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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
