[Pollinator] Pollinator Week in Illinois

[Ladadams at aol.com]

>From Pantagraph.com
 
 
Sugar Grove activities introduce nature to the curious

By Scott Richardson
_srichardson at pantagraph.com_ (mailto:srichardson at pantagraph.com) 

FUNKS GROVE -- A vacant lot down the street from the house where Angela Smith 
grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago was one of her few links to nature.

She'd play in the dirt, looking for worms, or chase snakes as they slithered 
across the ground. Her parents still tell stories about how she begged to go 
for walks in the Cook County forest preserves as soon as she could talk.

"All the pictures of me are outdoors," said Smith, now 36.

She knew what she wanted to do with her life by the time she graduated high 
school. She enrolled in what was then a new major area of study, environmental 
biology, at Eastern Illinois University. She took an internship hoping to land 
a rare position on the staff of a nature center.

"I went to work the day after graduation," she said.

Smith spent several years working at a nature center in Mattoon before moving 
to McLean County in 2004 to direct the Sugar Grove Nature Center at Funks 
Grove, where the first Hummingbird Festival and Pollinator Celebration will be 
held July 29. It's one of several festivals the center hosts each year.

Another gathering each January features hot chocolate like the winter picnics 
Smith's family enjoyed when she was a little girl. Another celebrates the 
Funk family's long tie to maple syrup production.

The largest event is a fall fest held against the spectacular background of 
changing leaves in the old-growth forest.

Smith's work allows her to help preserve wild places where children and 
adults can get in touch with the natural world around them as she did in that 
vacant lot so many years ago.

Toward that end, Smith was a key player in securing the largest grant awarded 
to date by the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation. The $2.5 million 
will permanently protect 476 acres of prairie grove at the site.

The parcel is a portion of a larger 1,100-acre natural area which was 
previously designated as a national natural landmark for its biological diversity, 
which includes rare, threatened and endangered species.

"It's part of what people see when they come visit. They automatically think 
it was protected, but it wasn't," said Smith, past president of the 
Environmental Education Association of Illinois.

The acres comprise one of a handful of remaining samples of what Illinois was 
like when settlers arrived.

They survived human activity since Isaac Funk settled at the grove in the 
1820s. But, they were about to be put up for sale by two land trusts when the 
center and the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation stepped in.

As a result, the land is the very first property owned outright by the Sugar 
Grove Foundation. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the Funks 
Grove Cemetery Foundation are among other groups that also own parcels there.

"Funks Grove is one of those rare places where an exceptional natural area 
and an exceptional part of our history have been preserved," said Jim Mann, 
executive director of Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation. "The Foundation 
was pleased to help preserve this outstanding part of our natural and cultural 
heritage for everyone to enjoy."

Mann noted the area features restored prairies as well as old-growth forest. 
Illinois was once 22 million acres of prairie. Only one one-hundredth of it 
remains.

The Sugar Grove Foundation will work with IDNR and other resources to devise 
a management plan for the area. Smith said the Illinois Nature Preserves 
Commission should designate the site as an Illinois land and water reserve by this 
fall. The action provides permanent protection.

"It can't be destroyed or developed in any way," she said.

Both passive and active outdoor recreation will continue to be permitted. But 
as Smith said, that's where people who manage natural areas face their 
biggest challenge.

"One of the hardest balances is keeping it a quaint and secret place, (yet) 
getting the word out to visitors," she said. "The goal is to share it and give 
people an opportunity to know about their natural heritage."

Funded entirely by private donations and annual memberships, Sugar Grove 
hosts at least 12,000 people annually, she said.

Sugar Grove attracts schoolchildren from the Twin Cities, of course, but it 
also serves as a destination for field trips from schools as far away as 
Kenosha, Wis.

The center has hosted groups from Elderhostel to churches and civic 
organizations. About 3,000 people appear on the third Saturday of October for the 
annual autumn celebration.

Historic Route 66, which passes by Funks Grove, draws additional visitors. 
Smith said many foreign countries are represented by pins they stick in a map to 
denote where they live, at the refurbished cattle barn which serves as Sugar 
Grove's visitors' center. The structure features natural history displays, 
live animal exhibits and a glassed room where bird watchers can view feathered 
visitors to one of several feeders just outside.

Smith is an environmental biologist and botanist by training, but birds are a 
passion. She recently was asked to join the education committee of the 
Illinois Audubon Society, which will take part in the Hummingbird Festival and 
Pollinator Celebration.

Visitors will have a chance to pay a few dollars to "adopt" one of the 
hummingbirds which the society will carefully trap and band before they are 
released. The festival also will take a look at bees and butterflies.

The Sugar Grove complex also hosts the observatory of the Twin City Amateur 
Astronomers. The club often holds stargazing events.

Nearby stands a Funk family home that dates to the Civil War and the Funk Gem 
and Mineral Museum, a collection of 4,000 rock specimens collected by 
Lafayette Funk II on his travels around the world.

Outside at Sugar Grove, people can wander five miles off designated trails. 
Many also follow paths used by the syrup gatherers when the sap is running.

Some visitors take "passive" activity to the extreme. Smith has found people 
spending a summer's afternoon sitting in rocking chairs by the corncrib 
sipping wine.

A short children's trail has stops along the way to encourage them to play in 
the dirt and use their imaginations as she did when she was a little girl.

"It (Sugar Grove) is a very special place, a little treasure all by itself," 
Smith said. "Do me the favor and drive out someday and see it. I guarantee 
you'll want to go back. ...You come once, and you're going to be hooked."

The importance of her life's work to save natural areas is underscored each 
time she drives by that vacant lot of her childhood.

"It's a Jewel/Osco and a strip mall now," she said.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Laurie Davies Adams
Executive Director
Coevolution Institute
423 Washington St. 5th
San Francisco, CA 94111
415 362 1137
LDA at coevolution.org
_http://www.coevolution.org/_ (http://www.coevolution.org/) 
_http://www.pollinator.org/_ (http://www.pollinator.org/) 
_http://www.nappc.org/_ (http://www.nappc.org/) 

Bee Ready for National Pollinator Week:  June 24-30, 2007.  Contact us 
for more information at www.pollinator.org 

Our future flies on the wings of pollinators.



************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at 
http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.sonic.net/pipermail/pollinator/attachments/20070724/bd1d840f/attachment-0001.html