The recovery of Chicago parks is visible nearly everywhere; equally significant is the growth of volunteer stewardship in the parks

Top photos: Controlled burn by Andrew Clauson; Raking in wild seed by Eric Hage; Water lily by Eric Fogleman

Fall 2002

Controlled burn		Raking in wild seed		Water lily

Chicago parks are undergoing a renaissance, and the Chicago Park District is hard at work identifying and restoring its natural areas. This recovery is visible nearly everywhere in the city. Equally significant — and much less heralded — is the growth of volunteer stewardship in the parks. The range of people intent on restoring greenery in the city includes serious citizen scientists, school children and their teachers, retired folk, and political organizers newly focused on parks. This renewal of public commitment is flourishing with the wetlands, prairies, and bird sanctuaries. It reflects a signal change in urban conservation.

"We're just at the beginning stages of our stewardship plan, and people are hungry to volunteer," says Mary Van Haaften, natural areas manager at the Chicago Park District and someone who has helped stimulate the change. "The key is finding interested people who live around the parks and offering to share the responsibility to care for these places."

Pulling garlic mustard. Important work can be fun!		Green hair and green thumbs. Photos by Mary Van Haaften.

Funds set aside for development are already strained, and Van Haaften and her colleagues see volunteers as crucial to success. Indeed, they intend to nourish a small citizen cadre that can organize a larger group as circumstances demand, a core circle living in proximity to the 50 natural areas undergoing revitalization.

The volunteer program complements two recent initiatives promoted by the Park District's newly created Department of Natural Resources. The first is an extensive rehabilitation of the district's 16 lagoons, for which it expects to spend $35 million. This work was scheduled to be carried out between 1998 and 2008, but pressure on Illinois' budget may push the deadline back. Nevertheless, landscape architects are busily recasting the original plans of Jens Jensen and Frederick Law Olmsted, stabilizing water levels in the lagoons while making them more accessible to the disabled, and improving biodiversity.

The second initiative focuses on natural areas management. The Park District started it in 2000 to ensure that the newly restored lagoons, as well as the district's prairies, wetlands, and woodlands, will be properly monitored and managed over time. The ongoing work, at a cost of $2.5 million a year, includes water quality improvement, erosion control, vegetative surveys, controlled burns, litter collection from lagoons, brush control, and the reduction of invasive species.

Most projects begin with cleanup. "It was important to focus initially on trash removal in order to create a good first impression of the nature areas," said Andrew Clauson of ARAMARK ServiceMaster. The facilities management company began work in the spring of 2001 and has played a major role in redeveloping the parks. An enormous amount has been extracted from the lagoons in particular, including toss-away litter, shopping carts, bowling balls, bicycles, and even a safe that was taken out of the water at Jackson Park.

Gompers Park is a good example of the work the Park District is doing and the help it's getting from area neighbors. The park is bisected by Foster Avenue, just west of Pulaski. The North Mayfair Improvement Association, a community group active since the 1920s, has made regenerating the park a priority.

The Gompers Park Lagoon was built in the 1930s, next to the regional headquarters of the Salvation Army, and was badly in need of repair by the late 1990s. As Jim Macdonald, an activist with the Mayfair group, points out, the "lagoon" is fed by city water and ultimately leads to the wetland just to the north. The Park District drained and reexcavated the lagoon two years ago. It had silted up over the years, resulting in shallow water that froze completely to the bottom and killed the lagoon's inhabitants. Erosion along the banks was damaging water quality and the range of aquatic life.

In addition to the excavation, the Park District put in rushes, sedges, and native wetland grasses to check the erosion, as well as stabilization netting on the lagoon floor. Some of the 200-year-old oaks near the lagoon have seeded others, and the Park District has added dogwood and crabapple.

Build it and they will come — both nature and people. Photo by Mary Van Haaften.

A retired anthropology professor from Northeastern University, Macdonald is avid for nature. His enthusiasm for the Park District's work has been spurred by regeneration of the adjacent prairie and wetland. A flood plain for the North Branch of the Chicago River, the two-acre parcel is now being extended southward. "Before," Macdonald notes, "this was just a wet meadow the Park District tried to mow — unsuccessfully." The campaign for rehabilitation started in 1995, when the wetland was reexcavated, and moved into high gear a year ago. The ARAMARK team has conducted controlled burns, which check invasive plants and encourage a healthy grassland ecosystem, and they plan to reconstruct pipes to more effectively regulate the water flow between the lagoon and the river.

"We've been seeding this area with native species," Macdonald adds, referring to the drier ground fringing the wetland. "The northern oriole and song sparrows are recolonizing the area. They've come back with the new plantings." As it has at Jackson Park Lagoon and Montrose Point, the Park District has also erected a large multi-nest birdhouse for purple martins, swallow-like birds that nest in colonies.

Most often, Macdonald and a solid core of about 25 volunteers collect litter and try to ward off invaders, chiefly garlic mustard. Additionally, they collaborate with Friends of the Chicago River and TreeKeepers. "We also have frog monitors with the EcoWatch program," says Macdonald. "Frogs are a measure of environmental health, and I've noticed a decline in the 12 years that I've lived here.

"The community simply felt we needed more nature," Macdonald says. "We still think the Park District lacks adequate funding and staff to maintain the area. Mary Van Haaften is a ball of fire, but you can't have 50 projects going with a thin bench. Here at Mayfair we have a deep bench. You need people to go out in the community and develop a program that unites it. The city needs to build a network at a very local level."

Photo by Mary Van Haaften.

The recently renamed Bill Jarvis Migratory Bird Sanctuary, at Addison Street right on the lakefront, is one of the best-known birding sites in Chicago. Renewal there was inspired by birders Jim Landing and Terry Schilling, and Lakeview reformer Charlotte Newfeld.

The treasured bird habitat in the sanctuary was deteriorating, so in 1996, Newfeld and other concerned neighbors took action. "As parks chair of the Lake View Citizens' Council (LVCC)," says Newfeld, "I decided it was time to get something organized. We started at the grassroots level and called a meeting of birder organizations and anyone else who was interested."

There was plenty to do. The cement footings for the fence surrounding the seven-acre sanctuary were breaking up. The water level inside the preserve had ebbed because the Park District cut off the supply every autumn when the fountains were turned off. Invasive plants proliferated.

The volunteers started work by weeding out the invasives and collecting trash — one curiosity was a mailbag filled with documents from the 1930s.

At first, "the Park District would open the gates but never leave me the key," says Newfeld. The group persisted, though. With the guidance of Schilling and others, they were soon removing green ash and buckthorn, replacing these invasive species with a wide array of native seeds and plugs, including the downy rattlesnake plantain, an orchid. Eventually, the nearly 80 native plant and tree species in the sanctuary were more than doubled.

The volunteers got more ambitious by 1999. The LVCC developed a mailing list, and word spread on Internet chat lines. Ultimately, the group obtained a $25,000 state grant, which they devoted to outreach, refreshment, tools, and plant materials. They also hired a tree management firm to protect quality trees in and near the sanctuary.

The volunteer base expanded with the variety of species. By the summer of this year, 300 people had signed on, including two entomologists from the Field Museum who conducted a limited survey of the insect population. The volunteers persisted with the work that could be done by hand. Enticed in part by the energy of the volunteers, the Park District took on the heavy lifting. With an initial budget of $350,000, they replaced the cement path, reestablished and extended the fence, stabilized pond edges, and erected a viewing platform. The water supply is also now kept relatively constant.

A second major birding site is Wooded Island and the Jackson Park Lagoon south of the Museum of Science and Industry. "It's a stunning asset," remarks activist and volunteer coordinator Ross Petersen, who likens it to a natural oak savanna. This North Side resident was raised in Hyde Park and remains active with the Jackson Park Advisory Council, the neighborhood group the Park District consults on the project.

The chief expense of the project was rebuilding the control station that regulates the water flowing from Lake Michigan to the 59th Street Boat Harbor, the Columbia Basin, and the lagoon. The new facility should stabilize water levels in the lagoon and the basin even as they fluctuate in the harbor and the lake. "The goal," says Elizabeth Koreman, a project manager at the Park District, "is to restore the ecological balance in the lagoon. Fluctuating water levels have caused erosion and reduced water quality."

The banks of Wooded Island were relatively stable. Those of the basin and of the five tiny islets in the lagoon were not. Dirty water obscured sunlight. The darkness limited oxygenation, which was dangerous for the fish. "Everything," laments Koreman, "got out of whack."

Along the basin shoreline, invasive tree species deprived the underlying shrubs and plants of light, preventing them from developing dense root matting, a defect that accelerated erosion. Now, volunteers have curtailed the invasives and replaced them with prairie, woodland, and wetland species that will make for a sustainable park ecosystem.

But Petersen sees big challenges in the city's multi-million-dollar effort to rebuild the area. Can the Park District reconcile the nonnative plantings of early city planners with today's focus on healthy ecosystems? Will it maintain its natural areas after the expensive revitalizations? And can it bring all of its projects to the level that some have reached?

Perhaps volunteers will fill their most important role in providing the guidance, focus, feedback, and sustained personal interest critical to addressing these questions. Indeed, Petersen thinks it's essential to "fold an ever-increasing public interest into the mix."

Frank Clements, a principal in Wolff Clements and Associates, one of the companies the Park District has hired, cites two incentives that keep people involved. One is social contact with like-minded park lovers, and the other is an opportunity to study the natural world. Evidence is building that people are finding both.

For a free nature brochure, call (312) 742-PLAY. For information on stewardship workdays, please visit the Chicago Park District's http://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/volunteer.home/RequestTimeout/500.