Summer of 2017 Conservation Corps group the biggest yet
Conservation Corps crew members work in Dan Ryan Woods. Alice Brandon oversees the summer Corps program in the Forest Preserves. From all over south Cook County they came. Calumet Heights. Hyde Park. Morgan Park. Ashburn. Beverly. They rose early on summer weekdays, arriving at their designated pick-up locations before 7:30 a.m. to be on site […]
SCA crew doing restoration work in Dan Ryan Woods includes some seasoned members
Among the Student Conservation Association (SCA) crew working in the Dan Ryan Woods this summer are several seasoned veterans. There’s Joi Funches, 17, a rising senior from the south suburbs. She speaks with the confidence that comes from experience, easily rattling off the names of invasive species—buckthorn, catalpa, burdock—that cause problems in the preserves and […]
OPRF High School students design public art pieces for Preserves
Standing around a table in a large meeting room, Oak Park-River Forest High School art students unveiled three proposals for public sculptures they designed to be installed at forest preserves sites this summer. The 12 students began working on the project last fall. Meeting during three-hour workshops on Saturdays, they collaborated with Transit Studio artists […]
Spears Woods Leadership Corps members learn, train for a lifetime
In the dead of winter, when it’s bone-chilling cold, the ground is frozen and wildlife are burrowed away, that’s when restoration crews are hard at work deep in the Forest Preserves of Cook County. On a recent morning in Spears Woods, a five-person Forest Preserve Leadership Corps crew took turns tossing freshly cut armloads of brush […]
Forest Preserve volunteers give —and recieve
An appreciation for nature led Margaret Tobin of Palos Hills to volunteer in the forest preserves. For Dennis Kankowske, it was “seeing people working in the woods.” After he inquired and found out what they were doing, he was hooked. Tobin and Kankowske are two of the preserves’ top volunteers, amassing hundreds of […]
Foundation, Allstate support 2016 Conservation Corps crew
A member of the Conservation Corps crew assigned to the Ted Stone Preserve. Alexa Molina, a Curie Metro High School senior, is spending six weeks of her summer mulching trails, removing invasive buckthorns and securing logs to create a check dam that will control water runoff in the Ted Stone Forest Preserve. Before she started […]
Wild Indigo gives two families a first-time camping experience
After everyone set up their tents for the night, there was still plenty of daylight left for tossing a Frisbee across the grassy field, squealing with delight at a peppered moth–or fear over the daddy long-legs–and getting a big pot of chili ready for dinner. It was a perfect day for enjoying everything the Forest […]
A memorial for a mother who loved spending time in Forest Preserve
When she was a child, Pet Smith’s mother took her on many walks through the Deer Grove Forest Preserve in Palatine. “She loved the area,” says Smith, remembering her late mother Vietta Mickus, who lived in Palatine all of her life. “It was her back yard. She knew it like the back of her hand.” A homemaker […]