Winter 2004

People Who Are Taking Nature's Pulse
By Katherine Millett | Photography by Rob Warner
> Overview

Mary Ochsenschlager: Professional By Day

Mary O. has great boots. They're burnished brown, rich as dirt, scuffed ochre around the toes. Walking countless miles through the parks she manages for the St. Charles Park District has worn away the treads. They look ancient, maybe handmade.

"No, they're just boots," she says with a shrug and a matter-of-fact glance through her gold-rimmed glasses. "I wear them every day, so I go through at least a pair a year."

Mary Ochsenschlager — Mary O. for simplicity — grew up with a custodial sense of wilderness, because her father was a superintendent at Isle Royale National Park on Lake Superior and later at the Grand Canyon. Now settled in Kane County, she manages parks professionally by day and monitors frogs as a volunteer by night.

Frogs' voices help to tell her whether wetland restoration efforts are working. An hour after sunset on an April night, one might find her in Otter Creek Bend Wetland, silent, sitting where a few acres of original wetland meet a "new" pond, one that has been reestablished after having long been drained for agriculture. She's listening for the high notes, rising at the end, of spring peepers. For the past five years, she has heard their call only in the original wetland.

"Spring peepers are especially sensitive frogs," she says, "and if they appear in the new area, maybe there's hope for these man-made wetlands. By restoring the hydrology, we're trying to give native plants a spot they recognize. ... Then we hope the insects, amphibians, and reptiles will come back."

Every year, she recruits and supervises from 80 to 120 frog monitors. She encourages them to pair up as a way of meeting new people and bolstering their commitment. Sandy Bauer, a retired elementary school principal, looks forward to her third year as Mary O.'s monitoring partner. Before she became a monitor, Bauer had not considered that economic development could harm the environment.

"We can't just concrete the world!" Bauer says. "Over and over, Mary has impressed me with her wealth of knowledge. She has shown me my community is up against the same challenges as the rest of the world."

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