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.
Sign up or log in to bookmark your favorites and sync them to your phone or calendar.
Northern wild rice (Zizania palustris; manoomin in Anishinaabemowin; ZP) is an annual emergent macrophyte of cultural and economic significance to many North American indigenous tribal nations. Its historic range extended throughout the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States, but its present extent is much smaller due to habitat loss, changes in hydrology, and climate change. ZP often grows in competition with other wetland plants whose niches overlap with its own. In the presence of competitors, ZP germination, growth, survival rate, and/or seed yield may be significantly reduced. Most ZP competitors are perennial plants with established rhizomes, which persist in the sediment, granting a head-start on growth each year. This mesocosm experiment investigated how competition with hybrid cattail (Typha x glauca) and pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata) – dominant invasive and native rhizomatous species, respectively – impacted ZP growth.
