Wild Things 2025

We’re most familiar with ‘VIP’ standing for ‘very important person’. The ‘P’ in VIP can also stand for places, phenomena, project, or passion. During this session you will explore your own Climate VIP and come away with tools to help people view the climate crisis as something that affects them directly. After identifying their Climate VIP, people can begin the conversation about how each individual already possesses the interests and skills needed to take climate and environmental justice action regardless of age, prior knowledge, or background.

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.

Cradling the shore of south Lake Michigan, the bi-state Calumet Region represents an ecologically diverse landscape that was permanently altered by steel mills and industrial-scale landscape manipulation. Recent habitat restoration efforts have revealed that even some of the most environmentally destroyed sites have the potential to eventually function as refugia for wildlife. Capture-mark-recapture methods were used to estimate population parameters of two species of deer mouse: the once-thought-extirpated prairie deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) and the white-footed deer mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) across two habitat types at three Chicago natural areas with substantial historical degradation (Big Marsh Park, Beaubien Woods, and Marian Byrnes Park). Preliminary results indicate that even altered landscapes can provide important habitat for small mammals, including locally rare species.

The Pembroke Savannas, located in southeastern Kankakee County, is home to the largest concentration of high-quality black oak sand savannas in the Midwest and also one of the largest populations of black, organic farmers, with a growing Latino population. Since 2000, Pembroke has been of great interest to conservation organizations for its outstanding natural landscape, which includes 38 state endangered or threatened species. The Pembroke Preservation Alliance, comprised of the Community Development Corporation of Pembroke-Hopkins Park, the Friends of Kankakee, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Illinois Nature Preserves Commission, Field Museum, OpenLands, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was formed to promote a more holistic approach to conservation within the human communities of Pembroke. We will discuss some of the area’s history, challenges, and success stories as Alliance members collaborate on a shared vision of a landscape where people and nature thrive.

Trees play a significant role in the wildness of a landscape, neighborhood or community and most people can identify with them. The Natural Land Institute's (NLI) Legacy Tree program was a community outreach and engagement strategy to draw attention to the rich heritage of trees in NLI's 12 county service area (Rockford known as the Forest City). The program, which began in January 2024 has been far more successful than planned with nominations from across northern and northwestern Illinois. Monthly tree stories about nominated trees specifically draw attention to the nature engaging attributes of a tree species. Eight new state champion trees have been identified in as many months. The program will share the objectives and outcomes of this successful community engagement program.

Have you ever been to Southern Illinois? Did you know there are massive sandstone bluffs, wetlands, sloughs, caves, limestone glades, barrens and cliffs that still exist in Illinois today? Enjoy a virtual tour of the amazing and unique landscapes that make Southern Illinois such a special place. You will learn about the history of Southern Illinois, the natural divisions and community types that converge there, and you'll hear about some of the local management needs and conservation challenges groups like The Nature Conservancy are involved with.

What can social science help us understand about the mutually beneficial relationships between people, plants and pollinators in urban and suburban settings? What about the impacts of community science projects on the people who participate? Evaluation feedback of the Field Museum’s 4-year-long Monarch Community Science Project (MCSP) signaled that further investigation was warranted. The Field Museum’s social scientists subsequently conducted 20 qualitative, semi-structured interviews of MCSP participants from 2022. In this session researchers will share their preliminary findings. The presenters will discuss themes around motivation, networks, conservation action, pollinator attitudes, well-being, and more.