Editor’s Essay

Signs of Hope

During the 20th century, we thought that there were three major bird species extinct in North America: the passenger pigeon, the Carolina parakeet, and the ivory-billed woodpecker. What an extraordinary discovery, then, that 60 years after the last confirmed sighting an ivory-billed woodpecker has been found in the wilds of the swampland forest of Arkansas. Who among us was not a bit emotional at the stirring announcement last April? I know I was.

“It’s like a funeral shroud has been pulled back,” Tim Gallagher, one of the first ornithologists to spy the ivory-billed in February, said in a public radio interview, “giving us a glimpse of a living bird, rising Lazarus-like from the grave.”

Other species share the ivory-billed woodpecker’s precarious hold on existence. The Hine’s emerald dragonfly was thought to be extinct until it was found on some rights-of-way in Chicago Wilderness. Another population was later found in Door County, Wisconsin. These beautiful creatures depend on the rare dolomite prairie for their safe harbor, and that type of ecosystem has nearly disappeared from the earth. Thismia americana, a tiny plant, has not been seen in almost a hundred years, yet isolated populations may still survive in the only place it’s ever been observed, the Calumet area. And caring people have been hunting for the elusive Thismia every summer. The search for the ivory-billed has given them new hope. Perhaps a remnant population survives; we just haven’t seen it yet.

Not too long ago, the tallgrass prairie, too, was pretty much thought to be gone, obliterated by pavement and plow, until Bob Betz and others found some lingering remnants and nurtured them back to life. So, too, with the rare oak savannas.

Many Chicago Wilderness partners are now hard at work figuring out the science and the practicalities of restoring big functioning prairie ecosystems, and oak savannas, and oak woodlands. Here we are bearing witness not just to the re-emergence of a single majestic bird, but to whole ecosystems coming back to life. These are Lazarus ecosystems returned from what had appeared to be dead.

Note, too, that the ivory-billed woodpecker was found in protected habitat—a national wildlife refuge. We cannot have functioning ecosystems without protecting and restoring habitat, yet the preserves set aside now are not nearly enough. In Chicago Wilderness, we will need the utility company rights-of-way that harbor the endangered Karner blue butterfly and the corporate campuses and even our neighborhoods to be extensions of protected land. If we treat all our lands and waters with sensitivity and care, if we understand them to be part of the great web of life, then we will have some chance of success.

We will need to assist our public officials in the transition from turf grass to tallgrass, and to convince our neighbors that unruly native plants are not unsightly weeds but can be magical havens for rare creatures. But if we all pitch in, here in Chicago Wilderness, then we will have many more opportunities for our hearts to quicken and our spirits to be buoyed by soaring hawks, trilling warblers, the gleam of a green snake, and, quite possibly, the unexpected miracle of Thismia americana.