bit the dust. Eileen Sutter, in the foreground, began recording the many prairie species that survived, many in small numbers.

Some of the early leaders - Eriko, Larry, Maria, Stone and Rebeccah - squint towards the camers. They claimed they were blinded by the prairie's bright future.

In May, the Morton Grove Park District removed many cottonwood trees that had grown and gradually shaded the eastern edge of the prairie. Without this important "heavy lifting" - restoration of much of the site would not be possible. 

Bit by bit the new stewards team identified needs and divided up responsibilities.

Ken heroically brushcut tall goldenrod, sumac resprouts, and other aggressive species throughout the growing season. And he taught others to do the same!

By summer, some of the better parts of the site were looking good.

But most of the prairie was just gone. It would not come back without help.

Weekday evening workdays focus on collecting seeds in the better areas. The work delivered many picturesque golden hours and dreamy sunsets. Here, Maria collects seed looks for seed of early-blooming species.


Here that selfsame Maria stands with seed bounty collected in the prairie by the new group in 2024 - in total, about 7 gallons of roughly 35 species. A generous supplement of hyper-diverse seeds also was donated to the cause by the nearby North Branch Restoration Project. Some of the genes in those species came from Morton Grove Prairie in the first place.

January 12th, 2025 - Those seeds were planted in every needy place.

March 27th, 2025 - the prairie burned! Trained Friends volunteers dragged fire with rakes. 
Bit by bit health is returning. 


Congratulations to All.

Here's to another Great Year Ahead!

Endnote: Prairie Species Rediscovered Here in 2024.

Achillea millefolium (common yarrow)

Agrimonia gryposepala (tall agrimony)

Allium canadense (wild garlic)

Amorpha canescens (leadplant)

Andropogon gerardii (big bluestem)

Anemone canadensis (Ccanada anemone)

Anemone cylindrica (thimbleweed)

Antennaria neglecta (field pussytoes)

Antennaria sp. (plantaginifolia or parlinii)

Apocynum cannabinum (hemp dogbane)

Asclepias purpurascens (purple milkweed)

Asclepias syriaca (common milkweed)

Asclepias tuberosa (butterfly milkweed)

Asclepias verticillata (whorled milkweed)

Caenothus americanus (new jersey tea)

Calamagrostis canadensis (blue joint grass)

Carex stricta (tussock sedge)

Carex bicknellii (bicknell's sedge)

Carex buxbaumii (buxbaum's sedge)

Cirsium discolor (field thistle)

Comandra umbellata (bastard toadflax)

Coreopsis tripteris (tall coreopsis)

Cuscuta sp. (dodder sp.)

Dalea purpurea (purple prairie clover)

Danthonia spicata (poverty oat grass)

Desmodium canadense (showy tick trefoil)

Dichanthelium scribneranium (scribner's panicgrass)

Dodecatheon meadia (eastern shooting star)

Elymus canadensis (canada wild rye)

Erechtites hieraciilfolius (american burnweed)

Erigeron philadelphicus (philadelphia fleabane)

Eryngium yuccifolium (rattlesnake master)

Eupatorium altissimum (tall boneset)

Euphorbia corollata (flowering spurge)

Euthamia graminifolia (grass-leaved goldenrod)

Fragaria virginiana (wild strawberry)

Galium obtusum (blunt-leaf bedstraw)

Gentianella quinquefolia (stiff gentian)

Geum laciniatum (rough avens)

Heuchera richardsonii (prairie alumroot)

Helianthus grosseserratus (sawtooth sunflower)

Hesperostipa spartea (porcupine grass)

Hypoxis hirsuta (yellow star grass)

Juncus tenuis (path rush)

Lactuca canadensis (canada wild lettuce)

Lespedeza capitata (round-headed bush clover)

Liatris spicata (dense blazing star)

Lobelia spicata (pale-spiked lobelia)

Maianthemum stellatum (false solomon's seal)

Monarda fistulosa (wild bergamot)

Oenothera gaura (biennial gaura)

Oenothera pilosella (prairie sundrops)

Oligoneuron rigidum (stiff goldenrod)

Oxalis stricta (tall woodsorrel)

Oxypolis rigidior (stiff cowbane)

Packera paupercula (balsam ragwort)

Panicum vergatum (switch grass)

Parthenium integrifolium (wild quinine)

Pedicularis canadensis (wood betony)

Penstemon digitalis (foxglove beardtongue)

Persicaria amphibia (water smartweed)

Phlox pilosa (downy phlox)

Polygonatum biflorum (smooth Solomon's seal)

Pycnanthemum virginianum (Virginia mountain mint)

Ratibida pinnata (gray-headed coneflower)

Roegneria subsecunda (bearded wheat grass)

Rudbeckia hirta (black-eyed Susan)

Rosa carolina (carolina rose)

Rosa blanda (smooth wild rose)

Schizachyrium scoparium (little bluestem)

Scutellaria parvula var. leonardii (prairie skullcap)

Silphium integrifolium (rosinweed)

Silphium laciniatum (compass plant)

Silphium perfoliatum (cup plant)

Silphium terebinthenaceum (prairie dock)

Sisyrinchium albidum (white blue-eyed grass)

Solidago altissima (tall goldenrod)

Solidago juncea (early goldenrod)

Solidago nemoralis (gray goldenrod)

Sorghastrum nutans (indian grass)

Spartina pectinata (prairie cordgrass)

Sporobolus heterolepis (prairie dropseed)

Stachys sp. (hedge nettle sp.)

Symphyotrichum ericoides (heath aster)

Symphyotrichum laeve (smooth blue aster)

Symphyotrichum novae-angliae (New England aster)

Symphyotrichum oolentangiense (sky blue aster)

Symphyotrichum pilosum (old field aster)

Teucrium canadense (american germander)

Thalictrum dasycarpum.(purple meadow rue)

Tradescantia ohiensis (Ohio spiderwort)

Trillium recurvatum (prairie trillium)

Triosteum perfoliatum (late horse gentian)

Verbena urticifolia (white vervain)

Veronicastrum virginicum (culver's root)

Viola sororia (common blue violet)

Zizia aurea (golden Alexanders)




Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Hard-hitting Headfire - a video captures it

As this 51-second video unfolds, Dave, Eriko, and Jo have happy smiles on their faces. They've spent more than two and a half hours putting in the backfire and the sidefires for this 158-acre burn. Once they're secure and the headfire shown in the video is lit, the human work is done, and the powerful - seemingly unstoppable (but see Endnote 1) - force of fire takes over.

Here, on March 10, 2025, Dave ignites the headier with a rake (see Endnote 2). The fire trailing behind him for its first half a minute is barely noticeable. But watch what happens next.  

Dave is pulling a rake of burning grass. The fire behind him is minimal, at first. But bits of burning grass fall off, starting little fires - and the rake picks up more grass as it goes - which then starts to burn and fall off in pieces - starting little fires every foot or two as he walks. He mostly just hikes the north edge of the trail, but he veers off a bit to avoid some areas where the grass along the trail is thin.

Next, our eyes are drawn to the increasingly intense fire that runs with the wind from the little flames Dave ignites. It's this raging fire that does the work the preserve needs. 

But, for contrast, watch the video again, and focus on the little fires which continue burning back toward the trail, flames just a few inches tall - a good contrast between a backfire and a headfire. 

Illinois Beach hosts one of the finest, largest, and most important remnant natural areas in the state. More than sixty endangered species populations depend on these savanna, prairie, and wetland habitats - as do thousands of other species of rare animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and more. Parts of these habitats have been under-burned and suffering, ecologically, because of lack of resources. (See Endnote 3.)

The evidence of degradation due to that lack of resources is widespread. Growing patches of such aliens as buckthorn, crown vetch,  and Japanese silverberry are only a part of the problem. Overabundant native woody species are the bigger part; they grow so dense that they shade out the grassland matrix on which this savanna depends. These out-of-balance species include grape, ash, aspen, and even oak. 

Thus those black oaks with persistent dead leaves exploding into fire represent some of the most important work that this burn is accomplishing. The oaks, like the grasses, are key to this ecosystem, but they need fire to keep them in balance. Many of these oaks will be "top-killed" by this fire, but they'll all re-sprout. Savanna oaks often live for long periods of time as "grubs" - or repeatedly re-sprouting oak bushes. The bigger oaks and some of the smaller ones will continue to grow larger. 

The crew that gets the credit for this fire consisted of one excellent burn boss from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources supervising a dozen folks in two teams (of mostly volunteers) from Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves. The 360 degrees of fire breaks added up to 2.4 miles, all carefully walked and tended by the two crews (one for the east half of the perimeter and one for the west). (See Endnote 4.) There will be another, longer post on the compelling details on this and another burn that we did on the same day - "coming soon" on this blog. 

Endnotes

Endnote 1.

This fire looks ferocious. Is it now unstoppable? Given the mix of loose sands, dense brush, and wetlands, it's probably not stoppable with vehicles. But there's a way to stop it. The answer is to fight fire with fire, that is, build a controlled backfire down wind. If we wanted to stop it, we'd go to a deer path or trail or road or whatever was handy and set a line of those little backfires that looked so mild on the video. We'd use rakes, water, and flappers to keep those fires from going downwind.  That fire would back slowly toward the coming headfire and use up the fuel. If needed, for speed, we might light a serious of close, parallel strip fires - from firebreak to firebreak - and when the headfire reached the line of no fuel, it would just go out. 

Endnote 2.

Igniting with a rake seems old-fashioned to some. Most crews use a drip torch. But some of us find rakes to have advantages in some situations. They're lighter to carry on a long day. They never run out of fuel or get plugged up. The lessen the amount of petrochemicals being deposited in the ecosystem. And when you're not igniting, that same rake is useful to reduce fuel around benches, signs, and certain young trees or shrubs, which we may want to spare from the burn for various reasons. 

Endnote 3.

The Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves assembled in 2019 because our Nature Preserves System, long a global model, was deteriorating from lack of sufficient staff, contract funding, and volunteers. The Friends work through education, advocacy, and training and empowering volunteers - especially expert volunteer leaders.

This burn was a good example. Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) heritage biologist Melissa Grycan, the logical person to lead today's burn, was required to be in central Illinois to burn another needy preserve on that prime day. There are more than 600 Nature Preserves, most of which need controlled burns, and only a handful of active burn bosses among the State staff. 

March 10th had the best burn weather in months, and Melissa trusted the Friends crew sufficiently that she did the work of rounding up Division of Forestry burn boss Dave Griffith, to be staff leader on the team today. He and the whole team deserve credit and thanks. Two certified Friends burn bosses were in the crew today, and more staff and volunteer burn bosses are in training - today for example. Many of the volunteers working and getting experience today may well become much needed burn leaders. And it will be a great growing season for the cherished ecosystem at Illinois Beach. 

Endnote 4.

An aerial photo showing the extent of the burn.

The principal (easy) firebreaks were the park road to the north, a wide trail to the northeast, Lake Michigan to the southeast, a park trail on the south, Dead River to the southwest, and the Dead River Trail and Nature Center parking lot and entrance road on the northwest. 


Acknowledgements

Thanks to Rebeccah Hartz, Jo Sabbath, Kathy Garness and Amy Doll for proofing and edits. 



Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Moving Ecosystems

What determined in whether a spot was prairie or woodland? 

Another way to ask, annoyingly to some (see Endnote 1): What determined "the most advanced stages of succession” for our prairies and forests for any given place. 

  

Southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois, and much of adjacent states, when first entering recorded EuroAmerican history, consisted of patches of prairie and timber (a word often used then for savanna and woodland). In some areas it was said that every 80-acre farm had some prairie and some timber. 

 

Henry Allan Gleason and other smart observers puzzled over the seemingly random nature of these patches in some areas. Gleason noticed prairie sites where the evidence suggested they once were woods - and visa versa. While it’s true (and reassuring to the orderly mind) that prairie occurred predominantly wherever the land was level (or on southwest-facing slopes) and that timber was predominant wherever the land was hilly (especially on north-facing slopes), striking exceptions were common.   


Fire tends to burn hotter and spread faster uphill than downhill. North slopes tend to be wetter and more likely wooded. Southwest slopes are the driest as they’re baked by the afternoon sun. Rivers may stop fires, so the east sides of rivers tended to be wooded. Wetlands sometimes stop fires; then again, with increased fuel loads, when they do burn they can burn very hot. Oaks (especially bur oak) tend to resist fire damage. But maple, the “climax” tree of long-unburned areas, tends to be wiped out when chance brings a hot fire through it. 

 

And what other principles might apply? Might knowledge of them help conservation decisions be rescued from the “playing God” charge - by appealing to history? 


One day it came to me, having watched brush patches and prairie patches move in response to controlled burns, that in this region the “climaxes” moved. Indeed there was order, but it was a different kind of order. 

 

I had noticed as I managed little nature preserve areas that patches of trees and shrubs sometimes shaded out and killed off nearby prairie areas. But also, with fires predominantly from the west, vigorous prairie fires sometimes killed trees and shrubs to the east of the grassland.

 

What could have prevented this sort of thing from operating on the larger scale … especially where so many patches made such a complex mosaic? Also, what could have prevented one community type from just taking over?

 

My hypothesis came to be that the “climax” vegetation in some areas was the northeast edge of both prairie and timber patches. There was a “rock, paper, scissors” dynamic going on here. On average, given the prevailing westerly winds, a prairie would tend to burn into and replace timber on the east edge of the prairie (the west edge of the woods). Also, because here in the temperate zone the sun at midday shines not from straight above but from the south, patches of timber would tend to shade out and replace prairie on the north edges. 


Oak Groves Move Northeast - Passing Two Hills

In this graphic, up is north, and the nested circles represent topo lines of hills.
Green represents oak woodland. White is open prairie. (See Endnote 2.)

Some hilly, north-facing slopes were prairie. And some flat, rich areas were timber. Most any piece of land in complex mosaic areas might alternate between prairie or timber. But perhaps the patches would move (at varying speeds, depending on topographics) generally northeast, irregularly, like giant amoebas. The southwest-facing slopes would last longest as prairie, but (except in extreme situations) they’d eventually be shaded by woody plants and become savanna or woodland for a while. Northeast-facing slopes (except in ravines and other extremes) would last longest in the woodland phase.


It's tempting to think that savannas might have been more stable, as their rich turfs had components of most all prairie and woodland species. But it would also be tempting to think that during periods of mild burning a savanna might evolve into woodland, and during periods of severe burns, pure prairie might win out. 

 

Such processes may have made for the grassland and woodland biodiversity that we find today and which is vanishing so rapidly and completely in many areas from lack of good stewardship … and understanding. 

 

Endnotes

 

1. Many wise people over the years have argued strenuously that “succession” is a word that is not useful today; it has been made scientifically confusing and misleading by misuse. The problem with “succession” (a fact that happens in nature, as keenly noticed by Henry Chandler Cowles) is that the concept was ossified wrongly by Frederick Clements. People began to believe that what happens without fire or other “disturbance” is true nature. It's “good” and leads to nature's most noble state, according to which most land in the Midwest would be maple forest. 


Even as late as Curtis (The Vegetation of Wisconsin 1959), the perspective was that oak woodlands would naturally become maple. But our understanding of “nature” now includes “biodiversity.” Curtis himself described how a diverse mesic oak woodland (with hundreds of species of plants and thousands of species of animals) loses most of its species when shady maples take over. Most conservationists today would see that as an ecologically tragic loss of a rare remnant of nature – resulting from neglect or mismanagement. 

 

On the other hand, if we’re not to use the word succession, we need other words to describe what happens in situations when, after some form of degradation followed by good stewardship, conservative species gradually displace most “weedy” species. Some people refer to prairies and savannas as examples of "fire climax."   


A related question: how much attention should we pay to such “climax” states when making conservation decisions? Some people look back on the past for our model. And whether or not we seek to restore past states, knowing a site's former ecological state can certainly inform conservation decisions. 

 

2. The graphic above is considerably less than half-baked and way simplified. How this dynamic would work in various areas would also depend on soils and many other features. Also, the panel representing "Future, Sometime" would only hold if we had fires as ferocious as past fires sometimes were. 


3. It may be a minor question what the “original vegetation” of a site was. For millions of years, our grassland and woodland communities evolved under the influence of lightning-caused fires. Following the retreat of the most recent glacier, lightning fire is widely believed to have been largely replaced by human-set fires. But the species, relationships, and communities were largely those same millions-of-years-old ones. 

 

Consider this thought experiment: A patch of prairie, in the absence of fire for a century or two, is invaded by the plants and animals of adjacent savanna and oak woodland. Many of the conservative prairie plants and animals die out, and many conservative savanna animals and plants become established in a mosaic of rich savanna and oak woodland communities. Then the adjacent former prairie and original savanna/woodland get destroyed. But the "patch of former prairie" becomes a nature preserve. Would it be best to cut down the trees to return this preserve to its original prairie state - if it loses its savanna/woodland biodiversity in the process and gains back no prairie biodiversity, because it no longer exists nearby? To me the answer in clearly no; save the inter-relationships among the oaks and the other savanna species; this is especially true as savanna biodiversity is even rarer than prairie biodiversity.  

 

4. Timber patches vs Prairie patches. It would be interesting to use existing topographies and ask a computer to model how vegetation patterns might have changed over time. The graphic above shows a "prairie grove" moving through surrounding grasslands. But an isolated patch of prairie might move through timber somewhat similarly. In an area that had equal amounts of both, the amoeba-like movements would be endlessly blending into each other or swallowing each other. The principles followed would include: 

  • Prairie patches on flat ground would tend to expand into timber to the north and east, where fire would be hottest. They'd need to shrink on their south edges because of shade and from their west edges because fire would have no momentum there. 
  • Timber patches on flat ground would head (and last longest) to the north because of shade and, to some degree, to the east because fire in frequently burned woods is moderated by lack of fuel. And a grassland on the east edge of timber might get shaded out by young trees because fire would have little opportunity to build momentum and heat while burning through the woods.
  • Prairie would spread fastest and last longest on south and southwest-facing slopes, in proportion to how steep the slopes were.
  • Timber would spread fastest and last longest on north and east-facing slopes. 
  • Timber would also spread fastest and last longest when protected by bodies of water to the west and to a lesser extent to the south, because fires would tend to have to back into those places (giving the prevailing west or southwest winds during fire season); a backfire is much less destructive of timber than a head fire. 

5. How fast did these patches travel? Once again, the answer would depend on soils, slope, aspect (the direction the slope faces), nearby water bodies, etc. But two additional elements are fun to think about. Bur oak is the principal tree in this dynamic because they are so much more resistant to fire than any other. The other tree species grow behind the protection of the bur oaks.


Bur acorns are big and heavy (It's hard to get established in a dense turf of grasses.) and thus not dispersed by birds or wind. They're planted by squirrels. Gray squirrels tend not to go more than 50 yards (?) from trees to cache their acorns. (Might fox squirrels have been different?) It takes many years for those oaks to grow big enough to make new habitat that the squirrels feel confident to venture out from.  


Bur oaks live for 300 or 400 years - said to be this region's longest-lived tree. It might be hard for fire to dislodge mature oaks from an area. If so, would that suggest that an area colonized by bur oaks would comfortably remain as timber for three or four hundred years? Other tree species can in time grow where bur oak reduces prairie fire intensity, but bur oak cannot reproduce in the shade of most other tree species. Perhaps intense fire has a better chance to eat away at the edge of a grove once the other species have replaced the bur oaks. 


6. The map below by Marlin Bowles and Jenny McBride shows the 1880s vegetation of six townships along the north edge of Cook County. Yellow is prairie. Green is timber. Blue is wet. 

Deer Grove is the large woods to the northwest. Busse Woods is the large woods in the south middle township, northeast of a wetland.

Timber is on the east side of the DesPlaines river, which spans this map from north to south on the east.

The Somme preserves are in the upper right (northwest) corner. Somme Prairie is west of the West Fork of the North Branch of the Chicago River. Notice that the prairie crosses the river there. The savanna and woodland are on the poorer soils of the moraine.


And what about the many smaller, isolated prairie groves? Isn't it fun to imagine what was going on with them?!

7. The maps of McHenry and Lake Counties, Illinois, shown below were suggested by Don Osmond. 

The striking difference between McHenry (left) and Lake (right) probably reflects differences in what the map-makers wanted to bother with more than differences on the ground. That is, the Lake County map seems more detailed.


Don also supplied a letter from 1835 in which a settler (C. Fletcher) described the prairie southeast of Wauconda with these words: “Traveling on them you are out of sight of land, as it is called here, that is timber. Then a grove of timber that runs along by some stream a mile or two wide, and then prairie as far as you can see except small groves of one to five acres.”

Map Key

beige = prairie

pale green = savanna

dark green = woodland or forest

blue = water


On the above map in Lake County (right), there are a dozen small prairie openings in the oak savanna and about that many isolated denser groves surrounded by prairie or savanna. But these maps were extrapolated from the original Public Land Survey which mostly mapped features that crossed survey lines, so there may have been many more smaller prairies or groves. McHenry County (left) looks very different, but that may just mean a less detailed mapping. 


For the letter by C. Fletcher, see here.


8. John Curtis, author of the Vegetation of Wisconsin (1959), is one of the people who has wondered about these questions. In a somewhat different context, on page 304 he wrote: 

Thus it appears probable that the mesic prairies moved eastward by a series of jumps, each following a catastrophic destruction of the pre-existing forest. If that forest had developed sufficiently close to a climax condition so that it would have eliminated the oaks, then a true prairie resulted, whereas if the forest contained any proportion of oak (other than red oak), then a brush prairie was likely. 


9. When this "moving ecosystem edges" concept first filled my mind for a while, decades ago, I was thrilled with it. I imagined there might be here – if not a “Great Discovery” – at least something useful. Then I forgot about it. There are so many competing challenges in conservation, and life can get busy. But Will Overbeck recently remembered a conversation about all this and asked if I had a graphic for his Wild Things talk. So I resurrected it. Thanks, Will. Perhaps some people will find it interesting. 





Monday, February 3, 2025

What Deer Eat In Winter, Surprisingly Enough

Most experts claim that in winter deer eat “browse” – that is the branches of trees and shrubs.

For example, in the words of the National Deer Association:

“The best option is to give deer more of the winter foods they are already adapted to eating: winter browse. This includes buds and twigs of woody plants. Introducing new foods in the middle of winter, especially in high quantities all of a sudden, can actually be more harmful to deer than not feeding them at all …” because deer can’t gain nutrition from foods that their gut micro-organisms are not adapted to digesting. Thus, in late winter, "deer carcasses can begin to pile up."

There are at least two things wrong with this perspective. The first is that it may be counterproductive to give deer extra food to keep them alive in winter where deer are overpopulated, diseased, and badly degrading the ecosystem. The second is that the over-dependence on twigs may be largely a reflection of the ecological degradation in our woods and savannas.

To put that second point differently, ecosystem managers have allowed habitats to become so shady that most herbaceous (non-woody) plants have died - and the few palatable ones that remain get drastically reduced or eliminated by the deer..

At Somme, we’ve long noticed that deer in late winter (when favorite foods like acorns and deer-level twigs have already been eaten) spend a lot of time “grazing” green sedges and dried wildflower leaves. Check out the video below: 



The closest deer is eating prairie doc leaves in our back yard. The three deer in the background are eating dried aster and goldenrod leaves.

Across the street in Somme Prairie and Somme Prairie Grove Nature Preserves, the deer this time of year spend lots of time grazing in areas that we know well as having few woody plants. When we study these deer with binoculars, they’re clearly eating green sedges and dried wildflower leaves. There are huge amount of those foods there.

Are there any useful lessons here?

Perhaps these?

1. It’s interesting to see another example of how degraded ecosystems lead to false conclusions.

2. Many deer at many sites leave the preserves in winter to eat prized shrubs in people’s landscaping across the streets. In a way, this is a form of population control, since many of those deer sooner or later get hit by cars and die. But that’s a very poor solution, for the deer, for the homeowners, and for the folks driving the cars.

3. As many have pointed out, buckthorn berries are edible and nutritious, but buckthorn bark and buds are poisonous (cathartic). So stands of buckthorn that are too high for deer to reach berries – or so low that they’re all branches and no fruit – are the very poor habitats for deer (and most wildlife).

4. All this is another argument for restoring full plant diversity to conservation lands.



Saturday, February 1, 2025

Dune Dusting at the Briar East Woods

by Anne Sedlack

Hammond, Indiana, is an industrial, Rust Belt city nestled in the corner between Indiana, Illinois, and Lake Michigan. It is home to countless factories and around 76,000 people. It's nestled near BP’s largest oil refinery and Gary Works, where U.S. Steel has operated one of the biggest steel mills in the world since 1908. Interstate 80/94 runs laterally through the city, hosting some of the heaviest truck traffic in the country. Railroads line the town like notches on a worn cutting board, with trains sometimes stalling in Hammond for hours, waiting to haul into Chicago.

There are only three designated nature preserves within Hammond’s 24 square miles. The rest of the land is densely developed with factories, shopping centers, and housing. Asphalt, concrete, and rail lines are the predominant features of the landscape. 


But there is one remarkable spot of green in Hammond that stands out from the rest: the Briar East Woods. It is not a protected preserve, but it is a 32-acre remnant of the 4,700-year-old High Tolleston Dunes, an ancient shoreline of Lake Michigan. It is home to ancient black oak trees and sand dunes. Here you can find nesting red-tailed hawks and barred owls, bullfrogs and DeKay’s brown snakes, and countless other native flora and fauna.



Dr. Kenneth Schoon, Professor Emeritus of Science Education at Indiana University Northwest, has described the Briar East Woods as a native sand ridge and swale ecosystem, significant as it is older than the dune and swale topography found at the nearby Gibson Woods nature preserve. Local Field Botanist Sandy O’Brien gave the area a 73% native rating, not too shabby considering the heavily urbanized environment.


Though this city-owned parcel is geologically important to the region, it has been degraded by decades of neglect. All the same, Briar East Woods has long been enjoyed by local residents and neighborhood kids for solitude and recreation. Regular stewardship began only recently.


In 2018, the city of Hammond applied for state grant funding to build a winding, half-mile bridge through 12 acres of the Briar East Woods. Ken Rosek, a Hammond native who frequented the woods as a child and now lives just blocks away from them, learned of this project a couple years later. The more details that came out -- through the Freedom of Information Act requests he filed -- the more concerned he became. The city was planning to develop the woods into 68 residential lots and a couple commercial properties, under the guise of building a bridge to get around those stalled trains.


And so the Hessville Dune Dusters were born. Named for the neighborhood in Hammond where the Briar East Woods are situated and for their devoted neighbors. Clean ups were among Ken’s first strategies to save the Briar East Woods by helping the city understand them as a natural area worth saving.


Neighbors could come, grab a trash bag, and spend a couple hours picking up the litter that blows in from the townhomes’ dumpsters behind the woods and also haul out tires, furniture, car parts, and much more, that have been dumped there over the years.


Since 2020, the Hessville Dune Dusters have cleared hundreds of bags of trash out of the Briar East Woods. We’ve hauled out pool stairs, rugs, and chairs, turning what naysayers might like to call a “dumpsite” into a clean, inviting place for the community to enjoy a nature walk and discover the beauty of one of the region’s oldest ecosystems. Some of our clean ups have been attended by buses of local students and friends of the forest from all across Northwest Indiana and Chicagoland.


What started as a couple concerned neighbors has now grown into a movement of 1,700 Facebook followers and 2,000+ petition signers. Hundreds of people have participated in clean ups, and we will continue rallying more neighbors out into these woods to appreciate and care for this little slice of natural paradise in our industrial city. 


For many people it’s about feeling that sense of community, of service; taking care of our land, our home, our Earth. It might not seem like the most fun activity at first glance, but many can say, like me, that after I attended my first clean up, I left with a sense of accomplishment and connection, to both the environment and the people around me, that I hadn’t quite experienced before.


After five years of “dune dusting,” the Briar East Woods is increasingly treasured. But it is still under threat of destruction. Please sign our petition and consider donating to our GoFundMe. You can visit our website at savebriareastwoods.com to learn more and watch our documentary, by Hessville resident Jana Abouhashem. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram to stay up-to-date on our fight to Save Briar East Woods and to find out when we are holding our next clean up. We would love to see you there, and dust some dunes together.