The Wild Things Conference Returns Saturday, March 1, 2025 - SOLD OUT
We’re thrilled to welcome you again to learn and share your expertise with our community. We’ve put together an exciting lineup of workshops and sessions from regional and national experts, plus meet & greets, video content, exhibitors, and sponsors. With over 140 presentations and discussion panels to choose from, the in-person program engages a diverse range of topics, research, and skills, and plenty of opportunities to meet with friends, old and new.
Thank you as well to our sponsors, scholarship supporters, and exhibitors who are all helping to make this another tremendously successful Wild Things.
Tickets for Wild Things 2025 are sold out. For additional information on the 2025 conference, visit wildthingscommunity.org.
**PLEASE NOTE: Some details are subject to change.**
NOTICE: Please be advised that photos and videos will be taken during Wild Things 2025. By attending, you consent to be photographed, filmed, and/or otherwise recorded. Your attendance on this event constitutes your agreement to the use of any resulting media by Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves for promotional, marketing, or any other purpose in perpetuity, without further approval or any compensation.
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The gROWing Chicago Habitat initiative is a working group based out of the University of Illinois Chicago that engages energy and transportation organizations, conservation groups, public and private landowners, and other stakeholders in creating pollinator habitat in the Chicago Wilderness Region on rights-of-way (ROW). This presentation will explain the potential of rights-of-way to serve as habitat and connect ecosystems for species that rely on early successional grassland habitats. Additionally, this presentation will discuss a prioritization tool that uses geospatial software to focus habitat creation in areas that are biodiversity hotspots, can address environmental injustices, and can increase habitat connectivity.