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.

5:00pm CST

A Race Against Typha: Evaluating the Impacts of Typha angustifolia in an Inland Salt Marsh Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Macy Gustafson Anthropogenic impacts on painted turtles (Chrysemys picta): Effects of human-derived sounds on nesting and development Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Beth A. Reinke • Sara S Crow Avian Acorn Herbivory in a Midwestern Oak Savanna Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Paige Terpstra • Derek Rosenberger Before and After: Through Soil Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Ellie Wasilewski Building Resilience in the River's Shallows Using the Power of Plants Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Kristine Lorenzo Capture Rates of Four Species of Snakes Utilizing Plywood vs Rubber Artificial Cover Objects at The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Jasmine Dwyer • Susan Lawrence Celebrating 50 Years of Restoration at the College of DuPage Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Susan Kirt Comparison of Assessing High Versus Low Effort Sampling Protocols for Benthic Macroinvertebrates in Streams Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Vanessa Ortega • John Griffis Darien Garden Club supports Wild Things TOO! Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Cathy Streett • Christine Bosacki Deciphering Invasion Patterns: Familial Analysis of Non-Native Plant Species in North America Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Sofia Al-Shayeb Determining the correlation between phenotype and carotenoids concentration in Painted turtles Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Cesilia Aguilar Ditch Maintenance With a Conscience Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Janice Aull • Grace Reilly • Elizabeth Friday Effects of interannual variation in climate on breeding bird demography in a postindustrial wetland Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Stephanie Beilke • Lila Fried Effects of Small-Scale Burning and Mowing on Restored Prairie Plant Communities Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Jillian Becksfort • David Hoekman 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 Orchid Appreciation Society Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Maggie Warren Photograms of native plants Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Ken Schaefer Population health and demographics of semi-urban snake communities in Cook County, Illinois Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Liz Hucker 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 Seasonal Use of DuPage County Savanna Preserves by Red-Headed Woodpeckers Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Derek Rosenberger • Charlie Leys • Sam Elsen Seasonal Variations in Urban Wetlands Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Riley Coomer Seeing the whole pitcher: understanding the relationship between the purple pitcher plant and its microbial communities Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Cael Dant Springtails: The Ancient Key to Boosting Global Biodiversity Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Alexander Czempinski Stewardship and Creating Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Sima Shah Supporting Monarch Population Growth in an Urban Environment Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Edwin Quiroz The Effect of Urban Native Landscaping on Species Abundance, Richness, and Diversity in Comparison to Urban Ornamental Landscaping Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Claudia Morrison • Tess Lesniak The effect of urbanization intensity on bumblebee-plant network structure and floral resource topological roles Rooms 21-23 & 32-34K.C. Carter The effects of salinity levels on Invasive plant species Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Zaria George • Gabriela Nunez-Mir The Environmental Beauty of the Calumet Region Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Blake Lenoir The How to: Creating a BIPOC Conservation based Fellowship (FUEGO: Fellows United for Conservation, Growth, and Opportunity) Rooms 21-23 & 32-34YLANDA WILHITE • Kiana Creese The impact of competition with pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata) and invasive cattail (Typha × glauca) on the growth of northern wild rice (Zizania palustris) Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Megan Wenner The influence of canopy loss on understory plant invasions across the eastern United States Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Eduardo Tovar The Power of Adaptive Management: Floristic Quality Trends at Barrington Greenways Initiative Sites Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Karen Glennemeier Tiny Remnants Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Allison Hausladen Unearthed: Art and Transformation Rooms 21-23 & 32-34Pamela Sloan 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