News

Wolf Road Prairie in Trouble

In mid-February, the Westchester Village Board was slated to vote on a bid by Patric Greene Development Group to build 27 houses on ten acres adjacent to Wolf Road Prairie in Westchester. They instead deferred the vote to allow for a survey of potential ecological impacts. A state nature preserve, Wolf Road Prairie is one of the last and best remaining original blacksoil prairies.

Greene has proposed building an access road on a strip of untouched prairie along the preserve’s west edge. While the strip is still zoned as a road (a technicality from an abandoned Depression-era housing project), actual construction would sever the preserve from adjacent buffer lands and disrupt site hydrology.

The development itself would be built on land that advocates have been trying for years to secure as a preserve buffer. A vote may come soon. To contact Save the Prairie Society, call (708) 865-8736.