#prairies

A couple of my photos at the Nachusa Grasslands, located in Franklin Grove, Illinois, which has been an ongoing, years long prairie rewilding project. An example of what can be done. There's something magical about knowing what was versus what is now and, on the basis of what's there now, working toward the future.

Excerpt from this story from Sierra Magazine:

When leaders at the Severson Dells Nature Center purchased the abandoned Elliot Golf Course, they had an ambitious plan to transform the manicured turf. They wanted to turn formerly manicured lawns in Rockford, Illinois, back into prairie and wetlands. What they didn’t anticipate was that the project would become the inspiration for a new state law.

While talking to funders about investing in the project, Ann Wasser, the executive director of Severson Dells, now called Wild Roots Nature Center, became interested in turning the idea of restoring native ecosystems into a form of policy that could be a state law. Wasser liked the idea that Illinois could be the first state in the US to adopt a rewilding law and contacted the Illinois Environmental Council (IEC), an advocacy organization promoting a healthy environment through public policy.

Rewilding hands the steering wheel back to nature. By restoring native habitats such as grasslands, reconnecting fragmented land with wildlife corridors, and, where appropriate, reintroducing species, this conservation approach focuses on rebuilding the conditions nature needs to function effectively on its own. In Illinois, the state environmental agency was already doing some of this work.

“Making [rewilding] a law was not complicated to do,” said Cynthia Kanner, executive director of the Prairie State Conservation Coalition. 

Introduced in February 2025 by Democratic representative Anna Moeller, it passed on August 1, 2025, and officially became Illinois state law on January 1, 2026. The legislation amended the existing Illinois Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Conservation Law, formally recognizing work the agency was already doing to restore ecosystems. Because it was simply codifying what many in the state wildlife agency were already doing, lawmakers were familiar with the types of projects that the state would undertake. 

Initiatives such as the Public Lands Hill Prairie and Associated Wildlife Habitat Restoration Project illustrated the DNR’s long-standing acceptance of rewilding work across the state. Working with the federal government and private donors, state ecologists have removed invasive species, reintroduced prescribed fire, and improved habitat for native plants and wildlife to restore rare hill prairie ecosystems.

Of course, not everyone was initially enthused by the rewilding law, which authorized the state, if needed, to introduce species, such as bison, beavers, and predators into the landscape. These animals are known as keystone species, or creatures whose biological needs play an outsized role in shaping the ecosystems around them.