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Wild Things 2025

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.

Sofia Al-Shayeb

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1:15pm CST

The Giant Puffball: Meet Illinois' first official state mushroom and the students who made it happen Room 40Erin Hemmer • Laura McCoy

2:15pm CST

Systemic Racism and Urban Ecology: Applications in Community Science Room 27Joy Bailey • Zelle Tenorio

3:15pm CST

A nine-year experiment testing the ability of wood betony to reduce the dominance of tall prairie grasses and tall goldenrod. Room 28Thomas Simpson

4:15pm CST

Rethinking Lawns: lawn alternative plantings in natural areas and at home Rooms 24, 25Rebecca Barak • Lauren Umek • Liz Anna Kozik

5:00pm CST

Closing Plenary/Social Hour/Poster Session Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Joey Santore Avian Acorn Herbivory in a Midwestern Oak Savanna Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Paige Terpstra • Derek Rosenberger Building Resilience in the River's Shallows Using the Power of Plants Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Kristine Lorenzo Determining the correlation between phenotype and carotenoids concentration in Painted turtles Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Cesilia Aguilar Effects of interannual variation in climate on breeding bird demography in a postindustrial wetland Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Stephanie Beilke • Lila Fried Enhancing Monitoring and Management with Geospatial Technology and Drones Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Virginia McHugh-Kurtz • Joseph Angermeier • Crystal Peirce • Mukila Maitha • Jackson Zinck • Fernanda De Souza Ramos Kuzuhara Glacial topography of the Chicago Region Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Jeff Daube How to be a good neighbor: An investigation of associational resistance through plant community characteristics Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Sarah Romy Integrative Strategies for Remediating Allelopathy: Physicochemical and Biological Approaches Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Yairely Marchan Interactions between Midwest flora & fauna Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Catherine Hu Invasional Meltdown of Plant Communities in Illinois Wetlands Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Coleman Earnest Native plants and pollinators in Chicagoland Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Rika Mizoguchi Promoting bog conservation through botanical illustration Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Cael Dant Remote sensing to evaluate environmental damage in inaccessible areas: A Gaza wetland case study Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Laura Shihadah The effects of salinity levels on Invasive plant species Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Zaria George • Gabriela Nunez-Mir The influence of canopy loss on understory plant invasions across the eastern United States Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Eduardo Tovar Urban Salt Marshes, Novel Ecosystem Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Payman Rajaie Using LiDAR as a method to detecting invasive shrubs in southern Illinois Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Ellie James