Wild Things 2025

The appreciation of light isn’t just for photographers. It is a gift for everyone, particularly those seeking to enhance their connection with nature. We frequently focus on the physical elements, like plants and geology, while ignoring the intangible yet significant contributions of our life-giving star.
 
In this performance, renowned nature photographer and acclaimed author and entertainer, Mike MacDonald, unveils breathtaking natural images of the Chicago region on a grand scale, inviting audiences to experience a fresh perspective on the world. He illustrates how our Sun can magically transform familiar and already stunning landscapes into extraordinary realms of enchantment and rediscovery.

Nature journaling is the mindful practice of connecting with nature using all your senses, making and recording observations, and being curious. Participants will practice using words, pictures and numbers to document the natural world around them. We will discuss tools, materials and resources, explore observation prompts, and practice basic drawing skills.

I will share stories from the unmatched history of Chicagoland botany with emphasis on the parts (people, places and things) I experienced firsthand. Will include thoughts about the future regarding botany and natural history study.

Hear from the Friends of the Forest Preserves team about our four-year running community leader engagement model. We will be joined by Friends staff, as well as two community leaders to hear from them about their experience. What’s a community leader? For this session, a community leader is a member from the neighborhoods we are working to bring events and volunteer opportunities to. Community leaders have assisted at events, hosted and recruited participants for focus groups, helped with outreach efforts, helped build new connections to people and organizations, worked with event partners, recruited event attendees throughout the year, and provided valuable insight into local interests.

Community science is a great way to inform the public about the natural world while also collecting data for projects. National Great Rivers offers several community science opportunities allowing volunteers to learn about and become stewards of Illinois waterbodies. In this presentation, we will describe our community science programs, share how new volunteers can get involved, and summarize some of the data from our most active programs: Illinois RiverWatch, Winter Chloride Watch, and a freshwater mussel monitoring project in the Upper Sangamon River.

This session will be a panel of 3 elected officials and one moderator. The purpose is to educate attendees on how local elected officials can collaborate on environmental issues and make positive change. The chosen officials for the panel are all outstanding environmental advocates who have strong relationships with environmental organizations. Collaboration between elected officials and constituents is imperative to policy-making and finding solutions to the most pressing environmental issues.

This presentation will dive into our playbook for successfully working with municipalities to introduce native plants at scale. We’ll share hard lessons learned along the way, including how to navigate common challenges like watering accountability, ongoing stewardship, and building lasting partnerships. A key focus will be on packaging: rather than pushing for full rewilding upfront, we’ve found that a gradual, strategic approach yields early successes and helps slowly shift perspectives. By taking small, calculated steps first, we can build momentum quickly toward larger native plant initiatives.

Stewardship storytime! How did you get started as a volunteer? What sustains your involvement? Was there an experience that changed your life? Something you learned that you didn't expect? Maybe an "Oh, how wrong I was!" memory?

This is sociology, a start, with stories. The goal is to glean ways to build and support our volunteer community.

Out In Nature is a local community affinity group that creates an accessible, positive environment for all LGBTQIA+ individuals to connect, explore, and experience nature and the outdoors, and it has been doing so since 2019. Our goal at Wild Things will be to share with conferencegoers how to best make nature spaces safe, welcoming, and accessible for the queer community. We will talk about past events, our community engagement and outreach strategies and events, and our history as queer naturalists and an organization. Out In Nature has partnered with organizations like The Nature Conservancy, Lincoln Park Zoo, Indiana Dunes National Park, Cook and Lake County Forest Preserves, and many more local conservation organizations.

Our inboxes and channels are flooded with awareness-raising messages to protect our natural world. However, this type of outreach does little to actually change our individual behavior. In this interactive session, participants will learn the fundamentals of behavior change strategies and will identify a conservation behavior to target.

The Illinois Big Tree Register (IBTR) is a statewide outreach program that seeks to discover, record, recognize, and appreciate the largest individuals of our native tree species. Chris Benda will discuss his role in updating the IBTR and show photographs of some of the most impressive trees in the state.

You’ll see in the award-winning short film Watershed Warriors, Friends of the Fox River builds a watershed community of caretakers focusing on youth education; their unique niche is hosting students in local streams to discover its abundant life, collect data, and foster stewardship. Their annual It’s Our Fox River Day, covers the 200-mile watershed featuring over 50 events, including numerous municipalities and partners, involving over 1000 participants. Extensive outreach education, cleanups, celebrations, and advocacy fill their calendar. Friends of the Fox River serves as an inspirational model for individuals like you and your organizations to give your watershed a voice.

There is increasing concern protected natural areas are being negatively affected by chemical pesticides that strayed from target areas. We characterized the occurrence and concentration of chemical pesticides and symptoms associated with herbicide exposure at 185 randomly selected locations in Illinois, including 102 Illinois Nature Preserves Commission sites. We found at least one pesticide at 97% of sites, with herbicides being the most common class detected. We found visual evidence consistent with herbicide damage for at least 97% of site visits. The strongest predictor of symptom severity and chemical concentration was the area of row crops in the surrounding landscape.

Over 20 pioneer prairie cemeteries are now Nature Preserves, but all are small. Larger preserves would theoretically support more species, be more stable, and be less likely to lose species over time. But the small remnant prairies are also valuable, especially since there are so few remaining prairies of any size. In this visual presentation, we will visit several pioneer cemeteries and consider their value, their problems, and some ways volunteers can contribute to their preservation.

Wetland scrapes are shallow depressions, typically less than three feet deep, that hold water seasonally but stay damp for most of the year. They offer diverse habitats for waterfowl, marsh birds, shorebirds, reptiles, and amphibians. When these scrapes fill in with silt from the surrounding watershed and invasive plants, they must be restored.

Pingree Grove Forest Preserve includes one of the largest wetland complexes owned by the Forest Preserve District of Kane County. Over time, much of the open water was lost due to the dense growth of invasive species like Narrowleaf Cattail, Reed Canary Grass, and Common Reed. A “wetland scrape” was performed by ILM in 2023 to return an interspersion of open water and emergent vegetation vital for wetland wildlife.

Prescribed fire is an important tool that is often used, and in most cases necessary, to maintain and improve the diversity and health of fire-dependent natural communities. This talk delves into the history of wildfires in the United States, what we have learned from them, and how their impacts have influenced modern day thinking and ecologists’ application of prescribed fire. You will also hear about the benefits of prescription burns, risks, variations in fire outcomes, planning, implementation, and recommended training.

Fire-dependent oak woodlands and savannas were Illinois' most common wooded ecosystems, yet today are globally imperiled. Restoring them is a conservation priority, but few or no very high-quality examples that could guide restoration exist. Thus, we are still in the early stages of understanding models and goals - and how to reach them. This talk examines topics such as fire frequency, ecosystem structure, and herb layer composition through a series of comparative on-the-ground studies, historical analyses, and observations of one of the region's longest-running oak ecosystem restorations in 300 acres of Somme Woods and Prairie Grove.

The session includes a screening of the original short film “Mussel Matters: Saving Critical Species in DuPage County”, created in partnership between North Central College, The Conservation Foundation, and Forest Preserve District of DuPage County. The film highlights local efforts to conserve the freshwater mussel population in Illinois. After the film, staff from the Urban Stream Research Center will share more insight into their work with freshwater mussels as well as other regional aquatic species in need of conservation.

Creating native garden habitat connects us with nature and helps support birds, pollinators and wildlife. This presentation features Pam’s photos from her Chicago bird garden she created, illustrating how it’s possible to attract over 100 bird species. Tips include landscape enhancements, practices and plant selection, with an emphasis on native plants. Chicagoland’s location along the migratory route, bird species diversity, diet, nesting, supplemental support and community science will also be discussed. Doug Tallamy’s “Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard” and Emily Murphy’s “Grow Now: How We Can Save Our Health, Communities, and Planet– One Garden at a Time” includes Pam’s garden, exemplifying the power of urban lots.

This session will provide an overview of the development and implementation of Illinois’ State Wildlife Action Plan over the past 20 years and current efforts to review and update the SWAP.  The Illinois Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Plan & Strategy version 1.0 and the 2015 Implementation Guide to the Illinois Wildlife Action Plan make up the currently approved State Wildlife Action Plan for the State of Illinois.  The SWAP is organized around Campaigns and Conservation Opportunity Areas that allow opportunities for public and private partners to engage in conservation actions designed to maintain and enhance native species and natural communities throughout Illinois.  

Springbrook Prairie Forest Preserve is an 1800 acre preserve and Illinois Nature Preserve in Naperville, Illinois, owned and managed by the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County. Springbrook is managed as a grassland and prairie restoration area and is known for its populations of breeding grassland birds. I have continuously monitored the breeding birds at Springbrook since 1994 using a network of point counts and transects. The presentation will present the results of this long-term monitoring and discuss the relationship of grassland bird diversity and density in relation to various habitats, site management, and prairie restoration efforts.

In 2023, 4 captive reared piping plover chicks were released at Illinois Beach State Park in Waukegan. They were monitored by the Lake County Audubon Sharing Our Shore-Waukegan volunteers. A 30 minute film tracks the life cycle of these birds from their release as fledglings, their 2023 migration to southern wintering grounds and their amazing return to nest and successfully raise young in 2024. Their story is beautifully shared in this film and will be followed by a panel of Piping Plover volunteers and others involved in the Sharing Our Shore-Waukegan project and Great Lakes Piping Plover Recovery Effort.

In 2018, a pair of endangered Great Lakes piping plovers attempted to nest in a busy gravel park lot at the Waukegan Municipal Beach. Due to the dangers posed to the nest, the eggs were salvaged and brought to a facility in Michigan for captive-rearing. That plover pair relocated to Chicago in 2019 and went on to become the internationally famous 'Monty & Rose.' The Lake County Audubon chapter chose the challenging route of transforming a bird tragedy into a positive community impact. The chapter approached the city with a plan to put in place a program to help monitor birds on the Waukegan lakefront, including a special piping plover monitoring team and to provide education and public outreach for the community. The partnership, named Sharing Our Shore - Waukegan, was created in 2019.

After the film, a panel will be available for a questions and answer session. Panel members include:

Sharing Our Shore - Waukegan Initiative Members Carolyn Lueck, Glen Moss and Diane Rosenberg
Sharing Our Shore - Waukegan Initiative Piping Plover Monitoring Team members including Carolyn Lueck and Lisa Rundle
Illinois Department of Natural Resources: Brad Semel, Endangered Species Recovery Specialist
Our final panel is still being assembled so watch for updates.