Chicago Wilderness — An Atlas of Biodiversity Army Corps of Engineers,Chicago District US Environmental Protection ... natural wonders of Chicago Wilderness.They will ... could go

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Federal Lands

state parks

county preservesand city parks

privately ownEDnature areas

nature preservesand scientific areas

PROTECTED LANDIN THE

CHICAGO WILDERNESS

REGION

AnAtlasofBiodiversityAnAtlasofBiodiversity

AnAtlasofBiodiversityAnAtlasofBiodiversity

Chicago Wilderness,An Atlas of Biodiversity,is a publication of the Chicago Region Biodiversity Council.

The members of the Council include:

Brookfield Zoo

Canal Corridor Association

Chicago Academy of Sciences

Chicago Botanic Garden

Chicago Park District

City of Chicago, Department of Environment

The Field Museum

Forest Preserve District of Cook County

Forest Preserve District of DuPage County

Forest Preserve District of Will County

Friends of the Chicago River

Illinois Department of Natural Resources

Illinois Natural History Survey

Illinois Nature Preserves Commission

Kane County Forest Preserve District

Lake County Forest Preserves

Lake Michigan Federation

Lincoln Park Zoo

McHenry County Conservation District

Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago

Morton Arboretum

The Nature Conservancy

Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission

Openlands Project

John G. Shedd Aquarium

Sierra Club, Illinois Chapter

Urban Resources Partnership

US Army Corps of Engineers, Chicago District

US Environmental Protection Agency, Region V

US EPA Great Lakes National Program Office

US Fish & Wildlife Service

USDA Forest Service

USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service

USDI National Park Service

Funds for this publication were provided by:

Illinois Conservation Foundation

The Nature Conservancy of Illinois

State of Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Conservation 2000 Fund

USDA Forest Service Northeastern Area, State and Private Forestry

US EPA Great Lakes National Program Office

Written by Jerry Sullivan

Designed by Corasue Nicholas

INTRODUCTION 5

GEOLOGY OF THECHICAGO WILDERNESS REGION 6

LIVING COMMUNITIES 13

PRAIRIES 14Animals 20

WOODED COMMUNITIESIntroduction 24Savannas 26Open Woodlands 27Flatwoods 28Forests 29Animals 30

WETLANDSIntroduction 34Marshes and Shrub Swamps 36Sedge Meadows 37Fens 38Bogs 39Animals 40

STILL WATERSLakes and Ponds 44

MOVING WATERSStreams and Rivers 46

THE DUNES 48

LAKE MICHIGAN 49

pe0ple on the landNative Americans 50Settlement 51The Creation of the Forest Preserves 54Restoration and Management 56

APPENDICES AND INDEX 60

Contents

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ENDANGERED AND THREATENED SPECIES IN ILLINOIS

RARE AND ENDANGERED NATURAL COMMUNITIES IN

CHICAGO WILDERNESS

Critically imperiledGlobally

imperiled Globally

The Story of Chicago Wilderness

Nature in theMetropolis

he lands stretching south and west from theshores of Lake Michigan hold one of NorthAmerica’s great metropolises. Nearly eight

million people live in northwestern Indiana, northeast-ern Illinois, and southeastern Wisconsin. Living amongthem, on islands of green, are thousands of nativespecies of plants and animals, species that make up someof the rarest natural communities on earth.We callthese communities and the lands and waters that aretheir homes Chicago Wilderness. Communities likethese—prairies, oak savannas, woodlands, marshes, fens,sedge meadows and others—once covered most of theMidwest.They have been destroyed almost everywhereto make way for towns and farms.

Only small fragments survive, and many of the richestof these fragments are in Chicago Wilderness.The largestmetropolis in the region is also home to the finest sur-viving examples of the natural heritage of the Midwest.

More than one-third of Illlinois’ dedicated nature pre-serves are in the six counties of Chicago Wilderness.

The maps on the facing page suggest what is atstake.They show the concentration of rare animals andplants and the dense clusters of whole natural commu-nities that may vanish from the face of the earth if theyare not protected in Chicago Wilderness.

This Atlas provides an introduction to these endan-gered communities. It tells how they sustain themselvesand how natural forces—and people—have shaped themover thousands of years. It describes efforts to use landpreservation and ecological restoration to save them andtells where interested people can see them.

A combination of enlightened action and historicalaccident has thus far prevented the extinction of thenatural wonders of Chicago Wilderness.They will sur-vive into the next century only if we act to ensure thatsurvival.

Nature in theMetropolisThe Story of Chicago Wilderness

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GEOLOGY of the CHICAGO WILDERNESSREGION

GEOLOGY of theCHICAGO WILDERNESSREGION

6 AN ATLAS OF BIODIVERSITY

Ice built the landscape of the ChicagoWilderness. Major construction beganabout 26,000 years ago and ended about

13,000 years ago when the glaciers recededfrom the Chicago region for the last time. Evenafter the ice had gone, the after effects ofglaciation repeatedly remade the shoreline ofLake Michigan.The lake stabilized at its presentsize just 2,000 years ago.

The Ice Age, geologists call it the Pleisto-cene, saw four major ice advances in easternNorth America.The first occurred about500,000 years ago.The last—the Wisconsinstage—began about 70,000 years ago.At onetime, the Wisconsin ice spread as far asShelbyville, Illinois, 200 miles south ofChicago. Our landscape reveals the complexseries of ice movements that occurred duringthe later years of the Wisconsin glacial episode.

The glaciers that covered our region were asmuch as a quarter of a mile thick. Land aroundthe northern Great Lakes is still rising, stillrebounding from the weight placed upon it bythe ice thousands of years ago.

It would seem that something that bigcould go wherever it wanted to go, but in fact,the land under the ice exerted a powerfulinfluence on glacial movements. In centralNorth America, the ice followed river valleys,and over the course of the Pleistocene, scouredthose valleys into the deep, broad basins thatnow hold the Great Lakes.The landscape ofthe Chicago region records five major advancesof the ice out of the Lake Michigan basinalternating with periods when the ice retreatedto the basin.

The glacial constructions cover a bedrockfoundation made of very old sedimentaryrocks. In the Chicago region, the most com-mon type of bedrock is a magnesium-rich

limestone called dolomite that was originallydeposited on reefs set in shallow seas duringthe Silurian period about 400 million yearsago.The youngest bedrock in our region datesfrom the Pennsylvanian period about 300 mil-lion years ago.This is the rock that contains thecoal deposits in Will County.

There are highlands and valleys in our bed-rock, but none of them corresponds to thehighlands and valleys visible at the surface.Thesurface features are all made of material depos-ited by the glaciers or by the lakes thatappeared as the glaciers melted. In some places,these deposits are nearly 400 feet thick. Onlyalong the Des Plaines River in southwesternCook and western Will Counties are bedrockexposures large enough to have an effect onliving things.There, unique communities ofplants and animals live on soils only a fewinches thick that lie above the Silurian dolo-mite bedrock.

GLACIAL DRIFT

Drift is the traditional term for the material leftbehind by glaciers.There are two kinds of drift.Till is material that was deposited directly fromthe glacier. Outwash is material deposited bymeltwater flowing from the glacier.

Glaciers are supreme earth movers.As theirenormous weight scrapes across the ground,they easily collect loose surface deposits.Bedrock is harder to dislodge, but they manageto collect it as well. Frozen into the ice as atotally unsorted mixture of giant boulders,cobbles, gravel, sand, silt, and the finest of clayparticles, drift can be carried hundreds of miles.When glaciers begin to melt, this materialdrops out and piles up in front of the ice.Glaciers are always moving, and sometimestheir rate of movement is equal to their rate of

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Deposits left by the glaciers or by the lakes that formed as the glaciers melted are the raw materials of soils.Topography,drainage, climate, and vegetation shape these raw mateials into soils.The process takes centuries. In a dynamic landscape,vegetation may change more rapidly than soils.We may find prairies growing on forest soils and forests on prairie soils.Thescale of the map allows us to show only broad categories. Small patches of soil that do not match the surrounding land willnot appear.

dark soils in glacial till

dark soils in glacial outwash

dark soils in beach deposits

dark soils on bedrock

soils in lakebed deposits

soils in organic deposits

light soils in glacial till

light soils in glacial outwash

light soils in loamy to sandylake deposits

moderately dark soils inlakebed deposits

soils formed underprairie grasses

soils formed under forestor savanna

Surface Deposits in the

Chicago WildernessRegion


knobby hills and ridges are mixed with kettle-holes where blocks of ice melted into lakes andmarshes.The Chicago region has hundreds ofsquare miles of moraines where the variedlandscape supports a rich assortment of naturalcommunities that are home to much of thebiodiversity of the Chicago wilderness.

When a glacier a quarter of a mile thickbegins to melt, it floods the land with cascades,torrents, whole lakes full of water. In ourregion, many proglacial lakes were dammedbetween the ice front and older moraines.Theyfilled, endured for a few decades or a few cen-turies, and drained away. Rivers a mile widescoured valleys. In some places the water justpoured over the land in sheets.

Water sorts the particles it carries. It takes aheavy, powerful flow to push a boulder along.As the current slows, smaller and smaller parti-cles settle to the bottom: gravel, sand, and siltalong rivers; clays in the lake bottoms. Much ofthe surface deposits on the lowlands lyingbetween the moraines in the Chicago Wilder-ness are made of outwash.

SHAPING THE LAND

The ice advance of 26,000 years ago that beganthe process of shaping our landscape broughtthe ice front to the Marengo Moraine, oftencalled the Marengo Ridge, which runs northand south through western McHenry Countyto Kane County.This is the westernmost andoldest of the moraines in our region.

The push south to Shelbyville came afterthe building of the Marengo Ridge, but byabout 17,500 years ago, the ice front had onceagain melted back to the Chicago area.This wasthe beginning of a very eventful few thousandyears.The ice, in a complex dance of advance-retreat-readvance built a zone of overlappingmoraines that extends from western KaneCounty to the shore of Lake Michigan.The icemoved rapidly—by glacial standards—and eachepisode of moraine building was followed by aretreat when the ice melted back—often as faras the Lake Michigan Basin.

The oldest moraines in our region are tothe west and south.The land gets progressivelyyounger toward Lake Michigan. Our largestmoraine belt is the Valparaiso Moraine whichruns south through Lake, Cook, and DuPageCounties before swinging east through WillCounty and Lake and Porter Counties in

melting. Geologists call such times "still stands."The ice front appears to be standing still, but itis really acting like a giant conveyor carryingan endless supply of fresh drift to the ice front.

At a stationary ice front, heaps of drift canform hills hundreds of feet high. Since thesehills are made of till, they are an unsorted mix-ture of everything from rocks the size ofgarages to microscopic clay particles. Immenseblocks of ice break off from the melting glacierand are buried in this debris.As they melt, theyform ponds and lakes.

The landscapes created by these conditionsare called moraines. Moraines are places where

proglacialeolian

supraglacial

subglacial(till)

subglacial(till)

proglacialfluvial

ice–marginal,

fluvial,lacustrine,and gravity

flow

proglacialfluvial

6.5 m covered

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Land and Lakes Section

1 m

column widthindicates relativegrain size

clay

silt

loam

sand

grav

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A Geologic column

Layers of glacial deposits 12 metersdeep show the history of one place inthe Chicago region. From the bottomup, sorted sands and gravels left bymeltwater flowing from a distant icefront.The ice movces closer. Unsorteddiamicton is mixed with sorted gravel.Ice covers the spot, dropping unsortedtill. Rapid melting drops materialfrom the top of the glacier. Finally, theice retreats and wind (eolian) scattersdust over the earlier deposits

diamicton

silt

clay

gravel

sand

soil

Key

Geology 9

Lake

End Moraine

Old lake outlet

old lake bed

End Moraine

Old beach ridge

River terraces

Kettle lake

retreating glacier

End Moraine

Proglacial lake

Lakeoutlet

IcebergIsland

Ice

Ice

Water

Till

Till

Glacial Processes

Meltwater swirls down through a hole in the ice. The moving water carries away smaller particles, leaving a mound of gravel called a kame.

Meltwater flows under the ice in a winding channel like the meandering course of a river. With the ice gone, deposits left by the water make an esker, a ridge that winds like a river.

A glacier melts back from an end moraine. The moraine acts as a dam, holding in the waters of a proglacial lake. The water cuts a single outlet channel through the moraine. As the lake drains away, the lake bottom becomes a plain marked with sandy beach ridges located along the old shoreline.

The narrow ridge of the Visitation Eskerin southwestern Cook County meandersthrough Cap Sauers’ Holdings, a CookCounty Forest Preserve.

GLENWOOD~14.5 – 12.2 ka

CALUMET~11.8 – 11.2 ka

CHIPPEWA~10.0 – 5.5 ka

EARLY NIPISSING~4.5 – 4.0 ka

WISCONSIN

ILLINOIS

INDIANA

WISCONSIN

ILLINOIS

INDIANA

WISCONSIN

ILLINOIS

INDIANA

WISCONSIN

ILLINOIS

INDIANA

Outlet

Outlet


The lake began as a pro-glacial lake dammed between the icefront and the moraines that circle the southern end of the LakeMichigan Basin.This Glenwood Stage was 55 feet above thepresent level of the lake. Sand ridges on the moraines mark thatearly shore.The lake overtopped the moraine in what is nowsouthwestern Cook County and rapidly eroded an outlet (theSag Valley) nearly a mile wide.

The Calumet Stage was about 35 feet above the presentlevel. Blue Island, where resistant bedrock had prevented erosionby the ice, stood above the water.

The low-water Chippewa Stage occurred when a temporary

Lake Michigan’s eventful history

outlet opened for Lakes Michigan and Huron through NorthBay, Ontario.Water fell to 300 feet below the present level. For-ests grew in what is now deep water.

Geologists call these early stages Lake Chicago.The title“Lake Michigan” refers to stages that occurred after ice hadcompletely left the basin.

The Nipissing Phase of Lake Michigan saw water risingagain over the lake plain and drainage from the lake flowingsouth through the Sag and down the Des Plaines to the Illinois.This phase left several prominent landmarks, including thebeach ridge that provided the route for Clark Street in Chicago.

Geology 11

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Chicago Wilderness is part of three separate physiographic regions. The regions differ in their geologicalhistory, their terrain, and their vegetation.

built up in undrained basins and blowing sandshave built the high dunes of the Indiana shore.

SOILS

The deposits left by the glaciers and the lakestages are the raw materials of soils.The soilsthemselves develop over centuries, products ofclimate, topography, and the effects of livingthings.

Soils that develop on hilltops are quite dif-ferent from those that develop in low valleys—especially if the valleys are subject to regularflooding. Soils on steep slopes may erode as fastas they develop.

Soils developed under forests are quite dis-tinct from those that were created under prairies.Wetland soils are equally distinctive.We willdescribe these soils in more detail in the comingpages.

Indiana.The Valparaiso Moraine is as much as25 miles wide with many high ridges and ket-tlehole lakes and marshes. Our youngestmoraines are the Lake Border Moraines inLake and northern Cook County, Illinois. Fiveseparate Lake Border moraines, all lying parallelto the shore of Lake Michigan, have beennamed.The low areas between these morainesare the valleys of the Des Plaines and ChicagoRivers. Glaciers never returned to land in theChicago region after the easternmost of thesemorainal ridges fell from the ice about 14,000years ago.

However, the history of Lake Michigan wasjust beginning.The earliest proglacial lake, theGlenwood Phase of Lake Chicago, was 55 feetabove the present mean level of LakeMichigan.As the lake went up and down withthe geological changes that followed the retreatof the ice, it left behind beaches, sandspits, andthick layers of clay fallen from quiet waters.These features mark the largest of our lakeplains, the Chicago Lake Plain. Most of themodern city is located on this plain.

The early stages of Lake Chicago drainedsouth to the Illinois and Mississippi Riversthrough a gap in the moraines called theChicago Outlet in what is now southwesternCook County.The rush of water through thisgap cut the Sag Valley and eroded the DesPlaines River channel down to bedrock inCook and Will Counties.

After cutting the channel of the DesPlaines down to bedrock, the lake stabilized fora time, then dropped again after a new outletopened to the north, shutting down the so-called Chicago outlet. However, the lakereturned to the Chicago Outlet in later times,most recently during the Nipissing Phase ofLake Michigan, a period that ended only 4,000years ago.The youngest land in the region isalong the shore of Lake Michigan in northernLake County (IL).The land in Illinois BeachState Park is sand deposited by lake currentssince the end of the Nipissing Phase.

Since the ice departed, the pace and scopeof change has drastically slowed. Deposits ofwind blown dust called loess (pronounced“luss.”) have accumulated on the glacial drift.Our rivers have cut more definite channels inthe intermorainal areas, although marshes, bogsand other wetlands show that much of the landis poorly drained or not drained at all. Peat has

Lake Plain

morainal section

grand prairie

Physiographic Divisions

of the

Chicago WildernessRegion

Pre-SettlementVEGETATION

OF THE

CHICAGO WILDERNESSREGION

This map shows the vegetation of this regionbefore large-scale settlement changed it.Themap is uneven in quality. Detailed original-

vegetation maps have been prepared for some areas and only generalized maps (grass-land vs. woodland) for others.The category“wooded communities” is used to describe

areas where trees grew but where map makershave not specified what kinds of trees or

how densely they grew.The scale of the mapmakes it impossible to show small areas of

distinctive vegetation.

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LIVING COMMUNITIESLIVING COMMUNITIES

he varied landscape that remained when the icedeparted and the lake retreated to its presentshoreline is the base that supports the biodiversity

of the Chicago Wilderness. Sands and clays, hilltops and plainsoffer different opportunities to different plants and animals.Geology, topography, and climate combine with living thingsto create ecosystems.When we talk of a prairie ecosystem or aforest ecosystem we include both the living things and thenon-living things that have an effect on life.

The term community or natural community refers just to theliving things in the ecosystem. Since plants respond more spec-ifically to moisture and light, communities are usually describedor named by the vegetation.The members of a natural commu-nity are connected in many ways, and these connections are socomplicated that we will never understand all of them.

We do know that the loss of a single species in a commun-ity can lead to the loss of more species.A flower disappearsbecause the insect that pollinated it is gone. Insects vanishbecause their food plants have died out.

Healthy natural communities have room for all their species.In healthy communities, we see biodiversity. "Biodiversity"refers to the variety of life, from variations in the genes of indi-viduals to the whole planet and all its millions of species. On aregional level, biodiversity can refer to the many communitiesthat exist side by side.

Biodiversity helps natural communities survive catastrophes.Indeed for some species, events such as floods and storms areopportunities rather than catastrophes.

In the Chicago Wilderness, we see biodiversity within com-munities and in the great variety of communities found in theregion.We have nearly a dozen wooded communities. Ourprairies are wet prairies, dry prairies, gravel hill prairies, andothers. Our wetlands are a very diverse collection of marshes,fens, sedge meadows, bogs, and swamps. Each of these separatetypes has its own special combination of animals and plants.

The next section of this Atlas will introduce you to the nat-ural communities of the Chicago Wilderness and describesome of the animals and plants that make their homes in thesecommunities.

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Prairie

Savanna

Oak Woodland

Upland Forest

Floodplain Forest

Dune Complex

Wetlands

Swamp

Bog

Lakes

Wooded Communities

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PRAIRIES


Miss Bigelow's reaction was shared by manywho were lucky enough to see the tallgrassprairie in all its glory. She was a NewEnglander who had grown up among forests.There are prairies as far east as Massachusetts,but they are small, sunny islands in a sea oftrees. In the Illinois country, people movingwest found tall waving grasses and the "splen-did hues" of wildflowers covering much of theland. Here the prairies were the sea, and thewoodlands were shady islands.The prairies ofIllinois were the first real American experienceof the wide-open spaces. Here you could findyourself in a prairie that stretched to the hori-zon, without a single tree in sight.

Many early visitors expected the prairies tobe of little use to farmers.Their belief was thatany soil too poor to grow trees was too poorto grow crops. Others noted the advantages ofland that did not need to be cleared of trees.The prairie was instant pasture for cattle andhorses and needed only a plow to make itready to grow crops.

However, the first settlers who tried turningprairie sod with the light wooden plows theyhad used in the forests got a rather nastyshock.A plow that would turn a clean furrowin forest soil skittered over the surface of theprairie sod like a pebble skipping across apond. Prairie soils seemed to be mostly roots.

Breaking prairie sod became a business.Men traveled the settlements with heavy plows

pulled by several teams of oxen and hired outto plow land at so much an acre.The sound ofthe tearing roots, they said, was like the rattleof small arms fire, as if an infantry companywas engaged in battle. Individual farmerscouldn't plow the prairie until 1837 when anIllinois blacksmith named John Deere inventedthe steel moldboard plow.

EVOLUTION OF THE PRAIRIE

Prairies are grasslands.The dominant plants aregrasses—although many other kinds of plantsare present.The group of plants we call grassesevolved during the Miocene Epoch, a periodthat began about 25 million years ago. Grasseshave since become the dominant vegetationover large areas of the earth.The prairies ofNorth America, the pampas of South America,the steppes of Central Asia, and the plains ofEast Africa are all grasslands.

Grasslands develop on flat lands in areaswhere long periods without rainfall are com-mon—although the climate is not as dry as itis in deserts.These periods of drought may beregular seasonal occurrences—like the dry sea-sons of tropical lands—or they may happenonly in some years—like the summer droughtsof the American Midwest.

Those periodic droughts and the flatground that offers few obstacles to advancingflames have made fire a major force in theecology of the world’s grasslands. Millions ofyears of evolution in the presence of fire have

PRAIRIES

n all my life, I never saw or dreamed of so beautiful a sight as the rolling prairies.

Nothing can equal the surpassing beauty of the rounded swells and the sunny

hollows, the brilliant green of the grass, the numberless varieties and splendid hues of

multitudes of flowers. I gazed in admiration too strong for words.

Ellen Bigelow1835

II

Side-oats grama grass, Prairie drop-

seed, Whorled milkweed, Purple prairie

clover, Gray goldenrod, False boneset,

Tall boneset, Hoary vervain,

Cylindric blazingstar, Daisy fleabane,

Little bluestem, Indian grass,

Rough blazingstar, Round-headed

bush-clover, Stiff goldenrod, Compass

plant, Big bluestem, Wild quinine,

Rattlesnake master, Culver’s root,

Wild onion, Flowering spurge,

White wild indigo, Yellow-headed

coneflower, Canada goldenrod, Prairie

dock, Switchgrass, Obedient plant,

New England aster, Saw-toothed

sunflower, Tall goldenrod, Smooth

white lettuce, Mountain mint, Canada

wild rye, Stiff gentian, Closed gentian,

Fringed gentian, Prairie blazingstar,

Cordgrass, Blue flag iris,

Reddish bulrush,

Common cattail

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Prairies 15

made the tallgrass prairie dependent on peri-odic fires for its survival.

The prairies of central North America form a triangle extending from the foothills of theRockies on the west to Ohio on the east. In theChicago Wilderness, the prairies share the landwith a variety of wooded communities.To thewest, trees become more rare. On the highplains in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains,they grow only in narrow strips along the rivers.

The western prairies—the grasslands of east-ern Montana,Wyoming, and Colorado, are considered short-grass prairies. Precipitationaverages less than 20 inches a year. In the dry,windy environment, plants hug the ground, sel-dom growing much above a foot in height.With increasing precipitation, the grasses and

other prairie plants get taller. From centralNebraska east, tallgrass prairies dominate thetreeless parts of the landscape. Early accounts tellof grasses tall enough to hide a man on horse-back.That height must have been rare, but set-tlers often lost cattle in the pastures of August.

ROOTS AND SOILS

Most of the biomass, the living material, of bothprairie grasses and prairie wildflowers—botanistscall them forbs—is underground. On deep soils,the root systems of some prairie species extendnearly 20 feet below the surface.They may livefor decades, each spring sending up new greenshoots to flower, set seed, and die.

Tallgrass

Mixed-grass

Shortgrass

Historic Range of the Prairie

Little remains east of the Mississippi, but some of the biggest and best of the surviving remnants are in the Chicago region.

A prairie slope with plants of dryprairies at the top, mesic in the middle,wet at the foot of the slope.

Blazing star and goldenrod create a colorful display in a mid-summer prairie.The flower show starts in spring and continues until October.

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Prairie remnants are scattered over theChicago region. Most of the prairies shownon this map are less than 20 acres.

These huge root systems are constantlygrowing and constantly dying. New roots seeknew sources of minerals and water in the sub-soil. Old roots die and decay, adding organicmatter to the soil.

Organic matter may form a layer nearly twofeet thick in prairie soils. It is this organic matterthat gives prairie soils their dark color. Organicmatter also made prairie soils extremely produc-tive of crops such as corn and soybeans.Thisfertility doomed nearly all the prairies.

TYPES OF PRAIRIES

As many as 350 different species of plants grewon the prairies of Illinois, Indiana, and Wiscon-sin, but they didn’t all grow together. Insteadthey grew in distinctive communities. Eachcommunity had its own unique mix of species.Soil moisture and soil texture are the two mostimportant factors in controlling where thesecommunities grew. Prairies on wet soils sharedmany plants with such wetland communities assedge meadows and fens. Prairies on sandy soils,where the coarse soil texture lets water drainaway quickly after rains, often contained plantsmore common in the drier lands to the west.

Ecologists have named five moisture groups:wet, wet-mesic, mesic, dry-mesic and dry.The

word “mesic”—which means “in the middle”or “moderate”—turns up often in ecology. Inaddition, two kinds of prairies are classified bythe texture of the ground they grow in. Sandprairies grow along Lake Michigan and inlandas well. Gravel hill prairies often grow on topof kames.

If we survey the plants growing in a wetprairie, we are likely to find that cordgrass(Spartina pectinata) and blue joint grass(Calamagrostis canadensis) are the most commongrasses. In dry prairies, side-oats grama(Bouteloua curtipendula) becomes important. Inmesic prairies, the dominant grasses are bigbluestem (Andropogon gerardii) and northerndropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis).The forbs showsimilar shifts.

PRAIRIES AND FIRE

Prairies are fire-dependent communities.Without fire, tallgrass prairies are invaded bytrees and shrubs that kill the prairie plants withtheir shade.Without fire, species begin to van-ish from the prairie. Smaller plants and plantswith small seeds seem to go first. Legumes alsodisappear.Their removal makes it easier forweeds to invade.

Some trees can survive regular prairie fires.Bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa) and black oak(Quercus velutina) can live for a century ormore even though regular fires repeatedly killall parts of the plant that are above ground.They survive as roots—called “grubs.”Thegrubs are not harmed by the fires and eachyear, they produce new sprouts.When largescale settlement began, people noticed com-munities they called "brushy prairies." Thesewere prairies where bur oak, black oak, andsometimes white oak grubs were common.Fire suppression after settlement quicklyturned these brushy prairies into oak woods.

A line of life-giving fire blows across a prairie in the ChicagoWilderness. Fires are essential to the health of this ecosystem.

Dr. Robert F. Betzof Northeastern Illinois University ledcampaign to save Indian Boundary

Prairies; initiated first large scale prairierestoration at Fermi National Accelerator

Lab near Batavia, Illinois.

Prairiesin the

ChicagoWilderness

Prairies 17

Historical accounts tell us that NativeAmericans set fires every year to improve for-age for bison and elk. If the weather was right,these fires might burn for days.

Fires burn best on level ground. In hills,they burn well uphill but are likely to go outon the downhill side. In the Chicago Wilder-ness, prairies dominated the flat land unlessthat land was on the downwind side of a river,lake, or other permanent body of water. Firesburning from west to east often went out onthe west banks of river or the western shoresof lakes and permanent wetlands.

PRAIRIE SUCCESSION

In the presence of fire, prairies are very stablecommunities. Many of the common prairieplants live for many years, but they do notreadily invade new ground. Before settlement,disturbed places—like buffalo wallows—wouldbe quickly filled with weedy prairie species—plants that grow fast and specialize in invadingdisturbed ground. In time, the more conserva-tive species would replace these invaders.

During the past 175 years, millions of acresof tall-grass prairies have been converted to

cornfields or covered with buildings. Survivingprairies are small and widely scattered. It isimpossible for seeds from these small prairiesto reach all the lands where they could grow.

With the native prairie species so rare, acornfield left idle for a few years is likely to beinvaded by plants from Europe and Asia thathave been imported into this area since settle-ment. Most of the grasslands in the ChicagoWilderness are dominated by exotic (non-native) species such as Hungarian brome grass(Bromus inermis) and Queen Anne's lace(Daucus carota).

The tallgrass prairie survives in tiny frag-ments. Conservationists have mounted protract-ed campaigns on behalf of prairie remnants offive or ten acres. Hope for the survival of thisecosystem rest on good management of thesefragments and on restoration projects thatreturn prairie to lands where it has not grownfor a century or more.The Midewin NationalTallgrass Prairie in Will County, the largestrestoration ever undertaken, will someday soonreturn the bison to the Illinois prairie.

New growth sprouts with the help of mineralsreleased by fire.

Most of the living stuff in a prairie isunderground. The huge root systems ofprairie plants live for many years, sendingup new green shoots every year. The deathof old roots adds humus to the soil.

littlebluestem

big bluestem

switchgrass

purpleprairieclover

leadplant

prairieviolet

compass plant

prairiesunflower

5 feet

10 feet

5 feet

T heBeauty ofImagine a circle the size of a hula hoop. All

30 of the plants pictured on these two pageswere found growing in just such a circle ran-domly placed at the Somme Prairie NaturePreserve in Northbrook, Illinois. Biodiversityis typical of tallgrass prairie. If we studied a fewacres of prairie, we might find a hundredspecies of plants.

In our hoop, the violets bloom first. Theirflowers open in late April. From that point untilthe moment in October when the last asterfades, something would always be bloominginside this small circle. A bumble bee in searchof pollen, a butterfly looking for nectar wouldstand a good chance of finding what it needs.

comandraumbellata

False toad flaxeryngium yuccifolium

Rattlesnake master

fragaria virginiana

Wild strawberry

heuchera richardsonii

Prairie alum root

lithospermumcanescens

Hoary puccoon

partheniumintegrifolium

Wild quinine

phlox pilosa

Prairie phlox

potentilla arguta

Prairie cinquefoil

potentilla simplex

Common cinquefoil

sisyrinchium albidum

Common blue-eyed grass

smilacina stellata

Starry false solomon’s seal

tradescantia ohiensis

Common spiderwort

viola papilionacea(viola affinis)

LeConte’s violet

viola pedatifida

Prairie violet

zizia aptera

Heart-leaved meadow parsnip

T heBeauty of

Prairies 19

B iodiversitySeveral species of the tiny butterflies called

skippers could reproduce in our hoop. Skip-per caterpillars feed on grasses and sedges.On the violets, we might find caterpillars thatwould grow into gaudy orange and black fritillaries.

In healthy ecosystems, energy flows freelythrough the system.There are many pathwaysfor it to follow. Plants of many species supporta variety of insects. Snakes, salamanders, andmeadowlarks eat the insects and northern harriers eat the insect eaters. Thanks to thebiodiversity in our hoop, the flow of energycan support them all.

SILPHIUM TEREBINTHINACEUM

Prairie dock

AGROPYRON TRACHYCAULUM

Bearded wheatgrass

ALLIUM CANADENSE

Wild onion

andropogon scoparius

Little bluestem grass

aster azureus

Sky-blue aster

aster ericoides

Heath aster

aster novae-angliae

NewEnglandaster

bromus kalmii

Kalm’s brome

carex bicknellii

Copper-shouldered oval sedge

carex conoidea

Prairie gray sedge

liatris aspera

Rough blazing star

liatris spicata

Marsh blazing star

ratibida pinnata

Yellow coneflower

solidago juncea

Early goldenrod

sorghastrum nutans

Indian grass

B iodiversity


On the green prairies of early summer,early in the morning before the sunburns off the dew, you might hear a

long eerie whistling cry as if the wind werealive and singing.

From overhead comes a tinkling song, along complex toccata delivered from high inthe sky.These are songs of prairie birds.Thecry comes from the upland sandpiper (Bar-tramia longicauda).The toccata is the flight songof the bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus).

Many grassland birds have taken to singingin the air.With no trees to serve as perches,they provide their own elevated stages tospread their songs over the prairie.

The tallgrass prairie supports a distinctivegroup of birds.Adapted to life in a treelessenvironment, they sing in the air or fromswaying perchs on the stems of prairie grassesand build their nests on the ground.

Most are migratory, but a few species havefound ways to survive prairie winters.The coldwinds are a severe test, but those same windsserve to keep some areas free of snow, revealingfood for the resident birds.

Meadowlarks are partial migrants; somebirds go south, but a few remain through thewinter.We have two species: the eastern(Sternella magna) and the western (S. neglecta).

Meadow larks eat a varied diet, specializingin insects in summer; switching to seeds inwinter.They are perhaps the least area sensitiveof our prairie birds.Area sensitivity refers tothe need which many birds have for largeblocks of uniform habitat around their nestingterritories.The Henslow’s sparrow (Ammo-dramus henslowii), another prairie species, claimsa territory of only a few acres, but it rarelynests in any grassland smaller than about 80acres. Meadowlarks can nest in fields as small as20 acres, and they often sing from tree limbs atthe edge of fields.The discovery of area sensi-tivity has made us aware of the need for largepreserves to sustain all our species.

Upland sandpipers and bobolinks are thechampion long-distance migrants among our

Dickcissels are wanderers. Theychange nesting grounds from

year to year.

prairies

Birds

Nes

ting

Site

s

East

ern

Mea

dow

lark

Bobo

link

Sava

nna

Spar

row

Gra

ssho

pper

Spar

row

Hen

slow

'sSp

arro

w

Nor

ther

nH

arrie

r0

5

10

15

20

25

21

19

17

9

21

cookcounty

Threatened in the state, theupland sandpiper’s largest Illinoispopulation is on the MidewinNational Tallgrass Prairie in Will County.

Prairie BirdNesting Sites

in

Cook County

“Area sensitive” birds are species that nest only in largeblocks of their favored habitat. This map shows the effect ofarea sensitivity on prairie birds in Cook County. The leastarea-sensitive species can nest in small fields. Species thatneed more room find few suitable locations.

Prairies 21

prairie birds.They fly all the way to Argentinafor the winter. Dickcissels (Spiza americana)winter as far south as Venezuela.This species isknown for its nomadic habits. It may nest insome numbers in a location one year, be com-pletely absent the next year, only to return insubsequent years.These movements may betriggered by changes in food availability.Theymay also be affected by moisture differences. Indry years, birds of mesic prairie may move intousually wet prairies and in wet years, birds ofwet prairies may seek out normally mesic sites.

Northern harriers (Circus cyaneus) andshort-eared owls (Asio flammeus) are the princi-pal hunters of the prairie.They seek their prey,rodents, small birds, herps, and insects by flyinglow over the ground and pouncing on any-thing that shows itself. Both of these birdsfavor wetter prairies and often hunt over placeswe would class as wetlands.The former namefor the harrier was “marsh hawk.”

Sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) also occupyboth wet prairies and marshes, sedge meadows,and other wetlands.

Birds are most affected by the structure oftheir habitat. Prairie species nest quite success-fully in meadows filled with Eurasian grassesimported into the Midwest in the past 175 years.As long as a place has little or no woody vegeta-tion, the prairie birds will continue to use it.

Their ability to adapt to life among strangegrasses helped sustain high populations ofprairie birds even after agriculture had destroyedalmost all the prairies.The birds simply movedinto pastures and hay fields. Birds such as theupland sandpiper that prefer shorter grass actu-ally benefited from the change. However, theswitch from general farming to an almostexclusive reliance on corn and soybeans pro-duced a disaster for prairie birds. Since the1950s, populations have declined 90 percent ormore for all our prairie species.

Today, the prairie birds that remain almostall nest in meadows of Eurasian grasses. Few ofour prairie remnants are large enough to sup-port bird populations.The song of the bobo-link is heard only on a few of the larger sites.

Grasshopper sparrows use only a small space for nesting territory, butthey will not nest on small patches of grassland.

Once extirpated from theChicago Wilderness Region,sandhill cranes are breeding onceagain in Lake, McHenry, andDuPage Counties.


This aphrodite fritillary (Speyeriaaphrodite) is a prairie specialist. It doesnot live on grasslands of Eurasian plants.

Most of the animals on earth areinsects, so it is not surprising thatmost of the animals of the prairie

are insects. In the Chicago Wilderness region,this is more true than it ought to be. Ourprairie remnants are mostly so small that theycan’t support any animals larger than insects.Even our prairie sparrows usually have to makedo with fields full of imported grasses andweeds because our real prairies are so tiny.

With prairies so scarce, the continued sur-vival of thousands of species of insects could bein doubt. Small populations of any plant or ani-mal are always in danger of being wiped out byweather or disease or some other catastrophe,and with prairies so widely scattered, the oddsagainst a prairie being colonized by new indi-viduals of the deceased species are very long.

If insects are like prairie birds, able to adaptto life amid imported species, then we need notworry particularly about their futures.As longas there are weed patches around, the insectscan thrive. But what if insects are like white-

fringed orchids and the other conservativeprairie species that survive only in prairie com-munities? We could be facing the wholesaleextinction of an entire fauna.

Extended investigation into more than 800species belonging to seven families of insects ofprairies and savannas has revealed that about onequarter of the total species in these groups areconfined to remnants of the native landscape.

prairies

Butterflies and Moths

Skippers are tiny butterflies whose caterpillars feed on grasses.

This recently discovered moth of the genus Papaipema liveson prairie remnants in the Chicago Wilderness. It has notyet received a scientific name.

That means that more than 200 species couldnot continue to live in our area if the last prairieand savanna remnants were destroyed.

Remnant dependence is particularly highamong butterflies and moths, with 40 percentof our local grassland butterflies confined toprairies.

Among root-borer moths of the genusPapaipema, more than 80 percent of our localspecies are confined to remnants of the naturallandscape. One species of these moths, Papai-pema eryngia, lives only in the roots of rattle-snake master (Eryngium yuccifolium), a plantcommon on prairies but rarely seen outsidethem.This moth is known from only threesites in the world: two here in the Chicagoregion and one in Oklahoma.

It is not surprising that a large number ofbutterflies would be dependent on particularplant communities, since caterpillars are oftendependent on particular plants as food sources.The degree of specialization varies, but it isalways present. Some caterpillars are confinedto a single species, others to a single genus, stillothers to a single family.

Ants tend the caterpillar of the silveryblue butterfly.

Prairies 23

When Marquette and Joliet passedthrough the Chicago Region in1673 they wrote of the “wild cat-

tle” and “stags” that could be seen grazing onthe prairies.They were referring, of course, tobison (Bison bison) and elk (Cervus elaphus), thelargest of our native animals.

Bison were the first large animals to be killed off following settlement, and elk followedshortly thereafter. Cows and horses became themajor grazing animals on the rapidly shrinkingprairie.

Grazing animals have definite tastes in foodplants. It is possible to tell whether a field hasbeen grazed by cattle or horses just by lookingat what has been eaten and what has been leftalone.We may soon have a chance to learnwhat effect bison and elk have on a prairie.Current plans call for reintroducing these ani-mals at the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairiein Will County.

Bison were probably the first animals extirpated from this region after settlement.They may soon be reintro-duced at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie.

Big Grazers

Herps

The Chicago Region is rich in gartersnakes.We are at the eastern end of therange of the plains garter snake (Tham-

nophis radix).A few isolated populations of thewestern ribbon snake(Thamnophis proximus) andnorthern ribbon snake (Thamnophis sauritusseptentrionalis) can be found in our region.Weeven have our own special garter snake, theChicago garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis semifas-ciatus) a subspecies of the eastern garter snake.

In the chaotic conditions of a boomingmetropolis, you might discover one of thesesnakes almost anywhere, but in places wherenatural conditions are a bit more stable, theybegin to sort themselves out.At the FermiNational Accelerator Lab near Batavia, IL, alarge scale ecological restoration project hasbeen underway for more than 20 years. Insidethe accelerator ring, an enormous half-buriedsteel doughnut a mile in diameter, is a small

grove of oaks surroundedby a recovering prairie.Search among the oak treesand you will probably findsirtalis, the eastern gartersnake. Out on the prairie, the usual snake isradix. Search a transition zone, the land withinabout 200 yards of the trees, and you mightfind either species.The snakes are a walking—or rather slithering—demonstration of the needto protect all the varieties of natural habitat inour region.

Herps can serve as guides to conditions onthe land.Their limited mobility makes it diffi-cult for them to travel in search of a betterhome, especially in a land of six-lane express-ways.As a result, they are vulnerable to localextinction. If a small population dies out, newanimals of the same species are unlikely to beable to colonize the vacated habitat.

People who study reptiles and amphibians are called herpetologists. The name comes from aGreek word meaning “creeping.” Herpetologists call the creeping creatures they study “herps.”It is a useful word, short and easy to remember, and it saves us from the endless repetition ofthe cumbersome phrase “reptiles and amphibians.” We will use “herps” to refer to these animals throughout this Atlas.

The Smooth Green Snake

In the Chicago Region, the herp mostclosely associated with the prairie is thesmooth green snake, a lovely little serpentwhose smoothly scaly skin practically glowswith a Kelly green tint. The presence of asmooth green snake (Opheodrys vernalis)can be taken as an indication of the quali-ty of a prairie remnant. Found in an oldfield full of recently imported Eurasianweeds, the smooth green snake is a signthat the land was once a prairie, and thatit has not been too heavily dosed with pesticides.

Smooth green snakes are small. Thelargest specimen ever measured was 26inches long. Their diet is principallyinsects.

WOODED COMMUNITIES


Marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) brightenspring days in wet forests and flatwoods inChicago Wilderness.

Trees in Chicago Wilderness once grewas lone sentinels on the prairie.Theygrew in open groves and sun-dappled

woodlands where they sometimes attained thenoble shapes that reminded visitor Ellen Fullerof cathedral pillars 150 years ago.

These wooded communities varied overtime and space.They blended into each otheron their borders.The categories we have createdto describe them are only rough descriptions ofnature.

Climate, soils, topography, and drainage setlimits on the kinds of natural communities thatcan live in our region. Other forces shape thelandscape within the limits created by thesefactors. In our landscape, in the thousands ofyears before large-scale settlement, fire was themost important shaping force.

In those times it was the frequency andintensity of fire that determined whether a giv-en piece of ground would be an open grove ora dense forest.We can arrange the pre-settlementwooded communities on a shade gradient, andwhen we make such a division, we find that ourshade gradient is also a fire gradient.The moreopen communities grew in places where firescame often and burned with some intensity.Shadier places saw fewer fires or less intensefires. Some of our dense forests are fire sensitive

communities that could live only where fireswere rare events.

Our sunniest places were prairies where notrees grew.The next community on our gradi-ent is the savanna. Savannas are considered grass-lands with some trees.Ample sun reaches theground, promoting the growth of a heavy turf ofgrasses and wildflowers that is fuel for fires.

Our open woodlands are some of the mostdistinctive communities in the region. Heregrew white oaks (Quercus alba), bur oaks (Quer-cus macrocarpa), and red oaks (Quercus rubra),along with shagbark hickory (Carya ovata), bit-ternut hickory (Carya cordiformis), and blackwalnut (Juglans nigra).The understory in thesewoods was equally varied. Some had thicketsof shrubs like American hazel (Corylus ameri-cana) and wild plum (Prunus americana). Otherforests were open enough to allow farmers todrive a team and wagon through them.Thespecies of trees in these woods were adapted tofrequent fire.The canopy was open enough toallow oak seedlings and saplings to grow.

Our dense forests included some communi-ties where fire was still a factor.At the heart ofmany prairie groves were stands of red oak(Quercus rubra) and black maple (Acer nigrum).And small areas had communities dominated bysugar maple (Acer saccharum) and basswood (Tilia

WOODED COMMUNITIES

The crown of a bur oakspreading out as wide as it istall recalls the open savannasof pre-settlement times. The

lowest limbs on this treewould probably have beenpruned by fire in that era.

illars ofMightyCathedralAisles

PP

americana) where fire played little or no role.We can also divide our wooded communi-

ties into categories based on soil moisture. Inour region moisture conditions for plants aremainly affected by soil texture and drainage.

The classifications scientists use to describenatural communities give a short, simple name toa very complicated thing.When we talk of “oaksavannas” or “oak-hickory forests,” we are refer-ring to communities that may include hundredsof species of plants, and—when you add up allthe beetles, spiders, snails, and centipedes—thousands of species of animals.When we study areal natural area and decide what communitiesare present, we look at the entire biota, all theliving things. Overall differences in the biota tellecologists whether a given community devel-oped as an open woodland or a dense forest.Thebiota also help us identify communities that havebeen seriously harmed by the changes that large-scale settlement has brought.

All of our wooded communities have beenchanged by the altered conditions that havefollowed settlement.The suppression of fire, inparticular, has had a profound effect.With firegone from the community, fire sensitive trees

such as box elders (Acer negundo), ashes (Frax-inus spp.) and sugar maples have moved intooak forests, open woodlands, and savannas,places where they could not survive when firewas an active force.

These trees cast a dense shade. If we lookedonly at the amount of shade, we might todayidentify a remnant open woodland or a savan-na as a dense forest. But if we look at the moreconservative plants and animals, those mosttied to a particular community, we see herpsand wildflowers typical of open woodlands.The biggest and oldest trees are white and buroaks, open woodland trees.

All these things tell us we are not looking atland that was originally a dense forest; we arelooking at a savanna or open woodland under-going a process of decay.The species that live inthese communities, the species that with theircombined activities create these communitiesare dying out.Thousands of years of history inthis place and millions of years of evolutionaryhistory are dying with them. Only a poor mixof a few trees, some weeds and much bareground remains. Fortunately restoration canreverse this trend.

Wooded Communities 25

WOODED COMMUNITIES IN THE CHICAGOWILDERNESS

This diagram arranges the pre-settlementwooded communities of this region on twoaxes. One separates them according to soilmoisture from wet to dry and the otheraccording to the density of the tree canopy.This density gradient is also a fire gradi-ent. Fires burned hotter and more often inthe communities to the left of the diagram.Communities to the right saw fewer fires.

Prairie Savanna ForestWoodlandW

et

Dr

yM

esi

c

Black oak

Bur Oak

Swamp White Oak

Hickory

Walnut

Sugar Maple

Basswood

Silver Maple

American Elm

White Oak

Red Oak


Bur OakBur oaks (Quercus macrocarpa) are themost common trees of the Midwestern mesicsavanna groves.Their thick, corky barkhelped the large trees survive intense fires.Even fires hot enough to kill the above-ground parts of the tree could not harm theroots. Dormant buds at the base of the deadtrunk could spring to life and produce newstems. Enormous root masses called grubsgrew over the years.With these well-established root systems feeding them waterand nutrients, the young stems needed onlya few years without fire to grow tall enoughto get their crowns above the flames, givingthem a good chance of surviving fires.Concentrations of bur oaks in the ChicagoWilderness often mark places where fire wasfrequent in the past.The heart of thisspecies’ range is in the savanna region of theMidwest.

Savanna trees have broad crowns, an indi-cation that they grew in places wherethey had space to spread out. Some old

savanna oaks are as wide as they are tall.Sand savannas grow on dunes along Lake

Michigan and inland on sandy soils. Black oaks(Quercus velutina) are the dominant trees inthese savannas, although white pine (Pinusstrobus) and jack pine (Pinus banksiana) are partof this community in the Indiana Dunes.Theunderstory of the sand savanna is mainly speciestypical of dry prairies.

The sandy soils of the sand savanna create adry environment that makes it easier for firesto burn through them. However, these soilshave very low fertility. Because of this low fer-tility, the annual production of new leaves,stems, and twigs is small. Low productivitymeans there is little fuel for fires, so when firesdo break out, they are likely to be small.

The ability of oaks to resprout from theirroots after the above ground parts of the treehave been killed by fire is one of the reasonsthey are able to thrive in fire-dependent communties such as savannas. Resprouts oftengrow into trees with two or more trunks risingfrom one root system.

Wet savannas grow on land with a subsoilof clay that prevents water from draining away.Standing water may be present in spring andearly summer, but by autumn, the ground isdry enough to allow a fire to burn through thegrove. Swamp white oaks (Quercus bicolor) arethe most common trees.

The major tree of the mesic savanna is thebur oak (Quercus macrocarpa), our most nearlyfireproof local tree. Bur oak savannas occupysilt-loam soils as well as gravel soils.

Bur oak savannas have nearly vanished.Grazing killed off much of the understory andfire suppression allowed fire sensitive trees andshrubs to invade.These cast enough shade toprevent the oaks from reproducing.

The understory in these savannas was eithergraminoid—which means dominated by grass-es—or shrubby.American hazel (Corylus ameri-cana) and wild plum (Prunus americana), whichcan both grow in areas with moderate fireregimes, were typical shrubs.

wooded communities

Savannas

Swamp white oaks and pin oaks (Quercus palustris) shade the wet savanna while tall joe pye weed(Eupatorium maculatum) brightens late summer with its purple flowers.

prairie, woodlandmosaic

savanna, woodland,forest mosaic

Black oaks are the most common trees in the sand savannas.

Black Maples andSugar Maples

Botanists still argue about the differencesbetween black maples (Acer nigrum) andsugar maples (Acer saccharum).The twospecies appear quite similar in manyimportant respects, and some specimenstoday show characteristics of both. Oldertrees are more distinctive, and in the pre-settlement landscape, they behaved in quitedistinctive ways. Sugar maples were con-fined to places where fire almost nevercame, while black maples could be found inforests and woodlands where fire was aregular occurrence. Black maple would havebeen the more common species then andthe major local source of maple sugar.

The open woodlands of the Chicagoregion were one of the most distinc-tive and diverse community types in

our native landscape. Oaks, as a group, were themost common trees in these woodlands, butthe exact composition of the community wasquite varied.

On mesic soils—places where soil moisturelay between the extremes of wet and dry—combinations of oaks and hickories (Carya spp.)might be found. Mixed oak woods where buroak, white oak, and scarlet oak (Quercus coccinea)grew together were also present. Smalleramounts of black cherry (Prunus serotina) mightalso be present, but the thin bark of this speciesleaves it vulnerable to fire.

Trees in open woodlands grow much closertogether than savanna trees, and their crownsare correspondingly narrower. However,enough light reaches down to the lower trunksto allow branches to grow low on the trees.

The presence of fire in open woodlandsprevents invasive species such as ashes andsugar maples from taking over the community,and the open quality lets in enough light topermit the oaks to reproduce and maintainthemselves as the principal trees.

In the native landscape, when healthy openwoodlands could be found throughout theregion, these communities were home to somespectacular concentrations of wildlife.Themany nutbearing trees—oaks, hickories, andwalnuts—along with the presence of Americanhazel (Corylus americana) shrubs in the under-story, provided rich food sources for the now-extinct passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius)and for wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) aswell.The latter species has been extirpatedfrom this region, but could be reintroduced.

In the understory, plants typical of the open

woodlands include yellow pimpernel (Taenidiaintegerrima), a species that might be found inborder zones between woodlands and prairies.Wild hyacinths (Camassia scilloides) grow inwoodlands and savannas.

Our open woodlands have been hit espe-cially hard by the changes settlement hasbrought. In addition to invasions by nativetrees, this community has been especially vul-nerable to the exotic invading shrub calledcommon buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica).Theconditions of medium shade seem ideal for thisspecies. Buckthorn and the native invaders cre-ate such dense shade that they kill the under-story plants and effectively prevent the oaksfrom reproducing.

In recent years, restoration and manage-ment, including prescribed burnings, haverevived many open woodlands.Typical under-story plants have returned, and oaks are begin-ning to reproduce again.

Open oak woodlands with rich under-stories are one of the natural wonders ofChicago Wilderness.

In dense forests, most wildflowers bloom in earlyspring before the trees leafout. In woodlands such asthe one shown here, morelight reaches the ground andmore flowers bloom in midand late summer.

Open Woodlands


Flatwoods communities are a product of topographyand the complex, multi-layered deposits left by theglaciers.They develop on land that is flat or gently

sloping. Below the surface, usually between 24 and 36inches deep, is a layer of clay that restricts the movement ofwater down into the ground.

This clay layer is not the virtually waterproof hardpanfound under southern flatwoods, but the clay is enough ofa barrier to force water to move laterally rather than down.Most of the time, the soil above the clay layer is saturated,and the water moves in sheets over the surface.

During spring and early summer, water may stand onthe surface in puddles and shallow ponds. By late summer,both the surface and the soils above the clay layer, may becompletely dry. Small knolls may support plants typical ofdry situations, while wetland species grow in the lowplaces.

Fire played a major role in determining just what sortof community developed in this wet/dry situation, butlong term fire suppression has made it difficult for us togauge the extent of fire’s effects. Pin oak (Quercus palustris)is now frequent in flatwoods, but fire may have kept itsnumbers down in the past. Other common species areswamp white oak (Quercus bicolor) and various ashes(Fraxinus spp.), especially black ash (Fraxinus nigra). Hugeold bur oaks are a feature of some flatwoods.The absence

wooded communities

Flatwoods

Early spring is wet in the flatwoods.

This map of the presettlement vegetation in three townships in eastern Kane and western DuPage County shows the effects of fire on the distribution of wooded communities.Prairie areas on the map are on flat glacial outwash.Wooded areas are on moraines where hills give fires a patchy distribution. Land east of rivers and Nelson Lake Marshwas relatively protected from fire.The most fire-sensitive community, a mesic forest, grew on the east bank of the Fox River.

of fire has also allowed silver maple (Acer saccharinum) tobecome common.

It is likely that in presettlement time when fires werefrequent, flatwoods were more open and savanna-like thanthey are now.The change in tree density can lead tochanges in the plants of the understory. Open flatwoodsshare many ground layer plants with sedge meadows. Fire-starved flatwoods are often too shady for such species.Fire-starved flatwoods also contain some of the largest andmost vigorous specimens of poison ivy (Rhus radicans) inour region.The vines climb to the sky by clinging to thetrunks of the largest trees.

Prairie

Savanna

Woodland

Forest

Wooded Communities in

three Chicago Region Townships


Dense forests were rather rare in thenative landscape of the Chicagoregion. Probably the most common

type, the black maple—red oak forest wasadapted to periodic fires.

Our forests were sometimes found alongrivers or in sheltered ravines near the shore ofLake Michigan where the topography inhibit-ed fires.

At the eastern edge of our region, theAmerican beech (Fagus grandifolium), one of thedominant trees in the forests of the easternstates, reaches the western edge of its range.Other prominent species of the beech-mapleforest—trees, shrubs, and understory herbs,grasses, and ferns—also are not found west ofPorter County, Indiana.A community thatdominates much of the landscape to the east ishere more like our fens and bogs. It was con-fined to islands where special circumstancesmade things suitable for it to grow.

Climate differences may be involved inthese changes and soils play a role too, but fireseems to be the major factor.The dominanttrees of the eastern forest have little resistanceto fire. In the Chicago Wilderness, oak wood-lands and savannas grow on lands that wouldbe covered with beech-maple forests just a fewmiles to the east.

Our floodplain forests are poorly under-stood, and few high quality examples exist.Silver maple (Acer saccharinum) is a dominantspecies in this forest, growing along with ashes(Fraxinus spp.). Before Dutch elm diseasestruck,American elm (Ulmus americana) was animportant species in this community.

Forests

Fungi

Fungi play three major roles in ecosystems. They aredecomposers that break down dead tissue and releasenutrients in the tissue for reuse in the system. Theyare disease-bearers—Dutch elm disease, for example,is caused by a fungus. And they grow on plant rootsand help plants absorb nutrients from the soil. Thesemycorrhizzal (the word means “root-fungus”) fungiabsorb plant juices as food and deliver minerals to pay for their keep. In laboratory experiments, trees grownwithout mycorhizzal fungi are seriously stunted. The earth-star fungus (far right) is a decomposer. The ecologyof the fungus at near-right is unknown. In Chicago Wilderness, our backyards may be as mysterious as theAmazon.

White trilliums (Trillium grandiflorum) bloom in early spring in an oak forest in Chicago Wilderness.

The groundlayer today is often rather sparse.However, this may represent a post-settlementcondition. Because our sewer and drainage sys-tems direct so much water into our riversimmediately after rains, flooding patterns arequite different than they were before settlement.Other changes in these communities may beinvolved as well.

Fire suppression has allowed trees of thefloodplain forests to invade upland sites wherethey did not grow prior to settlement. Swamps,forested areas that stay wet year around, areabsent from the Illinois portion of the ChicagoWilderness.They do occur at the IndianaDunes. Red maple (Acer rubrum) is a majorspecies in these swamps.


Birds respond to the structure of a commu-nity, nesting where tree density and sizemeet their needs.Within each community,they fill different niches based largely onwhat they eat and how and where they gettheir food.Woodpeckers look for insects inand on the bark of trees.They searchmainly the trunk and larger limbs.They donot compete directly with insect-eatingspecies that search chiefly among the leavesand small twigs in the crown of the tree orwith ground feeding species.These divisionsof the habitat allow large numbers ofspecies to occupy the same grove of forest.

Birds are usually the most conspicuousanimals in any wooded area. In nestingseason, their songs are the most char-

acteristic sound. Even in the dead of winter,resident birds sound their call notes as theysearch for food.

Some of our more common birds—robins,for example—nest wherever there are trees,from city parks and neighborhoods to denseforests. Most species are more specialized.

Birds tend to respond strongly to the struc-ture of the plant community.The size of thetrees and the density of tree growth affect birdpopulations far more than the presence orabsence of any particular species of tree.

Northern (or Baltimore) orioles (Icterusglabula) favor open savanna groves.They havebeen able to adapt to the artificial savannas wecreate in parks.They build their hanging nestshigh in the crowns of tall trees.

Scarlet tanagers (Piranga olivacea), like the

orioles, feed on insects and fruit. Orioles feedfrom the tree tops down to low shrubs, whiletanagers do their foraging more exclusively inthe crowns of trees. Scarlet tanagers preferwoodlands and forests where trees grow moredensely than in savannas.

As a group, woodpeckers feed on the trunksand large limbs of trees.Their powerful beaksand heavy skulls allow them to dig throughbark and wood to find beetle grubs and otherinsects that feed on the trees.

Hairy woodpeckers (Picoides vilosus) preferdense forests and are more likely to be foundin large blocks of forest rather than in smallwood lots.Their smaller cousins, the downywoodpeckers (Picoides pubescens) live amongyoung trees, and in open savanna groves.

Red-headed woodpeckers (Melanerpes ery-throcephalus) are a species of open woods andgroves.They seem to be subject to large popu-lation fluctuations.These may reflect themovement of birds to places where insect out-

Savanna

Woodland

prairie

Forest

wooded communities

BirdsNorthern oriole

Scarlet tanager

Ovenbird

Red-headed woodpecker

Hairy woodpecker

Easternbluebird

The Birds of our Woods


We have two species of squirrels inthe Chicago region. One is thegray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)

and the other is the fox squirrel (Sciurus niger).The gray squirrel is mostly gray above,

although highlights of buff and brown mayshow up on the back and head.The belly iswhite.

The fox squirrel is a bigger animal. Itsunderparts are rich foxy buff or ochre color,and its tail is richly colored with the same hue.

Scientists have a general consensus that inthe pre-settlement landscape, fox squirrels werelikely to be found in savannas and open wood-lands. Gray squirrels were animals of the denserforests.

This division may be an indicator of therelative importance of predators and the rela-tive difficulty of finding food in the two kindsof habitat.The savannas and woodlands withtheir acorns, hickory nuts, and walnuts had lotsof food, but they probably had many predatorsas well. Fox squirrels—by size and behaviorbetter able to deal with predators than graysquirrels—could do well there.

The denser forests with fewer nut-bearingtrees and sparser groundlayers rewarded foodgatherers while predators were not common.

Until about 1950, fox squirrels wereincreasing in Illinois. Since then, a world ofdenser woods and fewer predators has seengray squirrels increase and fox squirrels decline.

Fox squirrels do better in open woods andsavannas where both food and predatorsare abundant.

Squirrels

breaks have made food abundant.The closelyrelated red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes car-olinus) favors woodlands and forests.Thisspecies is near the northern edge of its rangein our region and is more common in thesouthern half of the Chicago Wilderness.

The eastern bluebird (Sialia sialis) is a savannaspecies. It needs trees for nest sites—it nests inholes—but it feeds over open ground. Grovesscattered across the prairie would be ideal habi-tat for this bird.

Down on the forest floor, the ovenbird(Seiurus aurocapillus) and the wood thrush(Hylochichla mustelina) search for insects amidthe leaf litter.The ovenbird builds its nest onthe ground, while the wood thrush nests in tallshrubs and small trees.

Wood thrushes are among the few speciesthat might benefit from the invasion of ourwoodlands by common buckthorn, since thegrowth of more tall shrubs provides additionalnesting sites. However, that modest benefitcomes at the cost of heavy losses in other ani-mals and plants. Nesting success is also low, so

these additional nests add few young to thepopulation.

Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii) is a bird-eating species that seems to favor open wood-lands as nesting sites. It has recently beenremoved from the endangered list in Illinois.

The red-tailed hawk, (Buteo jamaicensis), ourmost common large raptor, is definitely a birdof the savannas. It builds its nest high in thetrees, but it hunts by soaring over open fields.A landscape that mixes prairies and woodlandsis ideal habitat for this bird.

Gray squirrels do well in dense forestswhere food is hard to find.

The red-tailed hawk is a savanna specialist.


The forests and savannas of the Chicagoregion are rich in herps. In early spring,long before the leaves have emerged on

the forest trees, the raspy, thumbnail-on-combsongs of the western chorus frog (Pseudacris tri-seriata) and the clear whistles of the spring peep-ers (Pseudacris crucifer) bring life to the dormantwoods.

The salamanders of the forest floor do notcall attention to themselves, but people lucky

enough to be in the rightplace at the right time haveseen hundreds at once.

The center of amphibianlife in the spring woods is thevernal pond.The key charac-teristic of a vernal pond is thatit exists for only part of theyear. Formed of melting snowand early spring rain, it driesup during the summer. Itstemporary nature makes itideal for amphibians, becausefish cannot live in it. In perma-

nent bodies of water, fish become major preda-tors on eggs, tadpoles, and salamander larvae,making life much more difficult for the herps.

SALAMANDERS

Eleven species of salamanders live in theChicago region. Some of them are quite rare.The four-toed salamander (Hemidactylium scuta-

tum), a species fond of boggy places withsphagnum moss, is known from only a fewlocations.The Southern two-lined salamander(Eurycea cirrigera) and the smallmouth salaman-der (Ambystoma texanum) live only along theKankakee River.

The three species most likely to be discov-ered in wooded areas in the Chicago regionare the blue-spotted (Ambystoma laterale), thespotted (Ambystoma maculatum), and the tigersalamander (Ambystoma tigrinum).

All three of these species are called molesalamanders because they spend most of theirtime either underground or under somethingon the ground. Dead logs offer good cover asdo the undersides of rocks. Herpetologistslooking for animals sometimes leave a piece ofplywood on the ground. Come back in a fewdays, and there may be a salamander under it.Rainy nights are the best time to see them outmoving around, especially in very early springwhen adults are heading for the breedingponds or in early summer when newly devel-oped juviniles are leaving the ponds.

These three species usually divide the habi-tat.Tiger salamanders are animals of savannaswhere trees are widely spaced. Spotted sala-manders concentrate in forests, while bluespotted salamanders prefer open woodland sit-uations where the tree canopy is less dense.The blue spotted seems to be most abundantin flatwoods.

wooded communities

Herps

Vernal ponds are temporary pools wetonly in spring.They are essentialbreeding habitats for amphibians.Fish—major predators on eggs andtadpoles—cannot live in the temporaryponds.

Tiger salamaners are the most commonsalamander species in savannas. Their longmaturation period requires ponds that staywet well into the summer.

The larvae of a blue-spottedsalamander has gills thatallow it to live in the water ofa vernal pond.Adults hunton the forest floor.


Salamanders are predators whose majorfoods include earthworms, insects, and othersmall invertebrates.

Salamanders vary in the time it takes themto grow to adults. Blue-spotted salamandersmay emerge from the breeding pond duringthe last week in June.Tiger salamanders do notemerge until three or four weeks later.

Salamanders lay their eggs in the water, andthe developing young have to stay there.Theybreathe through gills, so they cannot leave thewater until their adult breathing apparatus isready.This dependence on water can be aproblem in dry years. If ponds dry up beforethe young have matured, the immature animalsdie.Animals with longer maturation periods—such as the tiger salamander—are particularlyvulnerable. Our alterations of the hydrology ofour region, alterations that usually lower thewater table, are especially hard on amphibians.

FROGS AND TOADS

The toads and frogs of vernal ponds also leavethe water after they mature.The western cho-rus frogs may move out of the woods into wetprairie areas, if any are available. Spring peepersstay in the trees, although they are unlikely toclimb very high. Similarly, the gray tree frog(Hyla chrysoscelis) generally stays in small treesor low on the trunks of larger trees.Tree frogshave toes equipped with adhesive pads thathelp them climb and cling to vertical surfaces.

Frogs absorb water through their skins.They can get water simply by sitting in a pud-dle, but there is now evidence that somespecies get the water they need from dewclinging to plants. Many of our wooded areashave been heavily infested by invasive trees and

shrubs which cast such a heavy shade thatgroundlayer plants are killed. Such places areless hospitable to amphibians simply becausethere are no plants for the dew to cling to.

Our one native venomous snake, the mas-sasauga (Sistrurus catenatus) is plainly an animalof the savannas, and particularly, the wettersavannas. It may move back and forth fromwooded areas to open prairies. Some of thismovement may reflect a search for food, but itmay also be a search for just the right tempera-

The raspy songs of Western chorus frogs (above) are a commonsound around our forest ponds in spring. Gray tree frogs(right) leave the water after they become adults and ascendinto the trees to live.

Massasaugas, our only native rattlesnakes,have complex habitat needs.They seem toprefer open savannas where the water tableis near the surface.They often occupy cray-fish burrows.

ture. Herps cannot regulate their body temper-atures as effectively as birds and mammals, sothey need to be able to find places to bask inthe sun when they are cold and sit in theshade when they are warm.They can use thecooling effects of standing water as a substitutefor shade.

Massasaugas eat mice, small birds, frogs, andother snakes.They take over crayfish burrowsfor shelter, and the bottom of a crayfish bur-row is a favored hibernation spot. Crayfish digdown to the water table, so a hibernating mas-sasauga lies in the water, occasionally lifting itshead to breathe. Places with clay subsoils thatprevent water from draining away are goodlocations for hibernation.

WETLANDSWETLANDS


turn, exerts a major influence on what animalslive there.

WHAT IS THE CHEMISTRY?

Soil chemistry plays a particularly importantrole in two of our wetland types: fens andbogs. Both of these communities depend onconditions created by the glaciers. Fens growon slopes that are constantly fed by groundwater flowing out of sand or gravel deposits.The ground water picks up calcium and mag-nesium carbonates from the sand and gravel.The highly alkaline water creates conditionsthat only a select group of calcium-lovingplants can tolerate.

Bogs are at the opposite end of the pHscale.Their highly acidic conditions favor thegrowth of another select group of plants.Whilefens depend on a constant flow of water, bogsare usually in basins where drainage is eithernon-existent or extremely limited. Kettleholesin moraines are prime locations for bogs.

Sedge meadows share many species withwet prairies.A string of dry years would allowa sedge meadow to be invaded by prairiespecies, while a period of unusually wet condi-tions would allow sedge meadow species toinvade the normally drier prairie.

WHERE ARE OUR WETLANDS?

Most of the wetlands in the Midwest havebeen either drained or filled. In Illinois the loss

Fen sedgemeadow Shrub Swamp

Groundwaterdischarge

Floodplain

Peat

Marsh RiverUpland

In geological terms, the landscape of theChicago region has existed for just theblink of an eye.Young landscapes like ours,

landscapes that have just emerged from undermountains of ice or lakes of water, are verypoorly drained.

The elaborate systems of streams and rivers,branching like trees, that develop on olderlands, have not yet appeared. Substantial partsof our landscape don’t drain at all.Water eithersinks into the ground or evaporates. Undraineddepressions with no outlets—or with outletsthat function only during periods of very highwater—are scattered over the entire region.

This young landscape, combined with themany layers of varied deposits left by the glaci-ers and by post-glacial lakes, produces one ofthe most diverse collections of wetlands inNorth America.The pages that follow willdescribe major features of the most distinctiveof these wetland types.

HOW WET ARE THEY?

Some wetlands are submerged year around.Others are wet in spring and early summer anddry by August. In some wetlands, water can behip-deep. In others, the soil is saturated but lit-tle or no water stands above the surface.Thesedifferences exert a powerful influence on thevegetation of a wetland.The vegetation, in

Typical wetland distribution in the Chicago region. Fens occupy hillsides where a constant flow of ground-water keeps them wet. Sedge meadows often grow where soils aresaturated but there is little standing water. Marshes need standing water for at least part of the year. Shrub swamps are likely to be in permanently wet ponds. Bogs are usuallyin isolated depressions.

Wetlands 35

has been greater than 90 percent. In Indiana itis more than 85 percent. Losses in the ChicagoWilderness area have been less drastic than inother parts of these states, but nonetheless mostof the wetlands that were here 200 years agoare gone.

Much of the lakeplain where Chicago nowstands was wet prairie, sedge meadow, andmarsh. Large scale drainage projects have low-ered the water table several feet, turning wetlandinto dry land.The remnant marshes aroundLake Calumet are the only surviving wetlandsin the city.

For the past century, farmers in our regionand throughout the Midwest have been layingdrain tile in their fields to make wetlandsfarmable. Drain tile are placed in deep trencheswhich are then refilled.The separate pieces oftile are laid end to end, but the joints are notcemented.Water percolating down through thesoil enters the tile at the joints and then flowsaway through the tile.

Elaborate tile systems have been created,with small lines of tile feeding into larger lineswhich ultimately connect with drainage ditch-es and rivers.

When conservation agencies buy formerfarm lands, they either allow these tile systemsto decay naturally or deliberately break themup.With the tile gone, former corn fields mayreturn to the hydrology that existed beforethey were plowed. Frogs and toads may singagain in places that, for a while, were dry land.

LEGAL WETLANDS

The federal Clean Water Act forbids the fillingof wetlands.The passage of this law led to thecreation of an official legal definition of a wet-

land.The U.S.Army Corps of Engineers,which oversees this section of the Clean WaterAct, defines wetlands as “areas that are inundat-ed or saturated by surface or ground water at afrequency and duration sufficient to support,and that under normal circumstances do sup-port, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapt-ed for life in saturated soil conditions.”“Normal circumstances” means no drain tile,so areas that were wetlands are still wetlands,even if they are temporarily drained dry.

0 10

Miles

N

LAKEMICHIGAN

Fox

DesP

laines

Kankakee

Little Calumet

Early spring in Cowles’ Bog at theIndiana Dunes National Lakeshore.The huge leaves of skunk cabbage(Symplocarpus foetidus) grow nextto the unfolding fiddle-heads of ferns.

The major concentrations of wetlands inthe Chicago Region are on the moraines,along the lower Des Plaines River, and inswales between old beach ridges on thelake plain in Indiana.The percentage figures in the map key refer to the amountof land in each area that is wetland.

few wetlands

<1% to 7%

8 to 13%

14% and over

WETLANDCONCENTRATIONS

IN THE

CHICAGO WILDERNESS REGION


Marshes occur in a variety of circum-stances in the Chicago Wilderness.Some are found in isolated kettle-

holes in the moraines. Others are located inthe shallow water at the edges of lakes or alongthe banks of rivers.There are still a few marsh-es in low places in the Chicago Lake Plain andin the swales between the beach ridges thatmark old shorelines of Lake Michigan innorthwest Indiana.

Draining and filling have largely eliminatedmarshes from Illinois outside the NortheastMorainal and Lake Plain divisions and alongmajor rivers. In Indiana, the once vast Kanka-kee Marshes have been nearly obliterated bydrainage projects and the channelizing of theKankakee River.

Water depth is a major controlling factor ofmarsh vegetation. In the deep, open waters oflakes and rivers, typical plants are tiny, floatingalgae that absorb their nutrients from the sur-rounding water.

In the deepest marsh waters, floating plants,some with submerged leaves, some with float-ing leaves, replace the algae. However, themore typical marsh plants are emergentspecies.They are rooted in the bottom andhave erect stems that rise above the water.Cattails (Typha spp.) are the most familiar ofthese, but in healthy, diverse marsh communi-ties, cattails are only a part of the plant life.

In late summer, the waters of marshes mayturn bright green as duckweed (Lemma spp.),the world’s smallest flowering plant, seems tocover every square inch of the surface.

Fire played a major role in the ecology of

marshes in the past. Of course, the presence ofwater would tend to prevent fires, but manymarshlands are dry in late summer.The produc-tivity of marsh communities provides abundantfuel, producing very hot blazes.The experienceof land managers is that periodic fires helpmaintain the diversity of marsh plant commu-nities.

Shrub swamps grow in shallow ponds.Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) is themost common dominant in such communities.Other shrubs often present include red-osierdogwood (Cornus stolonifera) and variousspecies of willows (Salix spp.).

In recent years, a European plant calledpurple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) has invadedmarshes and other wet areas throughout east-ern North America.This aggressive exoticspecies can completely take over a marsh, dri-ving out native plants and eliminating birds bywiping out the rigid-stemmed plants they usefor nest supports.The U.S. Fish & WildlifeService is currently testing a loosestrife-eatingbeetle in marshes in the Chicago area to see ifthis insect can control the loosestrife.

wetlands

Marshes and Shrub Swamps

The pink bloom of smartweeds(Polygonum sp.) rise from

the waters of a marsh in DuPage County, Illinois.

These globular flowers give buttonbushestheir common name.The flowers emerge

in July and August.

Cattails

Our two speciesof cattails, broad-leaved andnarrow-leaved (Typhalatifolia and T.angustifolia),are the twomost familiar andeasily recognizedmarsh plants inour region, but the historical evidence wehave suggests that they were not very com-mon in the pre-settlement landscape.Indeed, the narrow-leaved cattail may notbe native to the region. Siltation and othersuch disturbances may account for the greatincrease in cattail populations. Land man-agers responsible for maintaining healthy,diverse marsh communities worry about the ability of cattails to form dense standsthat exclude all other plants.

Wetlands 37

Sedge meadows are most easily recog-nized in early spring. Look for low, flatground flooded with a few inches of

water and studded with lumpy tussocks orhummocks.The tussocks reveal the presence ofCarex stricta, the most common sedge of thesedge meadow.

Sedges belong to the same order of plants asgrasses, but they form a separate family withinthat order. Papyrus, the plant the ancientEgyptians turned into paper, is a sedge, as arebulrushes.

Some 800 species of sedges belong to thegenus Carex.Almost 150 species of this genusare native to the Chicago region, and severalothers have been introduced. Most of these arefound in various kinds of wet habitats. Someare quite common; others are quite rare. Illinoislists 32 members of the genus as endangered orthreatened.This is a reflection of the massivedestruction of wetlands that has occurred in thestate. Half of these listed species are thought tosurvive somewhere in the Chicago region.Thisis a reflection of the survival of greater biodi-versity in this region than in the rest of thecorn belt.

ORGANIC SOILS

The tussocks of Carex stricta are composed ofpeat formed of the partly decomposed rootsand rhizomes (underground stems) of theplant.The soil between the tussocks is alsopeat. Peat soils are classed as organic soils,meaning they are made almost entirely of thepartially decayed remains of once-living plants.Mineral soils, on the other hand, are formed ofsand, gravel, silt, clay, and other inorganic mate-rials. Organic soils are common in wetlandswhere low oxygen levels in the saturated soilsprevent the decay of dead plants. If organicsoils are composed of peat that has decayed tothe point where the individual plant parts that

make it up are not identifiable, the soil is calledmuck.

Several other species of Carex are likely tobe present in sedge meadows along with anumber of species that also occur in othercommunities—particularly in wet prairies.Canada bluejoint grass (Calamagrostis canadensis)is perhaps the most common of these. In latesummer, the tall stems of joe pye weed(Eupatorium maculatum) are topped by largeclusters of purple flowers. Joe pye weed alsogrows in savannas.

Where the water in a sedge meadow is highin calcium, plants typical of fens can often befound.

Sedge meadows typically flourish wheresoils remain saturated most of the time,although periods when standing water is pre-sent are rare. Fire—which prevents invasion bywoody plants—is important to the survival ofthis community.

Peat will burn if it dries out, so in yearswhen drought strikes, fire could consume themuck soil of the meadow and drasticallychange conditions. Depending on circum-stances such as water levels, marsh vegetationcould replace the sedge meadow. If conditionsare drier, wet prairie plants could invade.

Some Shared Speciesof Wet Ground

These three wet communities share manyspecies. The differences among them aremore likely to be based on the relativeimportance of various groups of speciesrather than on the presence or absence of any particular species.

SedgeMeadows

The hummocks created by the sedge called Carex stricta show plainly in early spring.The standing waterwill be gone before mid-summer and the hummocks will be hidden by new growth.

Fen

Sedge Meadow

sedges dominate

grasses

dom

inat

e

calcium-lovingplants

WetPrair

ies dom

inate


Fens come in many varieties, but whatthey all have in common is a continuoussource of calcium- and magnesium-rich

ground water. In our region, the source of thisground water is in layers of sand or graveldeposited by melt water flowing from a glacier.These sand and gravel aquifers typically sit atopa relatively impermeable layer of glacial driftthat prevents water from sinking farther belowthe surface.

Since it can’t go down, the water flowssideways until it emerges on a slope.Along theway, the water has picked up the minerals thatgive fens their unique chemistry.The flow

from the aquifer may be sufficient tokeep the water liquid through thewinter.

Terrain, the amount of flow, andthe amounts of minerals in the

water all affect the precise nature of the fencommunity. In small amounts, calcium is animportant plant nutrient. At high concentra-tions, it creates caustic conditions that placestrong limitations on plant life. Only speciesadapted to these unusual conditions can livein fens.

Many of our fens are along the Fox Riveron the slopes of morainal hills, kames, andgravel terraces left from the time when the

wetlands

Fens

White lady slippers (Cypripediumcandidum) are among the beautifulorchids that show an affinity for thealkaline, peaty soils of fens.

The pH scale measures the acidity andalkalinity of organic materials. On thisscale, each whole number represents a ten-fold change.A fen with a pH of 7.4 is tentimes as alkaline as a mesic prairie with apH of 6.4. Soil pH is an important factordetermining the distribution of plants.

river was a torrent carrying a flood of melt-water from the wasting glacier. Others aresimilarly situated in glacial deposits whereerosion has exposed gravel aquifers on hill-sides.

In some places, the flowing ground watercarries such a heavy load of minerals that someof them precipitate out and form a porousrock called tufa. Sometimes, marl, a loose,crumbly material formed of calcium and otherminerals, collects. Fen soils are formed of peat.

Places with high mineral concentrationsand heavy flows may be separated out as springruns or marl flats. Calcareous seeps are areas

with high flow but with more organic matterand nutrients in their soils than occur in springruns. Graminoid fens occur where flow isreduced and still more nutrients and organicmatter are in the soil. Graminoid fens sharemany plants with the prairies. Such dominantprairie grasses as big and little bluestem (Andro-pogon spp.) and Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans)can be found growing along with calcium-loving species like grass-of-parnassus (Parnassiaglauca) and Ohio goldenrod (Solidago ohiensis).Sedges are also common.

Graminoid fens depend on periodic fire. Iffire cannot reach them, shrubs and trees invade.

AlkalinityAcidity

Bog

mesic forest

mesic prairie

Fen

Acidity—Alkalinity of Soils

6.4 pH

3.5–4.5 pH

6.9 pH

7.35–8.00 pH

Bogs are remnants of a time when theChicago Wilderness region was coveredwith vegetation like that of present-day

Upper Michigan. In early post-glacial time, aspruce-fir forest dominated this region.As oak-woods and prairies replaced this boreal foreston the uplands, bogs hung on in small glacialdepressions where drainage was limited ortotally absent.

Bogs are striking examples of the ability ofplants to change their environment.They can,over time, fill a pond or small lake with peatthat forms a substrate firm enough to supporttrees.

Bog waters are cold, extremely acid, andvery low in oxygen. Mineral nutrients arelocked up in the peat and therefore unavailableto plants.These conditions place severe limitson plant life.A group of species has adapted tothese conditions.These bog plants dominatethis extreme environment and are unlikely tobe found anywhere else.

Bog development is likely to begin with theformation of a floating mat of plants. Sedgesare a major element in this mat as are mosses,particularly Sphagnum moss.

As this mat thickens, it becomes firmenough to allow shrubs to root in it. Bog birch(Betula pumila) may begin to grow, along withleatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata) and otherspecies of heaths, among them, cranberries(Vaccinium macrocarpon). In time, trees may

invade, particularly tamarack (Larix laricina), adeciduous conifer whose needles turn a richgold before dropping in the fall.

In our region, the final stage in this processis considered to be a tall-shrub bog dominatedby winterberry (Ilex verticillata) and poisonsumac (Rhus vernix).The exotic shrub glossybuckthorn (Rhamnus frangula) has invaded thiscommunity in recent years.

The stages in bog development can oftenbe seen as a series of concentric circles inexisting bogs.The outermost circle is a narrowmoat of open water next to the shore of thelake or pond. Inside that is a sedge mat, then alow shrub bog, a forested bog, and a tall-shrubbog.A small pond of open water may remainat the center of this sequence.

In the nutrient-poor environment of thebog, some plants have developed the ability tocapture insects to provide themselves withnitrogen and other essential elements.The sun-dews (Drosera spp.) snare their prey on stickyfilaments.The pitcher plants (Sarracenia spp.)trap insects in cups baited with sugar water.

Bogs are known for the beauty of theirflowers.The heath shrubs produce bell-likeblooms and miniature versions of azaleas.Anumber of orchids—like the stemless lady slip-per (Cypripedium acaule)—are bog specialists.Others, like the grass pink (Calopogon tuberosus)are often found there.

The grass pink (Calopogon tuberosus)decorates summer bogs with its flowers.This species can also be found at the otherend of the pH scale in fens.

Bogs

Open water, sedge mats, and bog forest appearin this picture of Volo Bog in Lake (IL) andMcHenry Counties.The sundew (left) usessticky filaments to capture insects.


Dragonflies are among the most familiarsights at summer marshes.These ancientinsects—their ancestry goes back to the

coal forests—are predators that win the affection ofhumans by eating mosquitoes.Their larvae live inwater where they prey on small aquatic creatures.

At a few special places in Chicago Wilderness,wet places along the lower Des Plaines River wherea torrent of meltwater scraped away the glacialdebris and exposed the 400 million year oldbedrock, a bright green dragonfly called the Hinesemerald (Somatochlora hinena) hunts insects overmarshes, sedge meadows, and forest edges.The Hinesemerald is known from a few sites in Cook and WillCounties; it is known from a few sites in Wisconsin’sDoor County where this same dolomite bedrock isexposed. Historical records exist from northernOhio on the same bedrock.

The Chicago Region is at the center of efforts toprotect this rare and endangered insect.

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Insects The green darner(Anax junius) hawksfor mosquitoes abovethe wetlands ofChicago Wilderness.

Wetlands are rich in bird life. Dabblingducks like the blue-winged teal (Anasdiscors) sit on the surface scooping up

duckweed, sedge seeds, and snails. Pied-billed grebes(Podilymbus podiceps) use their control of their ownbuoyancy to sink like submerging submarines untilonly their heads remain above the surface, then divein search of small fish, crayfish, and tadpoles.

Soras slip among the reeds searching out snails,insects, and smartweed seeds.The marsh wren(Cistothorus palustris) sings its rattling song from thecattails and yellow-headed blackbirds (Xanthocephalusxanthocephalus) sing a song that sounds like some-body dropping a handful of nails in a coffee grinder.

Great blue herons stand motionless in shallowwater waiting for a fish to get careless and reveal itsposition while black terns (Chlidonias niger) swoopthrough the air picking off flying insects.

Lists of endangered and threatened birds aredepressingly heavy on wetland species.Three of thebirds mentioned above are on the endangered list inIllinois.The Chicago region is a refuge for these

A common moorhen (Gal-linula chloropus) helpsher chicks learn to recognizefood.A threatened speciesin Illinois, the moorhennests in several locations inour region.These birds werephotographed at Chicago’sLake Calumet.

birds simply because so many wetlands still survivehere.

Perhaps our most vulnerable birds are the bigcolonial nesters.The loss of a single nesting locationcan leave dozens—in some cases hundreds—ofpotential nesting pairs without a home. Five speciesof these colonial nesters live in the ChicagoWilderness, although the cattle egret lives at onlyone site,Will County’s Lake Renwick. Cattle egrets

current sites

historic sites

possible sites

CURRENT AND

FORMER RANGE OF THE

HINES EMERALD DRAGONFLY

Wetlands 41

are African birds that managed to get to NorthAmerica on their own.They nest in wetlands, butthey usually feed in pastures.

The double-crested cormorant is actually more ofa river and lake bird than a wetland bird.This divingbird may go down 25 feet or more after fish. Itwould find little to interest it in seasonal ponds.

The colonial herons--the great blue, the greategret, and the black-crowned night heron- fish theshallow waters.Their usual hunting strategy is tostand very still and wait for something to move.They usually grab things in their bills, although thegreat blue may use its bill as a spear for capturinglarger fish.

Great blue herons and great egrets are off and fly-ing by dawn, looking for ponds and marshes that arelikely hunting areas. Black crowned night herons, astheir name suggests, do more of their work afterdark.They leave their nesting grounds at dusk.Thenight herons usually nest in trees, but at the BigMarsh near Lake Calumet, they have adapted tonesting on the ground amid rushes.

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Soras (Porzana carolina) slip between the stems of emergentvegetation in search of insects, snails, and seeds. Smart-weedseeds are a favorite food.

Colonial nesters of the Chicago region include double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus),great blue herons (Ardea herodias), great egrets (Casmerodius albus), black-crowned night herons(Nycticorax nycticorax), and cattle egrets (Bubulcus ibis). Cattle egrets nest only at Lake Renwickin Will county. Numbers on rookery sites show number of colonial species nesting at the location.

Large numbers of big birds need large areas forhunting.These birds may travel 10 to 15 miles insearch of food. It takes lots of small wetlands to sup-port the animals living in one rookery in one bigwetland.

The most familiar wetland bird is the red-wingedblackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus), a wetland species thathas invaded uplands in recent years. Red-wings seemto do well even where cattails have completely cov-ered all the water in a wetland.Yellow-headed black-birds appear to need some open water.

Lake Renwick is an old gravel quarry in Will County that is our largest rookery.All five of our colonial nesting waterbirds nest on the islands in this lake.

42

The skins of beavers were the first prod-ucts of the Midwest to enter theworld market. Native Americans con-

trolled this end of the trade in the early days,but late in the 1600s, the French arrived. Later,British and American traders took over thebusiness.The hides of other animals were trad-ed too, but beavers (Castor canadensis) made upthe bulk of the commerce.Their skins wereturned into hats in Europe.

The trapping of beavers was a huge busi-ness, so big that it eventually killed all thebeavers. Historical accounts say that by about1850, beavers were completely gone not onlyfrom the Chicago Region but from the rest ofIllinois and Indiana as well.

They are now found in suitable habitatthroughout the Chicago region.The return ofthe beaver was accomplished with a certainamount of stocking, but mainly, the beaversmade it back on their own.They were helpedby the extensive network of drainage ditchesdug to keep the water out of croplands acrossIllinois.

Beavers not only live in wetlands, theymake wetlands.Their dams turn sections of

streams into ponds.The dams deepen the waterproviding room for underwater entrances tobeaver lodges.Along larger rivers where banksare suitable the beavers live in burrows withunderwater entrances.

Muskrats (Ondatra zibethicus) are the mostvisible of marsh mammals.They are frequentlyseen swimming, especially near dawn and dusk.Their houses are low domes—much smallerthan beaver lodges—roofed with mud andmarsh plants. Birds as diverse as Canada geese(Branta canadensis) and black terns nest on topof muskrat houses.

Muskrats are prolific animals.When popula-tions are at peak levels, their appetites can sig-nificantly reduce cattail stands.

Mink (Mustela vison) eat muskrats and virtu-ally anything else they can overpower.Theysometimes take over muskrat houses after eat-ing the inhabitants.They are active mainly atnight, but sometimes continue hunting intothe morning when early visitors might catchsight of one.

River otters (Lutra canadensis) were once partof the Chicago Wilderness.They have beenextirpated from much of their former range inthe Midwest.Today, they are occasionally seen

along the Mississippi and inextreme southern Illinois.

Occasional sightings,including some fromMcHenry, Kane, and DuPageCounty in recent years, wereprobably wandering individu-als looking for a home.Withbetter water quality and somelimits on development alongrivers, they might find one.

wetlands

Mammals

The huge lodge and the gnawed treetrunk are both signs of the presence ofbeavers. Beavers fell trees for food andfor construction material for lodgesand dams.

The river otter was oncecommon in our region, buthas been extirpated.Aswater quality improves inour rivers, the reintroductionof this species is a possibility.

Mink tracks

Wetlands 43

Afemale Blanding’s turtle (Emydoideablandingii) was captured at Spring BluffPreserve, a Lake County (IL) forest

preserve on Lake Michigan immediately southof the Wisconsin Border. She was equippedwith a radio tracking device and released. Shebegan traveling north, crossing the state lineinto the Chiwaukee Prairie, a preserve man-aged by The Nature Conservancy ofWisconsin.There she took up residence at apond. She had traveled a total of 765 meters,about half a mile.

In her wandering, she crossed land held bya county preserve system and a private conser-vation organization. In Illinois, she was a mem-ber of a species on a “watch list.”The watchlist is reserved for animals and plants whosefuture is a matter of concern but who are notconsidered in sufficient peril to make theendangered or threatened list. However, whenshe crossed the state line, this turtle became amember of a threatened species, since that isthe status of Blanding’s turtle in Wisconsin.

The travels of this turtle point up theimportance of cooperation among conserva-tion agencies and states.They also emphasizethe importance of preserving wetlands—evensmall wetlands. Many animals visit wetlands toosmall to support permanent populations. Somewetlands can support small populations thatmay die out from time to time.These popula-tions must be replenished by migrants fromother areas, and that recolonization cannothappen if great distances or other obstaclesprevent it.

Herps

Adult Blanding’s turtlesprefer shallow ponds with atleast some open water.Theydo not live where densestands of cattails dominate the wetland.Younganimals of this species have been observed inseveral different kinds of wetlands.They havebeen known to live in burrows dug into thehummocks created by Carex stricta in sedgemeadows.

Many wetland herps are confined to areaswith permanent water. Snapping turtles(Chelydra serpentina) belong to this group as dobullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana).

Kirtland’s snake (Clonophis kirtlandii) is aspecies that can be defined as an animal of wetprairies, wet savannas, or wetlands. Like themassasauga, it uses crayfish burrows, and itspends much time in them. Earthworms are amajor food source and they may be capturedunderground.

Blanding’s turtle (Emydoidea blandingii)(above left) is a once-common wetlandspecies that has been eliminated in most ofits historic range by habitat loss.The mapshows the historic range in color.The tri-angles indicate locations of recent sightingsof the species. Baby snapping turtles (above)will look for permanent bodies of water toprovide them with a home.

RANGE OF BLANDING’S TURTLE IN

ILLINOIS

STILL WATERS


The longear sunfish (Lepomis megalotis)brightens the waters of both lakes andrivers in this region.

Lakes are one of the signs of the youth ofour landscape. In areas to the south andwest, where the glaciers departed less

recently, the various depressions left by the icehave drained away or been filled by erosionfrom the surrounding uplands.

Glacial lakes are common to the north inWisconsin and Michigan, but in the states ofIllinois and Indiana, they are almost entirelyconfined to the small portion of each state thatlies on the Valparaiso Moraine or on theyounger lands between the moraine and LakeMichigan.

Lakes are permanently, not just seasonally,wet.They are too deep for rooted plants togrow except in shallow, near-shore areas.Thedistinction between a lake and a pond is amatter of size. Lakes are bodies of water largeenough to have at least one wind-swept beach.When winds are high, they blow across thewater and create waves large enough to wash

away any plants attempting to colonize thebeach.

Our inland lakes are generally of moderatedepth. One, in Lake County (IL), reaches adepth of 50 feet and has been named DeepLake.Thirty to 35 feet is more usual.

Lakes and ponds can be divided into cate-gories based on abundance of nutrients andhow these nutrients are cycled throughthem.Oligotrophic lakes contain limited nutri-ents and maintain an approximate balancebetween production of organic material byphotosynthesis and decomposition.The processof decay releases nutrients back to the water.The open waters of Lake Michigan are olig-otrophic.

In eutrophic lakes and ponds (the namemeans “well fed”), nutrients are abundant andmore are taken up during production than arereleased by decay. Such lakes usually receive acontinuing supply of nutrients through run-off

STILL WATERSLakes and Ponds

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Lakes in our region are concentrated on the moraines and in low spots on the Chicago Lake Plain.Draining and filling have eliminated all but a few of the lake-plain lakes.

DISTRIBUTION OF LAKESIN THE

CHICAGO WILDERNESSREGION

Lake Concentrations

from surrounding lands. Sediments rich inorganic matter build up on the bottom, andthe lake gradually fills. In the deeper waters,the bacteria of decay may absorb all the avail-able oxygen, creating stagnant conditionswhere few animals can live. Stagnation is mostfrequent during late summer when the supplyof oxygen brought to the deep waters by thespring overturn—see graphic on this page—has been exhausted. Many inland lakes are usu-ally eutrophic.

In dystrophic lakes, production and reduc-tion are wildly out of balance. Bogs are goodexamples of dystrophic waters.Thick layers ofpeat build up in the lake basin because verylittle decay is taking place.

One of the common effects of settlementhas been a large increase in the amounts ofnutrients flowing into our lakes and ponds.These come from fertilizers, from sewage treat-ment plants, or leaking septic systems.Theypush lakes in the direction of dystrophy bygreatly increasing the amount of production.Algae blooms fertilized by these nutrients canalso be foul smelling.

Lakes are ecologically complex communi-ties with several distinctive kinds of organismsliving in them. On the bottom are mussels,tube worms, and fresh water sponges.

Swimming organisms include crustaceansand other invertebrates as well as fish. Healthylake communities have animals at differenttrophic—that is, feeding—levels, from herbi-vores to top carnivores. Fish-eating birds suchas cormorants and terns enter the picture aspredators.

Several endangered and threatened specieslive in the lakes of the Chicago region, most ofthem in the lakes of the Fox River watershed.They include several small fish belonging tothe genus Notropis that carry the commonname “shiners.” Shiners are seldom more thansix inches long and often much smaller.Theyfeed on insects and small crustaceans.

The plight of the shiners is usually a prod-uct of environmental changes in their homelakes.The Illinois Endangered Species Boardhas recommended that glacial lakes be protect-ed from further development and from pollu-tion and herbicides, that introduction of sportfish be prohibited, and that native submergedand emergent vegetation be protected andenhanced.

Lake Stratification and Turnover

Winter Fall(turnover)

Summer(layering)

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Ice cover

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Heating

Heating and cooling separate lake waters into layers. In winter the cold air chills water near the surface. The warmest water is in the depths.

Spring sunshine heats the sur-face layers until all the water is the same temperature. Mixing by wind and currents brings oxygen-rich water to the depths.

In summer, the warm water is at the surface. A sharply defined thermocline divides the warm surface water from the deep cold water.

Fall cooling produces uniform temperatures again and another turnover. The turnovers are the principal sources of oxygen in the deep waters of lakes.

The cup-like leaves and yellow flowers ofAmerican lotus (Nelumbo lutea) coverthe shallow water in Nippersink Lake inLake County, IL.


The rivers of the Chicago region havebeen subjected to the same kinds ofhumiliations as other rivers in major

industrial, population, and agricultural centers.They have been used at times as open sewers.They have been dumping grounds for indus-trial wastes and been muddied with run-offfrom plowed fields.The Chicago in Illinois andthe Grand Calumet in Indiana got the worst ofthis treatment, although no river escaped with-out some damage.

Over the last 25 years, since the passage ofthe Clean Water Act and other legislation, con-ditions have improved somewhat. Fish thathave not been seen in a century have returnedto the Chicago; herons can be seen in themarshes along the Grand Cal.According to theBiological Stream Characterization of theIllinois Department of Natural Resources,some Chicago region streams qualify as“Unique Aquatic Resources,” Class A, or“Highly Valued Aquatic Resources,” Class B.The lower Kankakee as it flows through WillCounty is a river whose biodiversity makes itof global significance.

The use of rivers by living things is largelycontrolled by physical and chemical factors.Physical factors include the size of the river

and the amount of water flowing through it,the consistency of the flow, the speed of thecurrent, and the nature of the bottom.Chemical factors in our region are mostlyabout the extent of pollution.

Biologists have divided the rivers of theChicago region into four size categories.Thesmallest of these is the headwater stream, a tinycreek that may flow only intermittently. Head-water streams have few species of fish, andmost of those are shiners and other minnows.

Low order streams are small- to medium-sized creeks whose bottoms have been shapedby the water to produce riffles and pools, alter-nating sections of fast shallow water and slowdeep water. Life in these streams often sortsitself into ripple and pool species.The creekheelsplitter (Lasmigona compressa), an endan-gered mussel known in recent years from theKishwaukeee and tributaries of the Kankakee,is a quiet water species.Among fish, the threat-ened river redhorse (Moxostoma carinatum) is ariffle species, while the threatened Iowa darter(Etheostoma exile) is a fish of quiet pools.

Many miles of streams in the Chicagoregion have been channelized, that is, dredgedinto straight, steep-sided ditches of uniformdepth. Channelized streams have neither rifflesnor pools. Dams on our rivers, by preventngupstream movement, also contribute to thedecline in biodiversity.

Mid-order streams are our most complexriver habitat.Water flows through both deepand shallow pools. In the riffles, smallmouthbass (Micropterus dolomieui) are top predators,while largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides)live in the pools. Floodplains begin to developalong streams of this size.

Our largest rivers have broad floodplains.Floodplains are low lands adjoining the riverchannel that are regularly flooded during peri-ods—such as early spring—of heavy flow.Theflooding exerts a heavy influence on vegetationalong the banks.

Our presence in the watersheds has dramat-ically changed the pattern of flow in ourrivers. If the surrounding watershed is largelynatural land, heavy rains or snow melt tend tobe absorbed by the soil and released gradually.We have turned much of our watersheds intoimpervious surfaces—pavement and roofs.Water is carried rapidly to the river by stormsewers and produces frequent flooding.

The North Branch of the Chicago River isa peaceful stream on a sunny summerday.The creation of preserves along therivers is helping return life to the waters.

MOVING WATERSMOVING WATERSStreams and Rivers

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A continental divide runs through the heart of Chicago Wilderness.The Chicago, Grand Calumet, andLittle Calumet Rivers flow into Lake Michigan.The Des Plaines and Kankakee Rivers join to createthe Illinois River which flows to the Mississippi.The Fox also joins the Illinois.The Kishwaukee flowsto the Mississippi via the Rock River.A century ago, the flow of the Chicago was reversed. It nowflows through the Sanitary and Ship Canal into the Des Plaines and the Illinois. Rare and endangeredfish and mussels still live in the best of our rivers.

The irregular shore and varied depth of anatural creek (above) contrasts sharply withthe sterile ditch created by channelizing (top).

fishes

mussels

a & b qualitystreams

RIVER SYSTEMSOF THE

CHICAGOWILDERNESS

REGION

Rainbow darter (Etheostoma caeruleum) is oneof the endangered species that still lives in ourriver systems.

47

Henry Chandler Cowles is said to havedeveloped his interest in the IndianaDunes after passing through the area

on a train during his first trip to Chicago.Thelandscape that Cowles glimpsed is one of themost diverse in North America. Open dunes,marshes, prairies, upland forests and swamps,oak savannas, and relict populations of jackpines all grow within a few miles of the LakeMichigan shore. Botanical surveys tell us thatmore species of plants grow in the IndianaDunes National Lakeshore than in GreatSmoky Mountains National Park.

The basis of this diversity is the shape of theland.As part of the lake plain, the dunes showthe history of the various stages and levels ofLake Michigan. Long beach ridges parallel thepresent shoreline. Between them are low swalesnow occupied by lakes, marshes, and otherwetlands.

The most spectacular sights are the dunesthemselves, mountains of sand rising nearly ahundred feet above the swales.These dunes sitatop glacial drift.They have formed throughthe millenia from sand blown by the prevailingwesterly winds, sand taken from the endlesssupply carried by near-shore currents in LakeMichigan.

Dunes Formation

cottonwooddune Jack pine

Juniper

Black and red oak

marram grass

sandcherry

Black oak

Blackoak

Blowout

White pine

Illinois has its dune lands too.At IllinoisBeach State Park marram grass (Ammophila bre-vigulata) grows on low foredunes immediatelybehind the beach, and sand savannas dominat-ed by black oak (Quercus velutina) are a majorcommunity type. But there are no high dunesat Illinois Beach, because the prevailing windsblow toward the lake. Illinois Beach is also amuch younger landscape. It was formed in thepast 3,000 years, while parts of the dunelandsof Indiana go back to the earliest periods ofLake Michigan’s development.

The story that Cowles pieced together fromhis researches at the Indiana Dunes was ofchanges wrought largely by plants on the land-scape in which they grew.Adding organic mat-ter to the soil, changing the microclimate bycasting shade or shielding land from the winds,the marram grass of the foredunes wouldeventually create conditions that would favorthe growth of other plants, and these plantswould replace the marram grass.

The process was called ecological succession,and it became a major concept in the thenyoung science of ecology. Succession wasthought to lead ultimately to a natural commu-nity called the regional climax, a single, stable,long-lived community that would cover theentire landscape.

Cowles made ecological change intelligible,although today, we think of the idea of a climaxcommunity as too directional. No landscapeever reaches the regional climax. Instead, a variety of forces act to maintain diversity.Thewinter storm that blows down trees and opensnew opportunities for marram grass is not asetback on the road to the regional climax buta predictably recurring event that sustains bio-diversity.

The DUNES

The beach at the Indiana Dunes is awindswept desert where only a few hardyannuals can live. South from the beach, theland is progressively older and more exten-sively modified by the plant communitiesthat cover it.The vegetation separates intonarrow bands of very different communities.These differences help give the dunes theirgreat biodiversity.

Fowler’s toad (Bufo woodhousii fowleri) is a duneland specialist not found elsewhere in our region.

Henry Chandler CowlesThe University of Chicago’s ProfessorCowles was one of the founders of the

science of ecology. His studies of plant lifeat the Indiana Dunes developed the ideaof ecological succession and connected thehistory of the land to the life it supports.

The DUNES

49

Zebra mussels (inset) are the latest exoticspecies to upset the ecological balance ofthe Great Lakes.These tiny molluscs nowoccupy practically every square inch ofsuitable habitat in Lake Michigan.

The Great Lakes are among the won-ders of the world.The five inland seashold one-sixth of the world’s surface

fresh water. Lake Michigan is the third largestof the lakes, with a surface area of 22,300square miles.

The lake has played a major role in the history of the Chicago region. It has been ahighway for traders, travelers, and immigrants.

The natural riches of the lake were majorresources. Commercial fishing in the lake was abig business, and for much of its history, it wastotally unregulated. Over-fishing pushed somespecies to the brink of extinction. By the late1930s, lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) num-bers had been seriously reduced.The arrival ofsea lampreys (Petromyzon marinus) in the fortiesfinished off the species. Lampreys, an Atlanticspecies that entered the Upper Great Lakes viathe Welland Canal, are parasites on fish, andheavy infestations can be lethal. By the timeanother kind of newcomer, thealewife (Alosa pseudoharengus),arrived, the lake had no toppredator to help control thenumbers of this very prolificexotic species.Alewife popula-tions boomed and then crashedin massive die-offs that litteredbeaches in the late sixties.

In the early seventies, various species ofsalmon, including the coho (Oncorhynchuskisutch), were introduced to control the ale-wives.They succeeded at that and, as a sort ofside effect, created a multi-billion dollar sportfishing industry.

Meanwhile, lake trout stocking continued,but the species showed few signs of being ableto reproduce naturally. New exotic speciesarrived, the most troublesome being the zebramussel (Dreissena polymorpha), a mollusc thatnow infests practically every suitable bit of lakebottom.Traditionally abundant species such asthe yellow perch (Perca flavescens) have beendeclining alarmingly.

Not long ago, it was the water quality ofLake Michigan that was declining.A concerted

international effort has produced majorimprovements—although problems with per-sistent toxic chemicals remain. However, thebiological quality of the lake is very much inquestion.Aquatic biologists have the heavy taskof trying to maintain a system in the face ofthe constant arrival of new exotic species andthe loss of coastal habitat.

LAKE MICHIGAN

This diagram revealssome of the massivechanges in the life ofLake Michigan thathave accompanied settle-ment and the oftenheedless harvesting ofthe lake’s livingresources.

LAKE MICHIGAN

Some Lake Michigan Fish And Their Fates

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sunfishes emerald Shiner

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ciscoBloater

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Deep Watercisco

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Whitefish

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ON THEPEOPLE

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The permanent villages of Native Americans in this region were mainly along the rivers. Peoplemade seasonal use of the lake plain—where the present city of Chicago is located—but theydidn’t live on that wet, wind-swept land.

People have been living in the Chicago region forthousands of years. It is likely that hunters followedthe big animals such as mastodons north as the

glaciers receded. In those times, human populations weresmall—as they were throughout the world—and huntingand gathering were the sole means of subsistence.

By 2,000 years ago, people in the Midwest were liv-ing in settled communities based upon a combination ofagriculture and the harvest of natural foods such as fish,shellfish, and game.These communities developed intosubstantial societies capable of building such impressiveworks as the mounds at Cahokia, Illinois, and otherMidwestern sites.

This Midwestern civilization was centered along themajor rivers: the Illinois, Mississippi, and Ohio.

The arrival of Europeans in North America was cata-strophic for native societies. Diseases such as smallpoxand measles destroyed whole communities.Tribes dis-placed by the new colonists pushed west and came intoconflict with people already there.

The Illini, a confederation of peoples that had greetedthe first French explorers in the late 1600s, had practical-ly ceased to exist by 1800.The Potawatomi, recentarrivals from the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, hadoccupied the Chicago region by the time the city wasfounded in the 1830s.

Native populations were small. Only a few thousandpeople lived in the Chicago region.Their way of life andtheir habitations followed the seasons. Spring and sum-mer were spent in towns living in wooden houses. Fieldsnear the towns were planted in corn, beans, and squash.

After the harvest, most people moved away from thetowns. Often only a few elderly people remained therethrough the winter.The rest of the population movedinto winter hunting camps.The camps were occupied byfamily groups.

The coming of spring was signaled by the gatheringof the people at groves of black and sugar maple.There,

they collected the rising sap and boiled it down intomaple sugar, which they used as a condiment much aswe use salt.

The Potawatomi towns were mainly along the rivers.There they had reliable water supplies and firewood.Theprairies were places they used seasonally for hunting andgathering.They had no reason to establish permanenttowns there.

The major crops of the Potawatomi were of tropicalorigin and did not escape into the wild. Extensive tradenetworks existed throughout North America, but thegoods traded were mainly portable commodities andluxury goods.The sort of bulk shipments that led to theaccidental importation of large numbers of plants fromEurope were not part of Native American commerce.

This way of life began to change after the fur tradebecame important as men turned more of their time andattention to trapping and hunting beaver and other fur-bearers. Iron pots and steel axes, acquired in exchange forfurs, replaced pottery and stone tools. In the first 150years of European presence, the newcomers and nativesadapted to each other. It was only after the Americansbegan to pour in that natives were forced to move west.

The largest effect of Native Americans on the land-scape came from their use of fire as a land managementtool.The earliest account of burning in North America

PEOPLEON THE

LAND

NATIVE AMERICANVILLAGES

IN THE

EARLY 19TH CENTURY


People on the Land 51

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable set up his trad-ing post at the mouth of the ChicagoRiver just as Americans along the Atlantic

coast were rebelling against the colonial gov-ernment of England and setting up their newrepublic. Du Sable—of mixed French andAfrican ancestry—was one of many traders inthe Midwest who bought furs from the nativepeople and paid for them with iron pots, steelaxes, woolen blankets, and a variety of othercommodities that had already, by the 1770s,profoundly changed the lives of NativeAmericans.

The society of the Midwest at the time wasa blend of native peoples and small numbers oftraders from elsewhere. Intermarriage wascommon and close ties developed across cultural barriers.Except for the devastating attack on the beaver, changesin the human landscape had little effect on the naturallandscape.

All that changed suddenly and profoundly after theUnited States gained control of the lands that are now inthe Chicago region after the War of 1812. Settlers beganto pour in.The government land office sent out teams ofsurveyors to mark off the land so it could be sold to set-

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a man of mixed African and French ancestry, established the first trading postat the mouth of the Chicago River when this region was still under British control.Settlement

tlers.The survey reports are now one of our importantsources of information about the native vegetation of thisregion.

Chicago was meant to be a city from the beginning.Farmers who took up land at the edges of town werequickly overrun by development. By 1870, 350,000 peo-ple lived in Cook County, and the city’s populationwould top one million before the end of the century.

dates from 1528 when Cabeza de Vaca saw people inTexas setting fires. In the seventeenth century, Frenchtraders planned journeys west from the Mississippi tomiss the fall fire season.Accounts of fires in Illinois,Indiana, and southern Wisconsin are numerous.

Fires gave a competitive edge to the natural commu-nities best adapted to them.They created the varied

landscape of prairie, savanna, woodland and forest thatgreeted settlers in the early 19th century. Fire is a naturalprocess in many ecosystems, and many natural communi-ties are adapted to regular blazes.The native peoplesmade use of this process to serve their own needs, buttheir actions protected and often increased the biodiver-sity of the region.

Ruth Duncan and her daughter,members of the Lenape tribe,demonstrate the proper techniquefor building a wigwam at amaple sugar festival at theIndiana Dunes NationalLakeshore.


An Illinois blacksmith named John Deere invented the steel moldboard plow that allowed farmers to till the heavy soils of the prairie.

In the rest of the region, settlement followeda more typical pattern, as farmers settled theland and market towns sprang up to serve them.In northwest Indiana, settlement was concen-trated in the better lands on the moraine.Thelake plain with its marshes and dunes had littleattraction for farmers.

Prairie soils proved to be extraordi-narily fertile, and unplowed prairiesbecame pastures.The eating habits ofcows and horses proved to be differentthan those of bison and elk, and somecommon prairie wildflowers beganto disappear. Suppression of fire andthe influx of exotic species thatcame with the settlers also madelife difficult for many of theprairie natives.

Land that had been brushyprairie during times when fireswere a regular occurrencequickly became oak woodsafter settlement. Meanwhile,

burban development, but this was confined totowns along the rail lines and was, for the mostpart, something that only the well-to-do couldenjoy.

Settlement patterns began to change dra-matically after World War II. Federal mortgageguarantees strongly favored new housing,encouraging the development of new neigh-borhoods and whole new towns.The buildingof the Interstate highway system in the fiftiesand early sixties made long-distance commut-ing practical, not just between the city centerand outlying areas but from any point in themetropolis to any other point.

Suburban areas have grown explosively inthe past 50 years. Chicago, meanwhile, hit itspopulation peak in the fifties and has been los-ing people ever since.

Business and industry moved to the suburbstoo. Corporate headquarters that occupied afew floors of a high-rise in the Loop became40-acre corporate campuses in the suburbs.The region grew like a fairy ring mushroom,

the places that had been forested were cutover, and drainage projects were eating away atwetlands.

During the first century of settlement,human populations tended to be concentrated.In Chicago and in the smaller industrial townslike Joliet, Elgin, and Gary, most workers livednear their jobs, either walking to work orcommuting by street car or other public tran-sit.The coming of railroads led to some sur-

endlessly expanding at the margins while thecenter died.

Chicago lost more than 100,000 jobs inmanufacturing in less than 30 years. In north-west Indiana, the older industrial areas in Gary,Hammond, and East Chicago saw major popu-lation declines while towns to the south werebooming.

The shift from high density housing andbusiness to low density suburbs has put a heavy

0 10

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N

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Cook, IL

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Kane, IL

22

64

112

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cent

DuPage, IL

61

14 11 14

Per

cent

Lake, IL

43

239

25Per

cent

McHenry, IL

18

62

217

Per

cent

Will, IL

20

63

314

Per

cent

Lake, IN

26

70

2 2

Per

cent

Porter, IN

13

82

1 4

Per

cent

Kenosha, WI

16

57

25

2

LAKEMICHIGAN


This drawing from an atlas published in 1870 shows a section of the DesPlainesRiver near Plainfield in Will County. The varied landscape of prairies and grovesbecame a landscape of plowed fields and woodlots as settlement advanced.

demand on land. For decades, the amount ofdeveloped land has been increasing at a rateseveral times larger than the population. Bothfarm land and natural land are rapidly beingconverted to homes and businesses.

Meanwhile, evidence has begun to collectthat urban sprawl has an effect on natural areaseven when it does not cause their directdestruction.Animals such as raccoons andwhite-tailed deer that have always been a partof natural communities in the Midwest sud-denly undergo population explosions andbecome problems in isolated preserves sur-rounded by developed land. It may takedecades for the full effects of urban sprawl toreveal themselves. In an environment of con-crete and chemically treated lawns, the preser-vation of natural areas is a major challenge.

developed

agriculture

water and vacant

open space

MAJOR LAND USESIN THE

CHICAGO WILDERNESS

REGION

0

1,000,000

4,000,000

3,000,000

2,000,000

1860 199019501900

2,321,000

2,783,000

2,156,000

1,699,000

36,000

112,000

114,000

247,000

669,000

888,000

Population Growth

3,621,000

Chicago Suburban Cook County

Collar Counties

Lake & PorterCounties, IN

1880

32,000

408,000

605,000

57,000

140,000


The early years of the twentieth centurywere a time when Americans began tolook at the effects of our growing civi-

lization on the natural environment.The beliefof earlier times that the resources of NorthAmerica were limitless no longer seemed to fit.The frontier was gone.The buffalo nearly killedoff.The vast flocks of passenger pigeons thatonce darkened the skies of eastern NorthAmerica were extinct.We had lost much andclearly we stood to lose much more if we didnot change the way we thought about the land.

It was a time when the U.S. Forest Serviceand the National Park Service were created, atime when the first National Wildlife Refugeswere set aside.There was even a proposal putforward to create a national park at the IndianaDunes.

In Chicago, an organization called theMunicipal Science Club headed by architectsJens Jensen and Dwight H. Perkins proposedthat the most beautiful natural areas remainingin Cook County be set aside “for the benefitof the public.”

It took 15 years of work to turn that ideainto reality, but in 1915, Forest Preserve Districtswere created in Cook and DuPage Counties.Land purchases began immediately with a 79-acre tract in DuPage County and 500 acres atDeer Grove near Palatine in Cook County.

The essential idea of the forest preserveswas to preserve the native flora and fauna ofthe region for the “education, pleasure, andrecreation of the public.”The outcome hasbeen to offer generations of city dwellers a

chance to experience nature within a fewminutes travel of their homes while simultane-ously offering protection to a broad range ofnatural communities that have been wiped outthrough most of their former range.

In the following years, the state of Indianacreated a park at the Dunes, while Illinoisdeveloped parks at Illinois Beach and ChainO’Lakes and later a large Conservation Areawhere the Kankakee and Des Plaines Riversjoin to form the Illinois and another park atGoose Lake in Grundy County.

In the years after World War II, as peoplebegan moving in ever larger numbers into thecounties around Cook County, Lake, Kane, andWill Counties in Illinois and Lake County, Indi-ana created their own forest preserve districts. In1971, McHenry County founded a Conserva-tion District to hold and manage natural lands.

In 1966, 50 years after it was first proposed,the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore becamea reality. Most recently, the old Joliet Arsenalwas converted into the Midewin National Tall-grass prairie, adding 15,000 acres of public nat-ural land to the region.

We are lucky that our history has given us200,000 acres of preserved natural land not“near to,” but right in the middle of one of thelargest metropolitan areas in the country. Fewmetropolises can equal this total.

people on the land

The Creation of theForest Preserves

Members of a committee that first proposedthe idea of a system of natural preserves inCook County. Dwight Perkins (centerright), an architect, led the effort to makethis idea a reality.

A pathway leads invitingly into Will County’s MessengerWoods. Wildlife from coyotes to white-tailed deer are residentsof local preserves.

The 200,000 acres of protected natural land of Chicago Wilderness include preserves owned by federal,state, county, and municipal government as well as private organizations.These lands are the base thatsupports much of the biodiversity of the region.They are also the places where the nearly eight millionpeople of the metropolis enjoy the beauties and mysteries of nature.

N

LAKEMICHIGAN

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laines

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DuP

age

Kankakee

Fox

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The curiosity of children is kindled by a fieldtrip to a local preserve. Every school in theregion is near enough to a preserve to make

such a trip.

Federal Lands

state parks

county preservesand city parks

privately ownEDnature areas

nature preservesand scientific areas

PROTECTED LANDIN THE

CHICAGO WILDERNESS

REGION

A group of birders searches forspring migrants in a Chicago

Wilderness Preserve.


Human beings have been helping toshape the wonderfully diverse land-scape of the Chicago region for

thousands of years.The Native American set-ting fire to the golden grasses of the prairieautumn was giving an assist to the naturalprocesses that sustained fire-dependent commu-nities. Bending natural processes to the needs ofhumans, the native people could take what theyneeded from the environment without harmingthe ecosystems that supported them.

The flood of settlers that swept across theMidwest in the past 175 years arrived with noknowledge of the workings of the native nat-ural communities.They imposed demandsupon the land that the land could not sustain.Some ecosystems were lost on land thatbecame farms and towns; others were lost sim-ply because the new people did not know howto protect them.

The process called ecological restorationuses the knowledge gained over the past 200years to restore and maintain the biodiversityof this region.As it restores the natural com-munities, it also restores the old human tie tothe land, helping us function as benefactorsinstead of destroyers.

We can date the beginning of ecologicalrestoration in the Midwest to a time about 60years ago when scientists at the University ofWisconsin began planting tallgrass prairiespecies at the University’s Arboretum in Madi-son.That restored ecosystem continues to beimproved to this day.

It is not surprising that restoration beganwith an effort to restore a tallgrass prairie.Theprairie, which once covered thousands of squaremiles in the Midwest, was approaching extinc-tion in the thirties. It obviously needed help.

Those first prairie restorationists were alsothe first managers to apply fire as a tool ofprairie protection.At the time, this was a dar-ing step that was roundly condemned by manywho considered fires to be totally destructive.

The first prairie restoration in the Chicagoarea was begun by Ray Schulenberg at theMorton Arboretum in 1962. Schulenberg usedhorticultural techniques, hand-planting prairiespecies and weeding around them to removecompetition. He began with just half an acre,

People on the Land

Restoration and Management

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Fox

DesP

l aines

LAKEMICHIGAN

Kankakee

Little Calumet

A close collaboration among scientists, land managers, and citizen volunteers is bringing the benefits ofrestoration to natural areas throughout the region.

May Theilgard WattsIn books and classes at the Morton

Arboretum, she taught that the landscapeis intelligible and that people can enrich

their lives by learning to read it.

The federally endangered lakeside daisy (Actinea herbacea),once extirpated in the region, has been reestablished on a dolo-mite prairie in Will County where it is currently doing well.

RESTORATION SITESIN THE

CHICAGO WILDERNESS

REGION


although the Schulenberg Prairie has nowexpanded to 80 acres with an additional 20acres of oak savanna.

For Dr. Robert F. Betz of NortheasternIllinois University, a man with an intense inter-est in reviving the prairie, the SchulenbergPrairie represented a major step forward. Itshowed that diversity could be established in aprairie restoration and provided significantinformation on how to go about the task. ButBetz thought Schulenberg’s restoration was toosmall to, in his words “hold all the species.”Holding all the species was a task that demand-ed space, and a restoration project on the nec-essary scale could not be done by hand.

In 1972, Betz got permission to conductprairie restoration at the Fermi National Accel-erator Lab in Batavia, IL.Working with Lab staffand volunteers, he planted his first seeds in1975. Initially, the project concentrated on the600 acres that lay inside the accelerator’s enor-mous ring. Gathering seeds with a combine andplanting them with a machine that had beenused to spread salt on highways has allowed theproject to be expanded to 1,000 acres.The olderparts now support populations of more than 80species of prairie plants.

In the late seventies, restoration techniquesbegan to be applied to surviving prairies.Theseprairies were small remnants where some prairiespecies could be found growing along with var-ious weeds, shrubs, and small trees. Seeds ofprairie species gathered from other sites couldbe sowed into these remnants.This enrichment,combined with the removal of the woody brushand periodic prescribed burns, could expand the

Illinois Populations of thePrairie White-fringedOrchidThis flower (Habenaria leucophaea)once ranged over most of Illinois. Thenumbers show numbers of survivingpopulations in each county. The existence of these populations hasmade the Chicago region the center ofrecovery efforts for the species.

Volunteers in training to monitor butterflypopulations check a site for lepidopterans.The nationally recognized program is operating on sites throughout the region.

John Rogner of the US Fish & Wildlife Service hand pollinates flowers of thefederally threatened prairie white-fringed orchid.

area covered by prairie andhelp it support a larger num-ber of prairie species.

RESTORING THE WOODLANDS

While prairies were the center of attention forrestoration in its early decades, the eighties sawa major expansion of concern.The conditionof those quintessentially Midwestern commu-nities—the oak woodlands and savannas—wasobviously worsening. Scarcely any savannas hadsurvived, and those that did remain had beenso heavily affected by the changes that settle-ment brought that an intense scientific debatebroke out over thefundamental questionof what they had beenlike.Were they simplyecotones—transitionzones between forestsand prairies? Or werethey distinctive com-munities? Were theyplaces where oaksgrew over a groundlayer of prairie plants?

Baltimore Checkerspot

1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996

Pea

k C

ou

nt

(In

div

idu

als

per

Ho

ur

)

0

10

20

30

(Euphydryas phaeton)at Nelson Lake Marsh

Populations of the rareBaltimore checkerspot soar atburned areas of Nelson LakeMarsh in Kane County.

8

3

2

1

1

11

2 5


Or was there a savanna plant community differ-ent from either prairies or forests?

The oak woodlands had survived the initialshock of the post settlement changes, but studyafter study found that the oaks in these commu-nities were not reproducing. Sugar maples werebecoming dominant trees, but the species lost tothe heavy shade of the maples were not beingreplaced by typical maple forest species. Insteadof ecological succession replacing an oak forestwith a maple forest, ecological degeneration wasreplacing oak forests with a depauperate land-scape of a few trees, a few weeds, and a lot ofbare earth. Plainly conservationists needed tothink beyond the edges of the prairie.

VOLUNTEERS LEND A HAND

The slow hand-work of the first restorationprojects was quite unlike the industrial style ofthe Fermi Lab project, but the effects of this

hand labor began to accumulate, thanks to agrowing group of volunteers who donatedtheir time to restoration projects. Restorationcould be done by hand if you could getenough hands involved.

The first volunteer ecological restorationwork was done in the preserves along the NorthBranch of the Chicago River in Cook Countybeginning in 1977.The volunteers called them-selves the North Branch Prairie Project.As vol-unteers for the Forest Preserve District of CookCounty, they recruited and organized interestedpeople to carry on the work.

The results they got, and the enthusiasm theyinspired in people whose love of nature madethem eager to make a direct contribution to

protecting the earth, led to the formation ofother volunteer groups. Changes in environ-mental laws were also focusing attention on res-toration of all sorts of natural communities—wetlands as well as forests, savannas, and prairies.

With the organizational backing of TheNature Conservancy, thousands of volunteersthroughout Illinois were recruited for theVolunteer Stewardship Network.The volun-teers work in collaboration with land-owningagencies—chiefly the county forest preserveand conservation districts—on a wide range ofrestoration projects.The volunteers supplementthe work of agency staff members, providingtens of thousands of hours of free labor. Someof this labor is the sheer hard work of cuttingand removing invasive species like commonbuckthorn. Some requires a sophisticated sci-entific knowledge and the experience thatonly long hours in the field can provide.

Floyd SwinkLong-time chief taxonomist at the Morton

Arboretum, he taught generations of students to recognize and appreciate the

native landscape. His book, Plants of theChicago Region, is the ultimate authority on the botany of Chicago

Wilderness.

Volunteers study ecology and land manage-ment, and, increasingly, ecologists and landmanagers recognize volunteers as sources ofpractical information on ecology.

The volunteers also offer the land managersthousands of extra pairs of eyes.They are oftenthe first people to notice the presence of a rarespecies in a preserve.They also notice problemslike illegal dumping or the place where off-road-vehicles are entering a preserve.Workingon restoration projects has made people moreeffective conservationists.They are informedsupporters of our preserve systems and pio-neers in changing the way people in a modernindustrial society relate to nature.They arehelping put people back in the natural land-scape in a constructive way.

A burn site at Indiana Dunes NationalLakeshore looked blackened and charredright after the fire, but new growth, stimulated by the blaze, quickly clothes it in bright new greenery.

59

Restoration heals the land and enriches the spirits of those who do it.

THE HOW OF RESTORATION

The lands in the preserves of the ChicagoWilderness range from beautiful natural areasfilled with rare native species to former cornfields covered with weeds. Each piece of landhas a unique history: How long ago was thiswoods logged? Was it grazed? Have drainageprojects lowered the water table and killed offwetland vegetation?

The process of developing a managementplan begins with a survey of what is there nowand historical research into what was there inthe past.The plan may call for the protectionor expansion of natural communities alreadypresent, or, in the case of the cornfields, naturalquality can be built from scratch. Each site isunique, so each plan is unique, but there aresome common problems that need to beaddressed on many sites.These include:

• Changes in hydrology. If a site was drainedby field tile, removing the tile can restore theold water regime and make possible the reestab-lishment of the native natural community.

• Invasion by aggressive exotic plants. Onlya few of the more than 500 species of plantsintroduced into the Chicago region in the past200 years create problems, but those few makea lot of trouble.Whether it is common buck-thorn (Rhamnus cathartica) in a woodland orpurple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) in a marsh,the exotics can drive out both native plantsand native wildlife. Restoration may involve

physical removal of exotics and/or the use ofherbicides to kill them.

• Thinning of native trees to allow morelight to reach the ground.This promotes thegrowth of native plants of savannas and wood-lands—including young oaks.The techniquemay also be used to protect the plants of fensand sedge meadows.

• Planting the seeds of native species typicalof the natural community or to establish acommunity on old fields or other waste land.

• Returning fire to the ecosystem.The ultimate aims are to return the species

typical of the community to the land and torecreate the ecological forces that sustained thecommunity in the past.Thus far, restoration hassuccessfully expanded the ranges of rare speciesand rare ecosystems in the Chicago region.The work here has been taken as a model byconservationists around the globe. It representsour best hope for preserving the biodiversity ofChicago Wilderness.

Increased Biodiversity

1985-86 1986-87 1988 1989 1991Number of

species 11.6 13.5 19.5 17.9 18.1

Number of

native species 9.0 10.8 16.2 15.2 16.6

FQA* 3.8 6.4 10.2 11.4 13.5

These are average numbers for 15 plots, each one square meter, in Vestal Grove,an oak savanna/woodland at Somme Woods Forest Preserve in northern CookCounty. Restoration began in 1984. The plots were sampled twice, spring andfall. Fall, 1985 and Spring, 1986 data were combined, as were Fall, 1986 andSpring, 1987. Thereafter, spring and fall samplings were done in the same year.

*FQA: Floristic Quality Assessment from Swink and Wilhelm.

Setting a back fire to create a fire break during a prescribed burn.

Restoration Goals

Restorenatural processes.

Restocklost species of

plants and animals.

Maintainnatural ecosystems in

good health.


Brookfield Zoo3300 Golf Rd.Brookfield, IL 60513-0719(708)485-0263

Canal Corridor Association220 S. State St., Suite 1880Chicago, IL 60604(312)427-3688

Chicago Academy of Sciences2060 N. Clark St.Chicago, IL 60614(773)549-0606

*Chicago Botanic GardenLake Cook RoadP.O. Box 400Glencoe, IL 60022-0400(847)835-5440

*Chicago Park District425 E. McFetridge Dr.Chicago, IL 60605(312)747-2200

*City of Chicago, Department of Environment30 N. LaSalle St. #2500Chicago, IL 60602-2505(312)744-7606

The Field MuseumRoosevelt Rd at Lake Shore DriveChicago, IL 60605-2496(312)922-9410

*Forest Preserve District ofCook County536 N. Harlem Ave.River Forest, IL 60305(708)366-9420

*Forest Preserve District of DuPage County185 Spring Ave.P.O. Box 2339Glen Ellyn, IL 60138(630)790-4900

*Forest Preserve District ofWill County22606 Cherry Hill Rd.Joliet, IL 60433(815)727-8700

Friends of the Chicago River407 S. Dearborn St. #1580Chicago, IL 60605(312)939-0490

*Illinois Department of Natural Resources524 S. Second StreetSpringfield, IL 62701(217)782-6302

Illinois Natural History Survey607 E. Peabody Dr.Champaign, IL 61820(217)333-5986

*Illinois Nature Preserves Commission524 S. Second St.Springfield, IL 62701(217)785-8686

*Kane County Forest Preserve District719 S. Batavia Ave.Geneva, IL 60134(630)232-5980

*Lake County Forest Preserves2000 N. Milwaukee Ave.Libertyville, IL 60048-1199(847)367-6640

Lake Michigan Federation59 E.Van Buren St. #2215Chicago, IL 60605(312)939-0838

Lincoln Park Zoo2200 N. Cannon Dr.Chicago, IL 60614(312)742-2353

*McHenry County ConservationDistrict6512 Harts Rd.Ringwood, IL 60072(815)678-4431

*Metropolitan Water ReclamationDistrict of Greater Chicago100 E. Erie St.Chicago, IL 60611(312)751-6634

Chicago WildernessChicago Wilderness is supported by the Chicago Region Biodiver-sity Council, an unprecendented partnership of public and privateorganizations that have joined forces to protect, restore and managethese natural lands and the plants and animals that inhabit them.

Chicago Wilderness seems to be an oxymoron, but this regionharbors some of the best remnants of our Midwest “wilderness”—our native plant and animal communities—remaining on earth. It is

only through active protection, management and restoration thatthe prairies, woodlands and wetlands comprising Chicago Wilder-ness will survive.

The member organizations of the Chicago Region BiodiversityCouncil, and the thousands of volunteers who work with them, arepooling their resources and expertise to most effectively protect,manage and restore the natural heritage of the central Midwest.

For information about Chicago Wilderness, visit our web site at www.chiwild.org.

Individuals can participate in Chicago Wilderness activities throughout the region.To learn aboutthese opportunities, call the Chicagoland Environmental Network (708)485-0263 ext. 396.

Organizations of the Chicago Region Biodiversity Council

Appendices 61

*Morton ArboretumRoute 53Lisle, IL 60532(630)968-0074

*The Nature Conservancy8 S. Michigan Ave. #900Chicago, IL 60603(312)346-8166

Northeastern Illinois PlanningCommission222 S. Riverside Plaza #1800Chicago, IL 60606(312)454-0400

Openlands Project220 S. State St. #1880Chicago, IL 60604-2103(312)427-4256

John G. Shedd Aquarium1200 S. Lake Shore Dr.Chicago, IL 60605(312)939-2438

Sierra Club, Illinois Chapter1 N. LaSalle St. #4242Chicago, IL 60602(312)251-1680

Urban Resources Partnershipc/o US Department of Housing and Urban Development77 W. Jackson Blvd.Chicago, IL 60604(312)353-2473

US Army Corps of Engineers,Chicago District111 N. Canal St. #600Chicago, IL 60606(312)353-6400

US Environmental Protection AgencyRegion 577 W. Jackson Blvd.Chicago, IL 60604-3590(800)621-8431

US EPA Great Lakes National ProgramOffice77 W. Jackson Blvd.Chicago, IL 60604-3590(800)621-8431

US Fish & Wildlife Service1000 Hart Rd. #180Barrington, IL 60010(847)381-2253

*USDA Forest Service845 Chicago Ave. #225Evanston, IL 60202-2357(847)866-9311

USDA Natural Resources ConservationService603 E. Diehl Rd., #131Naperville, IL 60563-1476(630)505-7808

*USDI National Park Service1709 Jackson St.Omaha, NE 68102(402)221-3471

*Organizations marked with an asterisk own and/or manage natural lands. Contact them for informationon visiting these lands to see the natural wonders of Chicago Wilderness.

Suggestions for Further ReadingBohlen, H David, The Birds of Illinois, Indiana

University Press, Bloomington, 1989.Brock, Kenneth J., Birds of the Indiana Dunes, Indi-

ana University Press, Bloomington, Ind., 1986.Cronon,William, Nature’s Metropolis,W.W. Norton

& Co., New York, 1991Curtis, John T., Vegetation of Wisconsin, U. of

Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1959.Daniel, Glenda L., Dune Country, 2nd Ed., illus. by

Carol Lerner, Swallow Press,Athens, OH,1984.

Eckert,Allan W., Gateway to Empire, BantamBooks, New York City, 1983.

Eggers, Steve D. and Donald M. Reed, WetlandPlants and Plant Communities of Minnesota andWisconsin, US Army Corps of Engineers, St.Paul District, St. Paul, MN, 1987.

Engel, J. Ronald, Sacred Sands,Wesleyan UniversityPress, Middletown, CN, 1983.

A Field Guide to the Wetlands of Illinois, IllinoisDept. of Natural Resources, 1988.

The Great Lakes,An Environmental Atlas andResource Book, 3rd Ed., USEPA Great LakesNational Program Office and Government ofCanada, Chicago, 1995.

Hofmeister, Donald F. Mammals of Illinois, U. ofIllinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1989.

Ladd, Doug, Tallgrass Prairie Wildflowers, photos byFrank Oberle, Falcon Press Publishing, Helena,Mont., 1995.

Lampa,Wayne, The Phoenix Land, Forest PreserveDistrict of DuPage County, N.D.

Leopold,Aldo, Sand County Almanac, OxfordUniversity Press, New York City, 1949.

Madson, John, Where the Sky Began, HoughtonMifflin Co., Boston, MA, 1982.

Mills, Stephanie, In Service of the Wild, BeaconPress, Boston, 1995.

Mlodinow, Steven, Chicago Area Birds, ChicagoReview Press, Chicago, 1984. Copies availablefrom Chicago Audubon Society.

Packard, Stephen and Cornelia F. Mutel, eds., TheTallgrass Restoration Handbook, Island Press,Washington, D.C., 1997.

Peattie, Donald Culross, Flora of the Indiana Dunes,Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago,1930.

Pepoon, H.S., An Annotated Flora of the ChicagoArea, Chicago Academy of Sciences, Chicago,1927.

Pielou, E. C., After the Ice Age, University ofChicago Press, Chicago, 1991.

Randall, John and James Marinelli, eds., InvasivePlants,The Weeds of the Global Garden, BrooklynBotanic Garden, Brooklyn, NY, 1996.

Smith, Philip W., The Amphibians and Reptiles ofIllinois, Illinois Natural History Survey, Urbana,1961.

Stevens,William K., Miracle Under the Oaks,Pocket Books, New York City, 1995.

Straus,Terry, ed., Indians of the Chicago Area, NAESCollege, Chicago, 1990.

Swink, Floyd and Gerould Wilhelm, Plants of theChicago Region, 4th ed., Indiana Academy ofScience, Indianapolis, IN, 1994.

Tanner, Helen, Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History,U. of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 1987.

Watts, May T, Reading the Landscape, MacmillanPublishing Co., New York City, 1975.

Willman, H.B., Summary of the Geology of the Chi-cago Area, IL State Geological Survey, Urbana,IL, 1971.

Wilson, E.O., The Diversity of Life, Norton, NewYork City, 1992.

Young, Dick, Kane County Wild Plants and NaturalAreas, 2nd ed., Kane County Forest PreserveDistrict, Geneva, IL, 1994.

Good Field Guides are available to practicallyeverything in nature. In general, guides to theeastern U.S. will cover the Chicago region.


Photo and art creditsFront and back cover; pps. 14-15, top; p. 18,prairie violet, common cinquefoil, wild strawber-ry, hoary puccoon, false toadflax; p.19, wild onion,early goldenrod, Indian grass, heath aster; p. 31,fox squirrel; p. 54, woods: Bill Glass. Cover but-terfly/p. 60;Title page butterfly; p. 22, all images:Ron Panzer. Contents page and p. 30, scarlet tanager; p.18, spiderwort; p.20, upland sandpiper,dickcissel; p. 21, grasshopper sparrow; p. 30, hairywoodpecker, northern oriole, ovenbird, red-headedwoodpecker; p. 31, red-tailed hawk; p. 40/p. 60,moorhen; p. 41, sora rail: Rob Curtis. Pages 4-5,p. 29, trillium in forest; p. 38, ladyslippers; p.59,burn: Steve Packard. Pages 8, 9, 25, 30, 34, 36,37, 38, 45, 48, 53, 59, graphics and artwork:Corasue Nicholas. Page 9, esker: JerrySullivan. Page 14,Turk’s cap lily: The PrairieArts/L. Gits & L. Godson. Page 15, drawing:Nancy Halliday. Page 16, Dr. Betz; p. 54, fawn:The Nature Conservancy. Pages16-17, fire;p.33, massasauga; Page 55, photos: Lake CountyFP. Page 17, drawing: Carol Lerner. Page 17,new growth; p. 40, dragonfly: Dave and LoreneJagodzinski. Page 18, prairie phlox, DavidSollenberger. Page 18, prairie cinquefoil,LeConte’s violet, prairie alum root; p. 18 andContents page, starry false solomon’s seal; p. 19,Kalm’s brome, sky blue aster: John and JaneBalaban. Page 18, common blue-eyed grass,heart-leaved meadow parsnip; p. 19, prairie graysedge, copper-shouldered oval sedge: Ken Dritz.Page 18, wild quinine, p. 19, prairie dock, roughblazing star, little bluestem, New England aster:Thomas Antonio. Page 18, rattlesnake master;p. 19 marsh blazing star: Kent Fuller. Page 19,

yellow coneflower: K.Taylor. Page 19, beardedwheatgrass; p. 54, committee: FPD of CookCounty. Page 21, sandhill crane: InternationalCrane Foundation. Page 23, bison; p.27/p. 61,maple leaves; p.31, gray squirrel; p. 32, all images;p. 33, gray tree frog and chorus frog; p. 34/p. 63,Cowles’ Bog; p. 36, button bush; p. 39,Volo Bog,sundew; p. 42/p. 63, river otter; p. 43, Blanding’sturtle; p. 46, river; p.48, Fowler’s toad; p. 54, coy-ote: James P. Rowan. Page 23, smooth greensnake: Kenneth S. Mierzwa. Page 24, bur oak;p.36, smartweeds: Wayne Lampa. Page 24/p. 62,marsh marigolds; p. 49, dunes; p. 58, before andafter photos: Bob Daum. Pages 26-27, drawings,bur oak leaves: Lana Gits. Page 27, photo: RalphThornton. Page 28, photo: Jim Anderson. Page29, earth star; p. 42, beaver lodge, tree; p. 43, babysnappers; p. 50, women building lodge: Ind.Dunes Nat. Lkshre. Page 29, coral fungus: JackMurphy. Page 30, bluebird: Kim Harris/TNC.Page 37, 45, photos; p.47, stream; p. 57, pollina-tion: USFWS. Page 38, both photos; p. 39, grasspink: Steve Byers. Page 41, egrets: Joe B.Milosevich. Page 44, fish; p. 47, fish, channelizedstream: Illinois DNR. Page 48, H. C. Cowles:UC/Regensteiner Library. Page 49, zebra mus-sels: US EPA. Page 51, Du Sable site: Friends ofthe River. Page 52, both images: Deere &Company. Page 53, 1873 view of the DesPlaines: Openlands Project. Page 55, lakesidedaisies: Marcy DeMauro. Page 56, May Watts:The Illinois Prairie Path. Page 57, butterflymonitors: Doug Taron. Page 58, Floyd Swink:The Morton Arboretum. Page 58, kids in pinkcaps: Christopher Kean.

CreditsMap Credits The map of surficial deposits on Page 7 was created by the USDA Natural ResourcesConservation Service. All other maps weredrawn by Richard Vaupel and LeonardWalther of the Cartography Lab at NorthernIllinois University, DeKalb, IL. Illinois areaswere placed on a base map prepared by NIPCand Openlands Project.

Map Sources Page 4, E&T Species of Illinois, Illinois Endan-gered Species Board; Rare and EndangeredCommunities, created by TAMS Consultants;Page 10, Ill. Geological Survey; Page 11, IDNRand TAMS Consultants; Pages 12-13, LakeCounty Forest Preserves, Robbin C. Moran,Philip J. Hansen, FPD of Will County,SEWRPC, INHS map by R.C. Anderson,report to INDU by John Bacone and GerouldWilhelm; Page 13, TNC; Page 16, FPDs ofCook, DuPage, Will, Cook, Kane Counties,Lake County FP, McHenry CCD, Ill. Nat.Pres. Comm., Ind. Nat. Pres. Comm.; Page20, Chicago Audubon Soc. nesting bird census,1995; Page 28, Marlin Bowles, Jenny McBride;Page 35, INHS; Page 40, USFWS; Page 41,IDNR, Kenneth J. Brock; Pages 43 and 44.INHS; Page 47, IDNR; Page 50, Atlas of GreatLakes Indians; Page 53, NIPC, NW Ind. RPC,SEWRPC; Page 55, Openlands Project,NIPC, Lake County FP, FPDs of Will,DuPage, Kane, and Cook Counties,McHenry CCD, INDU, SEWRPC, LakeCounty (IN) Parks and Recreation Board;Page 56, VSN; Page 57, USFWS.

AcknowledgementsMany people contributed to this Atlas by providinginformation, advice, and review of manuscripts.The list includes: James Steffen and Susanne Masiof the Chicago Botanic Garden; Gerould Wilhelmof the Conservation Design Forum; Greg Mueller,Jack Murphy, and Daniel Summers of the FieldMuseum; Ralph Thornton, Steven Thomas, andJohn Elliott of the Forest Preserve District of CookCounty;Wayne Lampa and JoEllen Siddens of theForest Preserve District of Du Page County;Marcella DeMauro of the Forest Preserve Districtof Will County; Chris Parsons of the Friends of theChicago River; Brian Anderson,Vernon Kleen,Steven Pescetelli of the Illinois Department ofNatural Resources; James Herkert of the IllinoisEndangered Species Board;Ardith Hansel andMichael Chrzastowski of the Illinois State Geo-logical Survey; Scott Robinson and ChristopherPhillips of the Illinois Natural History Survey;Steven Byers of the Illinois Nature PreservesCommission; John Bacone of the Indiana NaturePreserves Commission; Jon Duerr of the KaneCounty Forest Preserve District;Andy Kimmel,James Anderson, and Ken Klick of the Lake

County Forest Preserves; Steven Christie of LakeForest Open Lands;Wayne Schennum, EdCollins, and Susan Ladendorf of the McHenryCounty Conservation District; Marlin Bowles,Christopher Dunn, and Jenny McBride of theMorton Arboretum; Katie Green, StephenPackard, Laurel Ross, and Sandi Stein of TheNature Conservancy; Richard Mariner of theNortheastern Illinois Planning Commission;Lauren Rhein of the Northwestern IndianaRegional Planning Commission; Glenda Danielof the Openlands Project; Donald M. Reed of theSoutheastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Com-mission; Kenneth Mierzwa of TAMS Consultants;Dr. Dennis Nyberg, UIC; Jean Sellar of the USArmy Corps of Engineers, Chicago District; KentFuller of US EPA Great Lakes National ProgramOffice; John Rogner and Amelia Orton-Palmer ofthe US Fish & Wildlife Service; Mark Bramstedtof the USDA Natural Resources ConservationService; John and Jane Balaban of the VolunteerStewardship Network; Kenneth Brock; JosephMilosevich; Ron Panzer.

Appendices 63

indexalewife die-offs, 49algae blooms, 45aquifers, sand and gravel, 38Arboretum, U. of Wisconsin, 56

beaver lodges, 42beaver dams, 42Betz, Dr. Robert F., 16, 57Big Marsh at Lake Calumet, 41Bigelow, Ellen, 14birds, prairie, decline in, 21bogs, 39butterfly monitors, 57

Cahokia, Illinois, 50calcareous seeps, 38calcium in ground water, 38Chain O’Lakes State Park, 54Chicago Lake Plain, 11Chicago Outlet, 11Chicago River, 11, 46Chiwaukee Prairie, 43Class A streams, 46Class B streams, 46Clean Water Act, 46climax, regional, 48coal deposits, 6communities, natural, 13Cowles, Henry Chandler, 48

fires set by Native Americans, 17, 50flatwoods, 28floodplains, 46forbs, 15foredunes, 48Forest Preserves, Cook County, 54Forest preserves, creation of, 54Forest Preserves, DuPage County, 54Forest Preserves Kane County, 54Forest Preserves, Lake (IL) County,

54Forest Preserves,Will County, 54Forest Service, US, 54forests, 29Fox River, 38, 47fungi, 29fur trade, 42, 50

glacial drift, 6glaciers, 6Goose Lake State Park, 54Grand Calumet River, 46grasslands, exotic in Chicago

Wilderness, 17gravel terraces, 38Great Lakes Basins, 6grubs, 16

high dunes, 48

Ice Age, 6Illini, 50Illinois Beach State Park, 11, 48, 54Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore,

48, 54, 58

Jensen, Jens, 54Joliet, Louis, 23Joliet Arsenal, 54

Kankakee River, quality of, 46kettleholes, 8

Lake Calumet, 35Lake County (IN) preserves, 54Lake Michigan, 49Lake Michigan History, Calumet

Lake stage, 10Lake Michigan History,Chippewa

Lake stage, 10Lake Michigan History, Glenwood

Lake stage, 10Lake Michigan History, Nipsissing

Phase of Lake Michigan, 10Lake Renwick, 40lakes, dystrophic, 45lakes, stratification and turnover, 45lakes, eutrophic, 45lakes, oligotrophic, 44lakes, nutrient cycling in, 45land use, 53loess, 11

mammals, wetland, 42maple sugar, 50marl, 38Marquette, Pere, 23mastodons, 50McHenry County Conservation

District, 54Michigan, Lake, basin, 6Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie,

17, 23, 54Miocene Epoch, 14Moraine,Valparaiso, 8, 1l, 44moraines, 8Moraines, Lake Border, 11muck, 37mycorrhizal fungi, 29

National Park Service, 54National Wildlife Refuges, 54native towns, 50Native American crops, 50Nature Conservancy,The, 58North Branch Prairie Project, 58

organic soils, 37outwash, glacial, 6, 8

pampas, 14peat, 37, 38Pennsylvanian period, 6Perkins, Dwight, 54plains, East African, 14Pleistocene, 6plow, steel moldboard, 14population growth, 53Potawatomi, 50prairies, 14prairies, brushy, 16prairie restorations, early projects, 56prairies, shortgrass, 15prairies, tallgrass, 14, 15prairie types, 16proglacial lakes, 8

root systems, prairie, 17

Sag Valley, 11sand savanna, 26, 48

Deer Grove Preserve, 54Deere, John, 14, 52Des Plaines River, 6, 11Des Plaines Conservation Area, 54dolomite, 6drain tile, 35drought on prairies, 14DuSable, Jean Baptiste Point, 51

ecosystems, 13emergent plants, 36esker, 9

fens, 38fens, graminoid, 38Fermi National Accelerator Lab, 23,

57fire-dependent, 15, 16

savannas, wet, 26savannas, 26, 57Schulenberg Prairie, 56Schulenberg, Ray, 56sedge mat, 39Silurian period, 6soil pH, 38soils, 11soils, prairie, 16spring run, 38Spring Bluff Preserve, 43steppes, 14streams, channelized, 47streams, headwater, 46streams, low-order, 46streams, mid-order, 46succession, ecological, 48succession, prairie, 17Swink, Floyd, 58

till, glacial, 6tufa, 38

vernal pond, 32Visitation esker, 9Volo Bog, 39Volunteer Stewardship Network, 58volunteers in ecological restoration,

58

Watts, May T., 56wetland losses, 35wetlands, 34wetlands, legal definition, 35wigwam, 51Wisconsin glacial stage, 6wooded communities, 24-25woodlands, open, 27, 57, 58


alum root, prairie, Heuchera richardsonii, 18ash, black, Fraxinus nigra, 28ashes, Fraxinus spp., 25, 29aster, heath, Aster ericoides, 19aster, New England, Aster novae-angliae, 15, 19aster, sky-blue, Aster azureus, 19basswood, Tilia americana, 25beech,American, Fagus grandifolia, 29birch, bog, Betula pumila, 39blazingstar, cylindric, Liatris cylindracea, 15blazingstar, marsh, Liatris spicata, 19blazingstar, prairie, Liatris pycnostachya, 15blazingstar, rough, Liatris aspera, 15, 19boneset, false, Kuhnia eupatorioides,15boneset, tall, Eupatorium altissimum, 15box elder, Acer negundo, 25buckthorn, common, Rhamnus cathartica, 27, 59buckthorn, glossy, Rhamnus frangula, 39bulrush, reddish, Scirpus pendulus, 15bush-clover, round-headed, Lespedeza capitata, 15buttonbush, Cephalanthus occidentalis, 36Carex stricta, 37, 43cattail, narrow-leaved, Typha angustifolia, 36cattail, broad-leaved, Typha latifolia, 15, 36cherry, black, Prunus serotina, 27cinquefoil, prairie, Potentilla arguta, 18cinquefoil, common, Potentilla simplex, 18clover, purple prairie, Dalea purpurea, 15compass plant, Silphium laciniatum, 15coneflower, yellow-headed, Ratibida pinnata, 15, 18cranberries, Vaccinium macrocarpon, 39culver’s root, Veronicastrum virginicum,15dogwood, red-osier, Cornus stolonifera, 36dropseed, prairie, Sporobolus heterolepis, 15, 16duckweed, Lemma spp., 36elm,American, Ulmus americana, 29fleabane, daisy, Erigeron strigosus,15fungus, earth-star, Geastrum sp., 29gentian, closed, Gentiana andrewsii, 15gentian, stiff, Gentiana quinquefolia, 15gentian, fringed, Gentiana crinita, 15

goldenrod, Canada, Solidago canadensis, 15goldenrod, early, Solidago juncea, 19goldenrod, gray, Solidago nemoralis,15goldenrod, Ohio, Solidago ohiensis, 38 goldenrod, stiff, Solidago rigida, 15goldenrod, tall, Solidago atlissima, 15grass, big bluestem, Andropogon gerardii, 15, 16, 38grass, blue-joint, Calamagrostis canadensis, 16, 37grass, common blue-eyed, Sisyrinchium albidum, 16grass, prairie cord, Spartina pectinata,15, 16 grass, Hungarian brome, Bromus inermis, 17grass, Indian, Sorghastrum nutans,15, 18, 38grass, Kalm’s brome, Bromus kalmii, 19grass, little bluestem, Andropogon scoparius,15, 19, 38grass, marram, Ammophila brevigulata, 48orchid, grass pink, Calopogon tuberosus, 39grass, side-oats grama, Bouteloua curtipendula,15, 16grass-of-parnassus, Parnassia glauca, 38hazel,American, Corylus americana, 24, 27hickory, shagbark, Carya cordiformes, 24hickory, bitternut, Carya ovata, 24hoary pucoon, Lithospermum canescens, 18hoary vervain, Verbena stricta, 15hyacinths, wild, Camassia scilloides, 27indigo, white wild, Baptisia alba,15iris, blue-flag, Iris virginica, 15joe pye weed, Eupatorium maculatum, 26, 37ladyslipper, stemless, Cypripedium acaule, 39lakeside daisy, Actinea herbacea, 56leatherleaf, Chamaedaphne calyculata, 39lettuce, smooth white, Prenanthes racemosa, 15loosestrife, purple, Lythrum salicaria, 36, 59lotus,American, Nelumbo lutea, 45maple, black, Acer nigrum, 25, 27maple, red, Acer rubrum, 29maple, silver, Acer saccharinum, 29maple, sugar, Acer saccharum, 25, 27, 58marigold, marsh, Caltha palustris. 24meadow parsnip, heart-leaved, Zizia aptera, 18milkweed, whorled, Asclepias verticillata,15moss, Sphagnum, 39

mountain mint, Pycnanthemum tenuifolium, 15oak, black, Quercus velutina, 16, 28, 48oak, bur, Quercus macrocarpa, 16, 24, 26, 27oak, pin, Quercus palustris,26, 28oak, red, Quercus rubra, 24oak, scarlet, Quercus coccinea, 27oak, swamp white, Quercus bicolor, 26, 28oak, white, Quercus alba, 24, 27obedient plant, Physostegia virginiana, 15onion, wild, Allium canadense, 19onion, nodding wild, Allium cernuum, 15orchid, white-fringed, Habenaria leucophaea, 57phlox, prairie, Phlox pilosa, 18pimpernel, yellow, Taenidia integerrima, 27pitcher plants, Sarracenia spp., 39plum, wild, Prunus americana, 24poison sumac, Rhus vernix, 39prairie dock, Silphium terebinthinaceum,15, 19Queen Anne’s lace, Daucus carota, 17quinine, wild, Parthenium integrifolium, 15, 18rattlesnake master, Eryngium yuccifolium, 15, 18, 22sedge, copper-shouldered oval, Carex bicknellii, 19sedge, prairie gray, Carex conoidea, 19skunk cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus, 35spiderwort, common, Tradescantia ohiensis, 18spurge, flowering, Euphorbia corollata, 15starry false solomon’s seal, Smilacina stellata, 18strawberry, wild, Fragaria virginiana, 18sundew, Drosera spp., 39sunflower, saw-toothed, Helianthus grosseserratus, 15switchgrass, Panicum virgatum, 15tamarack, Larix laricina, 39toad flax, false, Comandra umbellata, 18violet, LeConte’s, Viola papilionacea, 18violet, prairie, Viola pedatifida, 18walnut, black, Juglans nigra, 24wheatgrass, bearded, Agropyron trachycaulum, 19wild rye, Canada, Elymus canadensis, 15willow, Salix spp., 36winterberry, Ilex verticillata, 39

alewife, Alosa pseudoharengus, 49bass, largemouth, Micropterus salmoides, 46bass, smallmouth, Micropterus dolomieui, 46beaver, Castor canadensis, 42bison, Bison bison, 23blackbird, red-winged, Agelaius phoeniceus, 41blackbird, yellow-headed, Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus, 40bluebird, eastern, Sialia sialis, 31bobolink, Dolichonyx oryzivorus, 20checkerspot, Baltimore, Euphydryas phaeton, 57cormorant, double-crested, Phalacrocorax auritus, 41cranes, sandhill, Grus canadensis, 21creek heelsplitter, Lasmigona compressa, 46darter, Iowa, Etheostoma exile, 46darter, rainbow, Etheostoma caeruleum, 47dickcissels, Spiza americana, 21egret, cattle, Bubulcus ibis, 41egret, great, Casmerodius albus, 41elk, Cervus elaphus, 23fritillaries, 19fritillary, aphrodite, Speyeria aphrodite, 22frog, bull, Rana catesbeiana, 43frog, gray tree, Hyla chrysoscelis, 33frog, western chorus, Pseudacris triseriata, 32garter snake, Chicago, Thamnophis sirtalis semifasciatus, 23garter snake, plains, Thamnophis radix, 23goose, Canada, Branta canadensis, 42grebe, pied-billed, Podilymbus podiceps, 40green darner, Anax junius, 40

green snake, smooth, Opheodrys vernalis, 23harrier, northern, Circus cyaneus, 19, 21hawk, Cooper’s, Accipiter cooperii, 31hawk, red-tailed, Buteo jamaicensis, 31heron, black-crowned night, Nycticorax nycticorax, 41heron, great blue, Ardea herodias, 41Hines emerald, Somatochlora hinena, 40lake trout, Salvelinus namaycush, 49massasauga, Sistrurus catenatus, 33meadowlark, eastern, Sternella magna, 20meadowlark, western, Sternella neglecta, 20mink, Mustela vison, 42moorhen, common, Gallinula chloropus, 40moth, root-boring, Papaipema, 22moth, rattlesnake master, Papaipema eryngia, 22muskrat, Ondatra zibethicus, 42oriole, northern or Baltimore, Icterus glabula, 30otter, river, Lutra canadensis, 42ovenbird, Seiurus aurocapillus, 31owl, short-eared, Asio flammeus, 21passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, 27peepers, spring, Pseudacris crucifer, 32perch, yellow, Perca flavescens, 49ribbon snake, northern, Thamnophis septentrionalis, 23ribbon snake, western, Thamnophis proximus, 23river redhorse, Moxostoma carinatum, 46salamander, blue-spotted, Ambystoma laterale, 32salamander, four-toed, Hemidactylium scutatum, 32salamander, smallmouth, Ambystoma texanum, 32

salamander, southern two-lined, Eurycea cirrigera, 32salamander, spotted, Ambystoma maculatum, 32salamander, tiger, Ambystoma tigrinum, 32salmon, coho, Oncorhynchus kisutch, 49sandpiper, upland, Bartramia longicauda, 20sea lamprey, Petromyzon marinus, 49shiners, Notropis spp., 45skippers, 19snake, Kirtland’s, Clonophis kirtlandii, 43sora, Porzana carolina, 41sparrow, Henslow’s, Ammodramus henslowii, 20squirrel, fox, Sciurus niger, 31squirrel, gray, Sciurus carolinensis, 31sunfish, longear, Lepomis megalotis, 44tanager, scarlet, Piranga olivacea, 30teal, blue-winged, Anas discors, 40tern, black, Chlidonias niger, 40toad, Fowler’s, Bufo woodhousii fowleri, 48turkey, wild, Meleagris gallopavo, 27turtle, Blanding’s, Emydoidea blandingii, 43turtle, snapping, Chelydra serpentina, 43wood thrush, Hylochichla mustelina, 31woodpecker, downy, Picoides pubescens,woodpecker, hairy, Picoides vilosus, 30woodpecker, red-bellied, Melanerpes carolinus, 31woodpecker, red-headed, Melanerpes erythrocephalus, 30wren, marsh, Cistothorus palustris, 40zebra mussel, Dreissena polymorpha, 49

Species IndexPlants

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