Through their $5,000 donation to the Forest Preserve Foundation, a Champaign couple with deep ties to Chicago is supporting an expansion of the Forest Preserves Conservation@Home program into nine schools in Cook County. The gift by Warren Lavey and Dr. Holly Rosencranz will fund a grant that allows the schools to start or expand pollinator […]
Show your love for your local outdoors — with help from REI
Here at the Forest Preserve Foundation, we love our local outdoors. But you already know we do. Still, when there’s a chance to have more funds directed toward ensuring that the Forest Preserves of Cook County are protected and maintained, we are on it. Because that’s our mission. We depend on the community to support […]
Wes Serafin, a birder who did so much for the Preserves
Birders are a close-knit community. They travel in their own flocks, binoculars and cameras around their necks, traipsing across prairies and through woods, looking to spot an elusive scarlet tanager or indigo bunting or rose-breasted grosbeak. They develop deep bonds around their shared affection for the feathered species. Among Chicago’s birding community, one birder soared […]
Sustainability snapshot 1: Humans changed the environment and now can restore it
When we hear the phrase “human environmental impacts,” many of us probably immediately think about climate change and causes of global warming. While those conditions contribute to environmental and ecological change, humans have played a significant role in changing our ecosystems. During a mid-June talk, Alice Brandon, Resource Programming Manager of the Forests Preserves of […]
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 […]