Illinois had 22 million acres of prairie land in 1820, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Rolling plains bustling with big bluestem, compass plant and monarch butterflies aplenty. But by 1978, less than 2,300 acres of quality prairie remained in Illinois.
There are efforts to preserve what is left of the state's once omnipresent prairie and, if possible, restore some of it.
Sarah Livesay is the executive director of the Grand Prairie Friends Land Trust. The conservation organization formed in 1984.
“We started purchasing and protecting and then restoring some of those original tallgrass prairie remnants,” Livesay said. “We stretch 130 miles North to South. So Watseka, Illinois up to the North, all the way down, through Charleston, Illinois down to Neoga, Illinois.”
That adds up to about 1,200 acres. Livesey says around 60 land trusts own prairie land in Illinois. Most of Illinois' remaining prairie isn't owned by conservation groups, or even the government.
"The interesting thing in Illinois is that more than 90% of the land is in private, landholder ownership,” Livesay said. “So the private individual owns most of the land.”
For conservation groups like Grand Prairie Friends, that means an important part of the job is reaching out to private owners and teaching them about restoration.
“For example, we just had a national chainsaw trainer come in,” Livesay said. “And we opened it to the community, so they could come and learn the effective ways of using a chainsaw. So they could do timber stand improvement, all of those kinds of things. And remove invasive plants. So, yes, we have an obligation, I would say. Not just an opportunity, we have an obligation to do those things.”
Some other measures are also deployed to help with invasive species. For example, prescribed burns, like the ones taking place at Wilmington's Midewin Tallgrass Prairie this spring.
Livesay says these practices are important to keep out species like garlic mustard, which carpets the ground and chokes out native wildflowers.
“Luckily here in Illinois, being on the tallgrass prairie, most of our native plants and some trees have that immunity to fire,” she said. “Many are adapted to open their seed pods with fire. Or the prairies regenerate after fire and that rich amount of burnt material goes back into the soil.”
Conservation-minded groups also practice preservation to raise the numbers of certain species in Illinois prairies.
The Illinois Department of Transportation, the largest single landowners in the state, is one of these groups. With 429,000 acres of right of way across the state, the entity owns a significant amount of prairie and is restoring more in those right of way areas.
“We started this in 2015-16. We were always trying to plant,” said Stephanie Dobbs, a former IDOT roadside maintenance manager in charge of vegetation. “Because, don’t fight Mother Nature, right? If you plant what’s supposed to live there, if it’s a forest plant forest, if it’s in a prairie plant prairie, because it just exists better. Better groundwater absorption and everything else.”
Dobbs is retired, but she’s back working with IDOT on contract, filling the position of roadside manager in every IDOT district can be difficult.
“It’s a very specialized job,” Dobbs said. “I think average people don’t think about IDOT having biologists or agriculture specialists or things like that, that take care of the land.”
One of the largest projects at IDOT, in conjunction with other government agencies, is protecting an endangered species that thrives in Illinois prairies: the monarch butterfly. Dobbs says IDOT contributes by planting and maintaining milkweed, one of the insect’s main foods.
This also means maintaining a seasonal mowing schedule.
“I use the salad bar,” Dobbs said. “Would you rather eat old salad, or would you rather have brand new, fresh salad if you’re going to have a salad?”
Dobbs says monarchs show greater attraction to the new milkweed and mowing gets rid of threatening diseases that can be left behind by infected monarchs on old milkweed. It’s just one more piece of a modular mission to restore and protect Illinois prairies. Dobbs says prairie preservation requires a vast network of government, private and nonprofit agencies working together.
Dobbs mentioned that restoration is expensive and has to be done piecemeal. Livesay says there are grants on the nonprofit side of things, but they’re not abundant. When you do get grants, there are lists of qualifiers on their use.
She says land trusts are typically membership organizations. They need members, donors and even estate gifts to the land trusts.
“Those are the gifts where we can use them where we need them,” Livesay said. “And that is really the essential piece for managing and funding all of these ecosystems.”
