Wild Things 2025

Some are seemingly profound, some dramatic, some funny. From 40 years as a volunteer, then staff: with Illinois Nature Preserves, Nature Conservancy, Audubon, and finally as a volunteer again – gloriously so. These stories, focusing on great work by many, include lessons, insights, or even inspiration - or so I'm told. This is a “call and response“ session. There will be opportunitities for feedback. Then we’ll go on the next story and enjoy as many (and as much good exchange of ideas) as we can. The focus is on saving biodiversity, with fire, stewardship, advocacy, and by gosh and by golly.

Out In Nature is a local community affinity group that creates an accessible, positive environment for all LGBTQIA+ individuals to connect, explore, and experience nature and the outdoors, and it has been doing so since 2019. Our goal at Wild Things will be to share with conferencegoers how to best make nature spaces safe, welcoming, and accessible for the queer community. We will talk about past events, our community engagement and outreach strategies and events, and our history as queer naturalists and an organization. Out In Nature has partnered with organizations like The Nature Conservancy, Lincoln Park Zoo, Indiana Dunes National Park, Cook and Lake County Forest Preserves, and many more local conservation organizations.

Snake Road in the Shawnee National Forest, once a site of snake persecution, has transformed into a conservation area dedicated to protecting reptiles. This talk explores how landscape management policies have shifted public perceptions of snakes. Using surveys of visitors and residents, interviews with educators and policymakers, and archival research, the study examines whether direct encounters with snakes foster greater tolerance and appreciation. Findings indicate increased positive attitudes influenced by social and cultural factors, though high visitor traffic raises sustainability concerns. The presentation discusses how intentional landscape management can promote biodiversity and reshape attitudes toward uncharismatic species, offering insights for future conservation efforts.

The Peregrines are a new group that is connecting younger volunteers to preserves and places worth preserving across northeastern Illinois. Over the last year and a half, we’ve worked at over 40 different natural areas alongside many site stewards and have learned a lot about what it takes to organize and sustain volunteer communities. We’ll provide perspectives on our experiences and will invite participants to reflect on and share what's worked for them.

Ever wonder why warblers flock to wealthier neighborhoods? The unequal distribution of birds and other species is not an accident. In this session, we will cover an introduction to systematic racism and various impacts it has on our urban ecology. We will share a case study of how we used the lens of birds and birding to demonstrate concrete examples of how systemic and environmental racism play out in our ecosystem, and how we activated this knowledge and applied it to our Illinois Master Naturalist efforts, namely through community science. We will close by asking session participants to share past, current or future efforts to incorporate these important concerns in our engagement events in order to learn from and inspire one another.

Prescribed fire managers often hesitate to burn areas containing rare wildlife (E&T, SGCN) due to concerns about mortality. These hesitations can lead to missed opportunities, lack of prescribed fire, and frustration. We developed communication procedures using published literature and weather data sets to support burn-day decisions that provide confidence in minimizing impacts. We hope to provide future empirical data to further support such decisions at a local level. Presenters will share feedback from burn crews.

Tree thinning is one of the most important steps in successful oak savanna and woodland restorations. Proper tree thinning can help preserve and increase site-wide biodiversity, facilitate oak regeneration, improve the health of existing oaks, carry fire more effectively, and complement the re-introduction of savanna and woodland plant communities. As stewards of natural areas, we are tasked with making decisions on what trees stay and what trees will be removed. This presentation aims to break down some of the key considerations behind this process, and how they can help us meet our restoration goals.