BULL VALLEY – Passersby might miss the nearly 350-year-old bur oak tree located north of Route 120 and just west of Thompson Road near Bull Valley.

But all it takes is one look to realize why it’s worth protecting the oak and restoring the property it sits on, said Melissa Grycan, restoration ecologist with The Land Conservancy of McHenry County.

“I can’t really explain it in words, but just walking up to it and seeing it – there’s a connection there,” she said.

Oak conservation has been a strong focus of The Land Conservancy since about 2006, Executive Director Lisa Haderlein said.

Since the 1830s, there has been an 87 percent loss of oak groves in McHenry County because of disease, old age and development, according to information provided by the conservancy.

Although many of the oaks that remain are on private land, the conservancy has helped protect oak trees in areas including Harvard Gateway Nature Park, the Hennen Conservation Area in Woodstock and most recently at the Wolf Oak property near Bull Valley that holds the 350-year-old bur oak.

“Oak woods and oak savannas are some of the most endangered type of habitats on the planet,” Haderlein said. “And we’re fortunate in McHenry County that there are still some really, really great oak woodlands remaining.”

Although the conservancy doesn’t often buy land, in December it obtained a four-year loan to buy the Wolf Oak property, Haderlein said.

The conservancy received about $320,000 in pledges to pay for the cost of the property, provide a permanent endowment to take care of the land, restore it and open it to the community, she said.

The tree has a trunk nearly 5 feet in diameter, a canopy of about 60 feet and a height of about 30 feet, Haderlein said. Its branches touch the ground on either side, and the tree was named the Wolf Oak because of the space it takes up.

An oak woodland and savanna, sedge meadow and glacial features also make up the property.

When the land first was acquired, it was hard even to see the Wolf Oak from the side of the road, Grycan said as she piled brush Feb. 1 near the oak tree on a workday.

The Land Conservancy hosts regular oak workdays at its locations throughout the county, and about 10 volunteers came out to help cut and burn brush on Feb. 1.

When oaks aren’t managed well, the trees will die, and there won’t be any young oaks to take their place, Haderlein said.

Clearing out brush such as honeysuckle and buckthorn that is choking the oaks can be done through regular burnings, she said.

“Not all shrubs are bad, but it’s just the invasive ones that form a carpet,” Grycan said. “Monocultures are never good.”

Oak trees are worth protecting because they provide a high level of wildlife diversity, Haderlein said.

“We’re all connected to nature, whether you know it or not,” Grycan said. “Our natural systems are really important, even just for clean air and clean water.”

Pete Jackson of Prairie Grove took a break from cutting brush as he looked out at the Wolf Oak during his first time volunteering with the conservancy.

“You could stand here and imagine what that tree has lived through, and it goes way back into the pre-European history of this country,” Jackson said. “That’s really exciting to me that it’s still here, it still produces acorns.”

Lauretta Wolf of Woodstock said she has been volunteering with the conservancy for more than five years.

“So much is getting paved over, cemented over, built on, that when you have, especially something like this 300-plus-year-old tree, it’s worth coming out,” Wolf said.

To continue conserving oaks, the conservancy is looking to use grant money to buy another oak savanna property off Schultz Road in Harvard, Haderlein said, and continuing to educate people in the county on how to protect oaks on their private properties.

Oak keeper training sessions will be held through April and May to teach people various topics including identifying the solids, tree and topography at their site, identifying native and nonnative species, and how to use tools and herbicides.

For information or to sign up for the workshops, visit shawurl.com/conserveoaks.

“We’re hoping to inspire more people to want to do what they can to help,” Haderlein said.