CliffNotes
Illinois Conservation Police’s Mission Is To Preserve Natural Habitats
On a bright morning in late spring: The hawk circles slowly, its red tail feathers turned bright copper by the sun’s glinting rays. This bird hunts not only to satisfy it’s own hunger but also to meet the demands of his mate and the chicks they care for. Keen eyesight, wings and tail structured for […]
Autumn harvest for wildlife
A listing of wildlife mast foods may be found by clicking this link: Wildlife Mast Foods Harvest season is upon us, a time-immemorial sense of urgency carried on crisp breezes telling us to stock up and store for winter needs. We do our stocking up by tossing boxes and packages and tenderly placing produce, eggs […]
Bees and Pollinators Hard at Work for Us
Consider for a moment that one out of every four mouthfuls of food and beverage that you consume requires the presence of an insect pollinator. The United States alone grows 130 crop plants that need insect pollinators. The economic value of directly pollinated crops in the United States in 2010 was estimated at $27 billion. […]
Chainsaws are Outdoor Work Timesavers — But Safety Must Come First
Chainsaws are indispensible tools for many outdoor work tasks. They are great for felling, limbing, bucking, pruning, harvesting firewood, culling invasive plant species, putting in trails and firebreaks, wildland fire suppression, severe weather storm damage cleanups, cutting concrete, and, for the artsy, ice and wood carving. It’s hard to imagine how our forefathers managed to […]
Ticks, honeysuckle & deer ~~ another reason to remove invasive bush honeysuckle!
May is beautiful, bountiful, busy, AND is Illinois Invasive Species Awareness Month. Just in time to celebrate growing awareness of the problems invasive species create, we have an all new reason to get rid of bush honeysuckle, the single greatest threat to our bluff land’s natural biodiversity and the worst of the worst of invasive […]
A Little Night Music
It’s fun and heartening to sit or walk on warmer spring nights near wetter places and hear full symphonies of frog and toad song. They sing about love and their music is full of optimism. There are 16 different species of frogs and toads in Monroe County. Our region is a frog and toad heaven, […]
Rich Biodiversity Helps Keep You Healthy
What’s biodiversity done for you, lately? Oh dear, dear reader, you’re probably thinking: Yeah, yeah, another plea to keep the Amazon rainforests where that dumb butterfly bats a wing that creates an ice storm over my house (for sure!) or another preachment about wetlands filtering drinking water when I know that it’s full of good […]
Give a Hoot
As Shakespeare noted in Love’s Labor’s Lost, when icicles hang by the wall and milk comes home frozen in the pail, then nightly sings the staring owl. And so it is in our forested bluff lands, as our resident owls court and mate in the cold of February, and do a lot of talking in […]
Hickory Nuts Roasting on an Open Fire…
Guest author Debbie Scott Newman, Natural Areas Preservation Specialist, Illinois Nature Preserves Commission, explains the importance of prescribed fire: Jack frost nipping at your nose. Ahh, the sounds of the crackling fire. Twigs and logs giving off that familiar smoky aroma. And the warm comforts of glowing embers amidst the chilly air. It all brings […]
Ash trees: durable, useful, threatened
Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron all had one thing in common besides batting their ways into the Hall of Fame. They all used Louisville Sluggers and all admired the workhorse durability and incredible elasticity of American ash wood. While almost every American has felt and lived with […]