Prairie people ‘party’

Add comment November 5th, 2008

I learned from the Nature Conservancy that a group of about 40 volunteers who have tended a restored prairie at Nachusa Grasslands south of Rockford, near Oregon, will celebrate by having a private potluck lunch at 1 p.m. and a public hike at 2 p.m. Saturday, respectively.

They have put in 9,000 hours planting, harvesting, milling, monitoring pollination of rare plants, fostering violets that feed endangered butterflies and running prescribed burns.

The press release says:

 The few remaining prairies of the Great Plains can no longer survive without the efforts of people, and the efforts of the people at Nachusa have resulted in the continuous conservation and restoration of one of the largest surviving prairies in the Prairie State.

Find other hike info here. To RSVP, contact Becky Hartman at 630-309-2110 or bhhartman2001@hotmail.com.

Tour of Nachusa Grasslands Preserve, Illinois. Photo by Andrew Simpson/TNC

A Conservancy Restoration Ecologist leads a tour at Nachusa Grasslands, one of the Conservancy’s greatest ongoing success stories and one of Illinois’ largest and last surviving prairie landscapes. Photo by Chris Helzer/TNC