Kane Forest Preserve to benefit from $20K in grants

GENEVA – The Kane County Forest Preserve District received a $10,000 ComEd Openlands Award for the development of a 17-acre oak savanna and pollinator corridor at Big Rock Forest Preserve.

The Kane County Forest Preserve Foundation also received a $10,000 grant for improvements to the 7.53 acres of butterfly and Blanding’s turtle habitat at the Freeman Kame-Meagher Forest Preserve in Gilberts.

ComEd announced in a news release that it awarded almost $200,000 for the development of green spaces across northern Illinois.

Forest Preserve Commission President Pro-Tem Mavis Bates praised staff for the work in getting the grants.

“We are thrilled to receive this money,” Bates said. “And we want to invite all the people of Kane County to come and see monarchs and frogs and turtles and everything this is doing to help preserve our pollinators, endangered species and our green spaces.”

Although the butterfly and Blanding’s turtle grant went to the Kane County Forest Preserve Foundation, the foundation’s Board President Becky Gillam said it would give the money to the district to carry out the work.

“It’s important because we need to increase pollinator plantings for bees and endangered species like the Blanding’s turtles,” Gillam said.

Natural Resources Director Patrick Chess said the Forest Preserve is contributing $12,000 in matching funds for the oak savanna work.

“We’ve already got oaks planted there … a couple hundred white and burr oaks primarily,” Chess said. “They’re about chest high or so.”

The area has low-quality nonnative grasses such as Eurasian brome and Kentucky blue grass and herbaceous species such as crown vetch and bird’s foot trefoil, Chess said.

Instead of risking damage to the oaks’ root system, they would seed in native grasses with a pollinator mix into the grass cover.

“We do not want to do anything that impacts the oaks growing,” Chess said.

In the winter, they plan to get rid of invasive brush such as olive and honeysuckle and follow up with more of the seed mix.

The pollinator mix of native plants will include pale purple coneflower, lead plant – a small shrub with purple flowers – bee balm and yellow coneflower, Chess said.

“We are typically targeting a very diverse group of over 100 different species of native prairie plants,” Chess said. “The higher the diversity mix, then the more supportive of higher diversity pollinators.”

The prairie flowers would bloom in succession so that pollinators always have a steady supply of food and habitat.

ComEd grants also went to:

• Patriots Park Pollinator Habitat Restoration in Downers Grove to help the Downers Grove Park District fund native plantings.

• Theosophical Society in America in Wheaton for planting 50 trees in a 42-acre, 900-tree public arboretum, prioritizing native trees that sustain pollinators, birds and mammals.

• Waterman Butterfly and Toddler Gardens in Waterman to help the village enhance existing pollinator conservation efforts by removing invasive plants and adding pollinating shade trees, milkweed, verbena and bug hotels.

• The Crystal Lake Park District’s Nature Center Pollinator Garden development to provide habitat for birds, butterflies and bees.

• Wynnfield Detention Naturalization to help Algonquin convert a 4.6-acre turf grass dry bottom basin to a naturalized basin using native pollinator species to enhance the wildlife habitat, increase site aesthetics and ecosystem benefits.

• Oakhurst Community Recreational Path/Waubonsie Creek Trail intersection in Aurora to help the Oakhurst Community Association remove dead, diseased and nonnative trees where paths intersect. It also will fund the addition of benches along the path and new pollinator plants.

Openlands is a metropolitan conservation organization founded in 1963.

More information is available at openlands.org.