Rare Fern Appears
Last summer while walking his dog in an abandoned gravel pit in the Blackhawk Forest Preserve in Kane County, Jon Duerr spied a green shape in the shade of some tartarian honeysuckle. As Director of Field Services for the Kane County Forest Preserve District, Duerr's plant identification skills are darn good, but this one stumped him. He sent a sample for identification to fern expert Dr. Warren Wagner at the University of Michigan.

The finding? Botrychium campestre, from a family of plants known as grape ferns. Though native to the western prairie, this species has never been found in Illinois. "I don't know if the spores blew across that distance on the wind or were brought here on train cars from the west, but the fern seems to like the gravely soil of that pit," Duerr said. "It's just another exciting example of the crossroads of habitat that typifies Chicago Wilderness." — Mark Sheehy

Voyageur Canoeists
Musket shots — fired early in the morning of June 12, in Swan Lake Park, Wisconsin — launched a 75-mile Voyageur Canoe Expedition down the Des Plaines River ending near Romeoville, Illinois. These canoes, 26 feet long and weighing 300 pounds, are replicas of those used by the original French Canadian voyageurs, the "truckers" of the fur trade for hundreds of years.

The expedition made 21 stops along the way to pick up and drop off elected officials, agency staff, print media reporters, and others (including three county board commissioners from Lake, Cook, and DuPage Counties). Paul Stack, Mayor of Riverside, announced that "Riverside has always looked at the river as a liability. Now, we are going to develop the river as a recreational asset." Gary Mechanic, coordinator of the expedition, hoped the event would foster alliance-building: "Paddlers, bikers, runners, birder watchers, fishers — all want the same thing, a continuous greenway and water trail stretching the length of the Des Plaines River. We all meet at the water's edge."

The voyageurs helped kick off the Des Plaines River Watershed Conference and a proposed Friends of the Des Plaines River. If you live, work, or play in the Des Plaines River watershed and want to get involved, contact Gary Mechanic (773) 267-0146 or LStroker@aol.com. — Becky Polivka

Banded Killfish
The banded killifish, known from only eight other locations in Illinois, was discovered last February in a remote Lake County bog. Employees from Integrated Lakes Management had been hired to remove non-native shrubs that were choking out the bog at Grant Woods Forest Preserve near Fox Lake. Crew leader Pete Winkler had been noticing thousands of small fish under the clear ice when one somehow flopped out through a hole onto the ice in front of him. Recognizing that the fish was unusual, Winkler took it back to his Gurnee office, where the firm's director, Jim Bland, identified it.

"We were ecstatic," says Bland. "Its presence raises interesting questions about the bog's connection to nearby lakes and streams. This might be a relict population, completely isolated from other killifish." Once common throughout northern Illinois, the four-inch-long darter is considered threatened by the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Board. Reasons for the species' decline are not well understood, but ecologists point to poor water quality and possibly unnatural diseases and competition (unintentionally introduced by anglers who may dump out extra live baitfish at the end of the day).

Ospreys? Keep your distance!
The Birds of Illinois asserts that ospreys have not nested in Cook County in the 20th century. Not, that is, until now. Like its better known cousin, the bald eagle, the osprey has made a remarkable comeback in North America since DDT was banned, and this summer a pair of these fish-eating birds hatched three young in a stick nest beside a Cook County Forest Preserve slough. Avid bird monitor Craig Thayer first saw the downy nestlings on June 21. Although ospreys generally are tolerant of humans, they are — like other birds — still susceptible to nest failure if bothered too greatly during incubation and brooding.

According to the Canadian Wildlife Service, "Predation of young by crows, owls, gulls and raccoons does not usually happen unless parents have been disturbed by humans." Thayer hopes that visitors to the site respect these magnificent birds and will not be tempted to bushwhack their way too close to the nest site. The birds are easily viewed from a distance with a spotting scope. Since ospreys show great site fidelity to an eyrie, they may return to breed in their Palos region preserve for many years.

The Second Life of Peck Farm
Citizens rescued Peck Farm from bulldozers in 1991, when they voted to approve funds needed by the Geneva Park District to purchase the site. Peck Farm was once nationally recognized for its flocks of pure-bred Merino sheep. Later years saw evolution of the farm into row crops and a cattle feed lot. The third generation George Peck family, tired of seeing nearby farmland converted to housing developments, decided this site could be a memorial to founder Eli Peck. Landscape architects and restoration ecologists have been hard at work; native seed and a prescribed burning program are rapidly reclaiming nature lost during years of agricultural cultivation. Some old-fashioned farm gardens will be retained as well.

The property, located near Kaneville Rd. and Fabyan Parkway, will feature a 20-acre shallow pothole lake, 88 acres of planted mesic and wet prairies, seven acres devoted to educational buildings and open spaces, and 18 acres for recreational fields. The 1860s farmhouse will contain two public rooms devoted to history and nature discovery; the corn crib will be converted to an orientation theater providing an overlook to the prairie and wetlands, and walking trails will give visitors a closer glimpse of bluebirds and waterfowl. Peck Farm, a showpiece celebrating a bygone era and the restoration of native landscapes, opens in August. — Cathi De Grenier

National Park Quiz
Trick question: What national park is dominated by oaks, dunes, and wetlands and has tens of thousands of visitors annually?

Tricky hints: This park's wide range of flora and fauna surprise many people, especially because proximity to a major urban center poses threats, including habitat fragmentation, air and water pollution, and disrupted ground and surface water.

Surprise answer? There are two: Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and Poland's Kampinoski Park Narodowy (Kampinos National Park). As of April 15, 1998, these national parks on the fringes of Chicago and Warsaw have been designated sister parks. On that day in Warsaw, officials signed memoranda announcing that the National Park Service and the Board of Polish National Parks will exchange personnel, data, technology, training, and experience. The parks are hoping to embark on cooperative research projects on hydrology and European bison (saved from extinction and living in the wild only in Poland's parks).

Fire Sparks Prairie
It was only last October that a series of wildfires burned alongside a stretch of the Chicago and Northwestern railroad in Barrington, but already a variety of prairie and savanna plants have taken advantage of them. Since 1850, the easement of the railway has sheltered native plants from farming and grazing. This right-of-way continued to be burnt regularly, by design or accident, as late as the 1960s, maintaining now-rare prairie and even rarer open savanna ecosystems alongside the tracks. The 1997 fire, sparked by a faulty train wheel, ignited dry patches of prairie remnant; it cleared brush and encouraged the growth of several prairie and savanna species, including such rarities as veiny pea and Leiberg's panic grass.

Tom Vanderpoel, a member of Barrington's Citizens for Conservation, calls the increase in plant diversity "tremendous," and considers the site "one of our best examples" of the prairie-savanna continuum. Unfortunately, the unmanaged site has severe problems with aggressive species and will gradually become degraded unless an agreement with the railroad concerning management can be reached. In the meantime, Vanderpoel collects seed from the site and continues to study it. — Bridget Illian

Head Start for Turtles
In early July, 25 immature Blanding's turtles waddled off to new homes in the DuPage County Forest Preserves. After 10 months of captive rearing at the County's Willowbrook Wildlife Center, these youths are the second group of captive born and reared turtles to be released under the District's wildlife restoration program. District ecologists have been attempting to restore populations of these rare turtles ever since they were located in DuPage County during an amphibian and reptile survey in 1994. Once prevalent in DuPage (and much of the region), these domed-shell, yellow-throated creatures have lost much of their original wetland habitat. Moreover, skunks and raccoons prey heavily upon turtle eggs in today's small preserves and adult turtles are often run over on the highways while searching for mates.

"We feel that we can offset these problems by giving young turtles a head start that avoids some predation, and through proper habitat management," said District Animal Ecologist Dan Ludwig. Rearing young turtles in captivity also accelerates their growth so that they begin reproducing sooner than the usual 13 to 18 years. As part of the program, the District's Department of Grounds and Resources is writing a Blanding's turtle recovery plan with the assistance of geneticists and nutritionists from Brookfield Zoo and Blanding's turtle experts from the United States and Canada.

"This is the first time the Zoo has applied its population viability analysis model, used for endangered species conservation planning around the world, to a local threatened population," said Tim Sullivan, Chair of Conservation Biology at Brookfield Zoo. "We hope this can be a model for how to develop species management plans for other priority species in Chicago Wilderness." — Mark Sheehy

Fairway Frogs
The gray treefrog never expected to be fussed over by so many agencies. But a novel collaborative effort (by the Forest Preserve District of Will County, the Will County Land Use Department, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Services, and Providence Development Corporation) has protected a vernal pool where this frog breeds. The Fairways Wetlands Restoration Project, named for the Fairways Townhomes in Crete, lies adjacent to Goodenow Forest Preserve.

The vernal pool, a seasonally wet depression, is just under an acre in size and 1.5 feet at its deepest, yet provides valuable breeding habitat for several amphibian species such as the blue-spotted salamander, the spring peeper, and the eastern gray treefrog. Most vernal pools like this one are too small to be protected under the Clean Water Protection Act and, as a result, developers frequently fill them in or convert them to larger ponds (where fish may eat the vernal pond amphibians).

This site was destined for the same fate until interviews with nearby residents showed that many moved there to be close to the forest preserve and have a strong interest in wildlife and natural settings. These interviews, conducted by the county Land Use Department, convinced the developers to approve the restoration proposal. "We're hoping the project will be viewed as a model to developers, planners, and researchers," says Bruce Hodgdon of the Forest Preserve District. — Nicole Kamins

Wild Turkey (the bird)
Three Thorn Creek Audubon birders had an exciting morning on June 15 while surveying breeding birds for the Bird Conservation Network Survey '98. While walking a trail towards the Boy Scout Camp in Cook County's Zanders Woods, they saw a large shape in a tree. At first they thought it was a hawk or a turkey vulture, until birder Daniela Herman spotted the identifying blue on the head and light-colored legs of a wild turkey before it flew off into the woods.

"We were so excited to see such an unusual sight," said Herman. It is not unusual to find wild turkeys in savannas, and this is a restored oak savanna, but wild turkeys have not been recorded in Cook County since 1878, and were considered extirpated from the state by 1900, according to Chicago Area Birds. In recent decades, wild turkeys — distinguished from their domestic cousins by their dark rather than white tail tips — have been released in various parts of rural Illinois to re-establish the turkey as a game bird.

"This is indeed a significant sighting," said the Illinois Ornithological Society's Eric Walters. "There have been only a handful of sightings of these birds in the wild in northeastern Illinois since they disappeared, and none that I  know of in Cook County."

News stories compiled by Elizabeth Sanders with help this issue from Dilip Das, Dale Endquist, Marianne Hahn, Tim Houston, Wes Serafin, and Fred Szarka.