CFC Helping Fund Restoration of Smooth Green Snake to Greenway
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CFC Citizens for Conservation Saving Living Space for Living Things NEWVol. 36, No. 1, SpringS 2017 CFC helping fund restoration of smooth green snake to Greenway corridor habitat by Tom Vanderpoel The best way to increase biodiversity for all these native species and many more that didn’t make the list is to expand their habitats. Citizens for Conservation (CFC)’s new Barrington Greenway This is what the Barrington Greenway Initiative will do. Join us in Initiative is moving forward on several fronts. our efforts. This will take several generations to accomplish. All along the way meaningful volunteer opportunities will appear. As envisioned, the corridor will wind northward through the In the end, the Barrington area will reap the benefits of weaving Barrington area, from Poplar Creek Forest Preserve south of nature deep into the fabric of our society. I-90 into southeast McHenry County. There are almost 18,000 protected acres in the coalition area. CFC is negotiating a new land purchase we hope to announce shortly which will add to the total. A coalition called the Fox River Hill and Fen Partnership has been created to begin native habitat restoration on a larger scale throughout the Greenway corridor, with a specific focus on wildlife reintroduction, a developing science. Accordingly, the partnership will concentrate on 12 priority species of wildlife identified by Chicago Wilderness as native to our region’s ecosystems. The species include Blanding’s turtle, blue spotted salamander, bobolink, little brown bat, monarch butterfly and red-headed woodpecker. CFC’s support for this project entails monitoring, habitat restoration and actual reintroduction. We’ve been restoring monarch habitat for years. We’ll begin monitoring bat species this summer, hopefully finding the little brown bat in the process. Bobolinks and Henslow’s sparrows will be drawn to the expanding and improving prairies. CFC will partially fund the effort to restore one species in particular, the smooth green snake, to the Barrington area. This beautiful, gentle creature is in serious population decline. We are proud to step in and help with this effort. Smooth green snake. Photo provided by Allison Sacerdote-Velat. CFC News • Page 1 Restoration Report tea on the Peninsula at Flint Creek Savanna. This is the first time this important plant has germinated at any of our restorations. We never collected this plant in the wild, but we 2016 in review - the breakthrough do have several established individuals in our planting beds, so we are certain the source of the seeds must have been our 2016 was another successful year for restoration. We bed. Also, for many years, we have picked the seeds of one continued to spend most of our time on our three main specimen of white turtlehead on the special Harvard Savanna techniques: brush cutting and invasive species control; work day. We have had a few of this spectacular relative of the prescribed burning; and seed collection, cleaning and sowing. snapdragon come up from our wet prairie mix over the years. This year it hit the takeoff stage — we must have had twenty to For the sixth year, we conducted over one hundred volunteer thirty blooming at Grigsby Prairie this August. The source of workdays. Our total number of volunteers was 240, an this huge increase must be Jim Root, the Native Seed Gardener increase from last year, and our total volunteer hours count who grows this plant in his garden by the dozen. The Native was another record. We enjoy the largest core we have Seed Gardeners supply garden grown seeds from the original ever had of consistent and frequent volunteers. Again, our seeds that we collected in the wild. White turtlehead is the class of four interns performed the majority of their work favored host plant for Baltimore checkerspot butterflies; could on restoration. Total volume of seed collected was 371 our substantial turtlehead population make us a possible site pounds, and the number of species was 209. We do not for reintroduction of this beautiful wet prairie denizen? harvest as much seed by weight as we used to because we are concentrating more and more on getting the seed of rarer, On a larger scale, we are most excited about what we call the harder to restore, species. We could now collect a ton of big breakthrough along the right bank of Flint Creek. In the last bluestem grass, but we no longer need to because we already six years, we used a grant from the Donnelley Foundation to have plenty. conduct the Reed Canary Eradication Demonstration Program. We identified small, isolated patches of native vegetation that For the second time, we sowed multiple seed mixes at our new had survived along the creek amongst the vast reed canary Craftsbury Preserve. We finished clearing the brush along grass clones. We poisoned the the road at the Kelsey Road Prairie. We continued our major reed canary grass with a selective heavy-duty brush herbicide and were ecstatic that cutting at our new the native plant element surged preserve at Flint Creek back in each of the patches. In the South and detailed last four years, contractors, interns follow-up clearing at and volunteers have toiled hard to Wagner Fen (including destroy the reed canary grass that the recently acquired separated our now thriving remnant wooded hill), Baker’s patches and planted plugs of native Admiring the white turtlehead at Grigsby. Lake, Flint Creek Photo by Rob Neff. sedge. For the first time, we have Savanna and Grigsby restored a continuous band of sedge Prairie. For the first time, we created a map of Flint Creek meadows from the base of South Savanna based on aerial photos with named geographic Tawny-edged skipper. Knoll in the Henry Lane addition all locations. This map will make it easier for workday leaders to Photo by Jim Vanderpoel. the way to the East Side Marsh. We direct volunteers to multiple locations. will continue to overseed this breakthrough habitat to improve plant diversity. On our own lands, we conducted two spring burns at Flint Creek Savanna, the most extensive one ever at Grigsby, and These expansions of, and connections of, our wetland plant one at the Conservation Easement. We had another successful community have created lots of new habitat and the remnant burn at Baker’s Lake in cooperation with our partner, the dependent butterflies have taken advantage of it! In 2013 Village of Barrington. We also burned the remnant railroad and 2014, we had seen the black dash skipper only in the Deal prairie with Paganica Homeowners’ Association. Mitigation; in 2015, we spotted it at Great Water Dock Marsh, probably the place it had survived. In 2016, we saw it at both As our restorations mature, we are appreciating new and places and at Snipe Marsh, Second Pond and the East Side subtle successes. We were never able to collect certain species Marsh. We also saw the Dion skipper in its original location of plants that lived in the Barrington area in our original and at Snipe Marsh. In addition, we added the tawny-edged collecting area along the Chicago and Northwestern railroad skipper to our list in the breakthrough area and, to top it off, tracks. Those species have become too rare to harvest in the the eyed brown returned after dying off in the bad drought remnants. This year we spotted two seedlings of New Jersey of 2011. All of these butterflies require native sedges as (continued) CFC News • Page 2 that she inspired an audience of enthusiasts too. We can just Restoration Report (continued) imagine how popular she must be as a college instructor! caterpillar food. We are finding that it is crucial for wildlife to link good habitats together. It is exciting to see our “heads down” restoration work coinciding with and validating the Living soils advocacy work of our Habitat Corridors Program and the Barrington Greenway Initiative. by Peggy Simonsen At Flint Creek, we added a new bird to our list: the black duck. Is your soil alive with healthy organisms and porous with air This uncommon and declining duck was migrating through pockets to capture water and nutrients? A full-house audience for CFC’s February Community Education program by Jeff Great Water Dock Marsh. We also had good news with a late Weiss learned about the structure of good soil for native nesting pair of bobolinks at Grigsby and late sedge wrens at plants, including organic matter, water, minerals and air. The both Grigsby and Flint Creek Savanna. biological activity of living soil includes plant roots, fungi, bacteria, protozoa, worms, insects and seeds. We all know that — Jim Vanderpoel native prairie plants have deep roots that contribute to this deep, fertile soil, as well as providing ecological services such as water retention, erosion control, and carbon fixation. We learned that prairie soil is called mollisol and is the deepest, The dazzling world of dragonflies and alfisol is forest soil and shallower and histosol is wetland soil, damselflies muckier of course. by Peggy Simonsen Composting is essential to improve the organic matter and soil composition, especially in our area’s clay, but did you know that composting also can filter out 60-95% of urban CFC’s Community Education Committee’s first program of stormwater pollutants? And that composted soil can hold five the year was a marvelous presentation by Marla Garrison, times its weight in water? One research study found that ½ an expert on dragonflies and damselflies. Showing her inch of compost over the surface sequestered the equivalent spectacular photos, Marla captivated the full house with of one metric ton of carbon dioxide in one hectare over three fascinating information about these insects.