Patty Wetli: Regular readers of our Friday newsletter know that we typically end with a list of outdoor events.
Well last Saturday, pretty much every member of what I think of as the greater Chicago “nature community” spent the entire day indoors.
Some 2,000 nature stewards, advocates and educators — myself included — flocked to the Rosemont Convention Center for the biennial Wild Things conference, hosted by Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves.
Billed as a “celebration of nature, wildlife, ecosystem restoration, birding, botanizing and discovery,” the conference offered a dizzying number of presentations to choose from — nearly 150. I should have gone into the conference with a plan of attack but wound up making snap decisions in the moment.
“Cemetery Prairies: A Matter of Life and Death”? Sign me up.
According to the presenter, Jack Shouba, there are some 29 known prairie cemeteries — 19 of which are dedicated Illinois Nature Preserves — and maybe as many unknown and/or unprotected. Most are an acre or less in size.
“Why should we care about small prairies?” Shouba asked. “Because we don’t have large prairies. They are living museums.”
Shouba, a retired botany teacher, avid naturalist and self-described “prairie buff since 1968,” is one of those guys who’s been part of the Chicago “wild things” scene for so long, he actually studied under the folks whose names are in all the textbooks.
He’s taken it upon himself to visit these scattered cemetery prairies and catalog the species that are present – or not – and then compares his findings with decades-old inventories. Along the way, he’s made an interesting discovery: A lot of these prairie cemeteries have drop-offs of a foot or two at their edge, due to the loss of topsoil on adjacent land. Shouba shared photos of himself, straddling that line – one foot on the higher ground of the prairie past, the other in the present.
The pace of change, in terms of the disappearance of natives and the emergence of invasives, is increasing, Shouba said, and some of the cemetery prairies “desperately need help.”
It was a theme that repeated throughout the day.
As exhilarating as it was to be surrounded by so many people passionate about protecting, preserving and understanding the nature around us, it was also overwhelming to think about the scope of what needs to be protected, restored and studied.
We’ll be sharing some of those stories with you in upcoming columns, from underappreciated rare plants to misunderstood creatures. Did we go to a session called “Snake Road”? Yes, we did.
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