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Montrose Dunes Designated First Natural Inventory Site in Chicago Park District

Though the Montrose Beach Dunes feel removed from the big city, they are only blocks from the Aragon Ballroom and the Green Mill jazz club in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. In October of 2005, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources designated this ten-acre swath of sand nestled at the far eastern end of Chicago’s largest beach as an Illinois Natural Areas Inventory (INAI) site. The designation recognizes the site’s biological quality and opens the way for greater protection and enhancement of the unique habitat. Montrose Dunes will be the first INAI site owned and managed by the Chicago Park District.

The Park District is restoring the dunes to their natural state in collaboration with volunteers led by site-steward Leslie Borns, who six years ago first lobbied for and succeeded in setting aside a fenced, protected natural area. At the time, says Borns, the area was “completely bare, except for very little scattered vegetation and a small stand of cottonwoods and willows that became the main dune.” Borns, a regular birder of the adjacent Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary and an avowed beachcomber, saw an opportunity. Since then, she and others have worked to control the invasive species that would interfere with the emergence of the dune-adapted native grasses, sedges, rushes, and forbs. They’re letting the dunes recreate themselves.

“What’s really interesting,” says Borns, “is that plants that haven’t been seen in Chicago for years are showing up on their own.” The group often has turned to Paul Labus, an ecologist with The Nature Conservancy who works in the rich dune-and-swale pockets around the South Shore steel mills in Indiana, to help them understand the dune ecology. “One theory,” Borns says, “is that seeds or rhizomes have been preserved at the bottom of the lake sediment. When the lake level becomes low and sediment is exposed, these can sometimes grow. But we’re really not sure.” They also suspect lake currents, wind, and birds as agents of dispersal. Volunteers monitor several state-listed plant species at the site for the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Plants of Concern program.

The move for INAI designation came after Borns consulted Debra Nelson, a heritage biologist from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) last summer on ways to control the invasive species at the site. Nelson and a colleague soon visited the dunes and were immediately impressed by its unique flora and fauna — including the piping plover, a federally endangered migrant shorebird — as well as uncommon geological features such as a panne, a wet depression that often harbors unique plants. IDNR subsequently nominated the site for INAI status.

The site’s success is spreading. Promising dune species, says Borns, have taken hold all up and down the Chicago shoreline, including Loyola, Osterman, and Rainbow Beaches, as well as the South Shore Cultural Center.

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