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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High quality oak woodlands and oak woodland restoration opportunities are precious and rare, but also often unrecognized and misunderstood. We need to appreciate that the structure and composition of the oak woodland herbaceous flora is at least co-equal in importance to that of the trees. We need to predictively understand which fire and other management prescriptions destabilize or limit oak woodlands versus stabilize or promote them. We need to take a long view of restoration and stewardship. I will discuss shared characteristics among high quality oak woodland remnants, promising restoration projects, and how they have informed the development of a Wisconsin oak woodland assessment tool with respect to the foregoing claims. This session should help conservationists evaluate opportunities for and results from oak woodland protection and restoration in the Midwest and motivate lines of inquiry to further our understanding.
