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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Illinois Wetlands are one of the state’s most important natural resources as they provide habitat for native species, protect communities from floods, and act as carbon sinks to mitigate the effects of pollution. For these wetlands to be effective, they must retain some degree of biotic resistance to combat challenges brought by climate change. Invasive species pose a great threat to the integrity of these ecosystems when they establish large populations that alter the composition and processes of the wetland. Management of aggressive invasive shrub species has proven to be difficult and expensive. This study uses long-term plant community data from the Critical Trends Assessment Program (CTAP) collected by the Illinois Natural History Survey to gain insight into how the establishment of an invasive species population potentially instigates secondary and tertiary invasion events in the successional sequence of wetlands.
