Over the course of a day in late July, citizen scientists joined expert entomologists and TWI staff at the Dixon Waterfowl Refuge for a mini-BioBlitz to find as many pollinator species as possible at the site. By the end of the insect adventure, we turned up 277 types of butterflies, bees, flies, moths, wasps, beetles, and other pollinators.
About five years ago, the International Crane Foundation (ICF) began to explore with the Wetlands Initiative (TWI) the potential of our Dixon Waterfowl Refuge as high-quality habitat for the reintroduction of seriously endangered Whooping Cranes. As part of this partnership, we began to more methodically monitor the Sandhill Cranes that have already chosen to nest and breed at the Refuge, since Sandhill Crane habitat will also often be good for Whooping Cranes.
Long known for the restoration of lost wetlands, the Wetlands Initiative (TWI) is now also a leader in the practice of farm-based constructed wetlands that reduce nutrient pollution in agricultural runoff. This efficient and effective way to naturally improve water quality needs to be adopted on a large scale to really make a difference, and TWI has found the perfect partner in Ducks Unlimited (DU) to spread the practice in Illinois.
The Wetlands Initiative recently completed a five-year monarch butterfly conservation project that, for the first time, crossed two of our major project sites: Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie and the Dixon Waterfowl Refuge. Funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the project focused on increasing high-quality habitat for monarchs and also increasing availability of a range of milkweed species, the monarch caterpillar’s only food, across Illinois.
Most of us humans stayed close to home over the past 18 months, but the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t impact birds’ incredible migration journeys. This summer, researchers with the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC) and the Forbes Biological Station partnered with TWI to install three Motus towers at our Dixon Waterfowl Refuge in north-central Illinois to learn more about birds passing through the area.
At TWI, successful wetland restoration involves more than getting rid of invasive species and planting native wildflowers and sedges. While these are important steps, it’s ecology combined with engineering that makes the magic happen. This is especially true in the Calumet region along the southern shores of Lake Michigan, where the hydrology has been extensively altered by industrial and residential development.
The Wetlands Initiative has been a core restoration partner at Midewin nearly since the site’s designation as the country’s first National Tallgrass Prairie 25 years ago. Since 2001, when our habitat restoration efforts there really ramped up, TWI has worked in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service on restoring eight distinct parcels of land across a total of 3,376 acres on Midewin’s west side. As we celebrate Midewin’s silver anniversary this month we’re taking a walk down memory lane, looking at some of the highlights of what we’ve accomplished so far to transform this former U.S. Army arsenal, including the huge Glacial Plains Prairie project that’s now underway.
Award-winning author and naturalist Julian Hoffman wrote this original essay for the Wetlands Initiative’s 25th anniversary in 2020. Julian’s first book, The Small Heart of Things, won the 2014 National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature and his most recent book, Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places, was a finalist for the 2020 Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation.
The plan was exciting: Wetlands Initiative ecologists would host biology students from Brookfield Zoo’s master’s degree program at both the Dixon Waterfowl Refuge and Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie to learn hands-on about wetland and prairie ecosystems and their restoration. But like many of 2020’s well-laid plans, it took considerable adjustment for TWI ecologists Dr. Gary Sullivan and Anna Braum to lead the virtual equivalent of these field classes via Zoom.