Here are some people you might want to know. They slog through ponds, ramble over moraines, and trek across the grasslands to assess the health of the region's wild places.
The stated goal is collecting data, but it's the adventures that remain sharp in memory. On an outing to measure trees, someone runs across a preposterously elegant mushroom, or a sleeping red bat, or a rainbow rising over a beaver pond — and the world stops. The people out to monitor frogs find themselves learning from their volunteer partners about plants or butterflies. Many have experienced the palpable thrill of gradually mastering the difficult skippers, or sedges, or the songs of invisible grassland birds.
Many Chicago-area monitors would proudly call themselves "hard-core science-types" or "numbers people." But the monitoring bug is spreading to a rising proportion of other people in Chicago Wilderness. In addition to the staff scientists of forest preserve districts, state and federal agencies, and nonprofit organizations, more than 700 volunteer citizen-scientists now send a steady stream of data back to land managers, creating a living picture of natural areas that were once, scientifically at least, dark points on the map.
For one person, science is her whole life and profession. For another it's a hobby, an avocation, or an occasional bit of fun. But underlying these different motivations, monitors see what they do as a concrete, hands-on way to help nature thrive. The great quantities of data that are the fundamental building blocks of science can be daunting to collect — unless a few dozen enthusiastic volunteers chip in.
The Illinois Natural History Survey is the oldest state survey in the country. But only recently has Survey ornithologist Jeff Brawn concluded from reams of data that the birds of oak woods can do better with controlled burns and the thinning of invasive trees. Similarly, DuPage Forest Preserve ecologist Wayne Lampa and Morton Arboretum botanist Gerry Wilhelm first demonstrated through monitoring that our unmanaged woods and prairies were losing species richness at about 3 percent per year. Good data demonstrated that the "leave it alone" idea of nature wasn't working any more.
It was the volunteers of the Bird Monitoring Network who captured West Nile virus headlines when their data showed a correlation between areas of human infection and those where chickadees and crows had vanished. Data from monitors has helped attract millions of dollars to restore a 1,000-acre savanna complex in the south suburbs, move a trail that would have wiped out rare prairie birds in the west suburbs, and bring nesting terns back to the lakeshore in North Chicago.
The cameos here show science professionals and volunteers who are saving nature by discovering its needs and secrets for themselves — on nature's home turf. — Editors
PROFILES
Elizabeth Plonka: Apprentice to Many
Scott Kobal: The Data Changed Us
Mary Ochsenschlager: Professional by Day
Mike Mieszala: The Kids Did It
Greg Spyreas: Escape to the Jungle
Wes Serafin: Eyes Too Keen to Measure
Overview > Profile 1 | Profile 2 | Profile 3 | Profile 4 | Profile 5 | Profile 6 | Volunteers Needed
