News

DuPage Purchases Largest
Natural Parcel in County

The acquisition of more than 377 acres of wetlands and prairie in Wayne, Illinois, has finally secured for nature the largest remaining tract of private undeveloped land in DuPage County. After eight years of litigation, the Forest Preserve District prevailed in a legal tug of war with the Oliver-Hoffmann Corporation.

The district paid $25 million for the chunk of land southwest of Army Trail and Powis Roads, where the Oliver-Hoffmann Corporation was planning a 500-home development. This acquisition, one of the district’s largest single purchases, will give conservationists the opportunity to expand the area’s wetlands and help protect the crucial Fox River basin.

According to district ecologist Scott Kobal, the new site is ecologically linked to Pratt’s Wayne Woods and adjacent James “Pate” Phillip State Park. With only a third of a mile of homes and yards standing between the new site and Pratt’s Wayne, herons, cranes, egrets, foxes, and coyotes can move relatively easily through a nearly unbroken ecosystem of more than 4,300 acres. Area residents, who supported the acquisition, have already spotted sandhill cranes on the site.

Approximately 120 acres of the site were once wetlands but were heavily tiled for farming. Disabling the tiles will be one of the first steps toward restoring the area’s original hydrology. The remaining upland will be reseeded into prairie.

— Elizabeth Riotto