Winter 1999

[TEXT ARCHIVE WEB-PUBLISHED MARCH 2002.
ORIGINAL PRINT PUBLICATION DATE: WINTER 1999.]

Friends of Nature

In this issue we review the stirring and a cautionary tale of the battle to establish the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. When Dwight Perkins and Jens Jensen set about saving "natural park lands" for the benefit of people, they did not know these holdings would become refugia for rare and endangered species, harboring biodiversity of global conservation significance.

They were establishing culture. Along with their friend and colleague Jane Addams, they were concerned for the health and welfare of urban residents — the wage earners, as they put it — who deserved, in their view, pleasant natural areas to enjoy, find inspiration, and cultivate a bond with the natural heritage of the region. At the time, they thought protecting and preserving nature meant simply saving land from development. Everyone did.

The new Forest Preserve District purchased its first land, 500 acres of Deer Grove, on June 25, 1916. They called it a "preserve," campaigned in sometimes charming ways to protect its nature, put out fires, and essentially left the lands alone. (The young lady appearing on the back cover of this issue was part of an early campaign to educate visitors not to pick the wildflowers.)

But these quaint values were not enough. Many of the places Perkins fought so hard to preserve became less attractive over the years, to both nature and people. Woodland wildflowers were disappearing from sites, not because they were being plucked but because their habitat was suffering. Once open areas, pleasant for strolling, picnicking or providing respite for the eye, were gradually becoming choked with invasive brush.

Yet ours is a continuing history of civic pride and action on behalf of nature. Soon all the region's counties would have preserve districts of various kinds. The spirit of Perkins, Jensen, May Watts, and others lives on in the efforts to restore natural areas and in the collaborative conservation initiatives of Chicago Wilderness.

Today, I suspect, we hallow nature no less than Perkins, Jensen, and Watts, but, perhaps, we respect nature more. We have learned what a challenge it is not only to protect tracts of land, but also to preserve healthy complexes of species — the whole communities called marshes, prairies, savannas and woods — that constitute our native landscape.

Those among us today who have the fortitude, vision, and persistence of the forest preserve founders will be the conservation heroes generations hence. These are the people of Chicago Wilderness, the citizen scientists profiled in this issue, the leaders of organizations large and small (such as Charlotte and Herbert Read and Dr. George Rabb, and not least of all, you, our readers. Bless you — and keep the faith.

Debra Shore may be reached at editor@chicagowildernessmag.org.