On a cold, gray Sunday afternoon, Warren Strom and his 10-year-old son, Damon, made plans to visit friends. They put some food in a basket and set out across fields and through a new-fallen snow. Many of their friends were taking long naps; others were out for a while. But Warren knew they were around.
For one thing he saw fresh tracks in the snow. Then he noticed damaged bark on the thin trunks of young saplings, and he heard a distant thump high in the pine thicket.
Warren`s and Damon`s friends were there, but they were keeping their distance. That was natural because their friends were animals, and they live on the Strom family`s wildlife refuge near Lily Lake in Kane County.
One of only two privately developed wildlife refuges in the county, the 40-acre tract provides a welcome haven for animals suffering from an ever-shrinking habitat. Besieged from the west by farmland plowed from fence to fence leaving no trees or protective cover and from the east by encroaching suburbia, animals here find carefully created sources of food, water and protective cover that give them at least a fighting chance for survival.
This particular Sunday, the Stroms have come to bring corn for the large number of pheasants on the property, a trip they may make several times during the winter when snow or sleet make feeding difficult. Roosting in the tops of tall pines, the birds, the most visible of the animals, make known their presence when they take to flight with a thumping whoosh sending showers of snow filtering down through the boughs.
Other animals leave subtler clues. Warren noted coyote tracks made during the night and pointed out the damage done to saplings from bucks scraping shedding felt from their antlers.
In addition to the coyotes, deer and pheasants, other animals that have either passed through or taken up residence at the site include beaver, fox, owls, wood ducks, mallards, geese, blue bills, swans and even wolves.
”Thirty years ago there was no wildlife in this area,” Warren said,
”and now we probably have here the largest concentration of pheasants in the county.”
The return of wildlife is no accident. Warren and his brothers, John, a resident of Dixon, and Lee, who farms approximately 1,200 acres in the area, are deeply committed to conservation and wildlife and have spent the better part of the last 30 years experimenting, expanding and improving their land and habitat.
”My family has had close ties to the ground our whole lives,” Lee said. ”I can remember when I was 5 years old, I was sitting on the back of a pickup truck, and my family was planting walnut seeds in the ground here by hand.”
Although the farm was purchased by their Swedish grandfather in 1915, Lee said it was his father, Elof, who was the inspiration for the wildlife refuge. ”Our dad really had a loving heart for animals and wildlife,” Lee said. ”He hated to see the trees and the fence lines torn out. He figured that God put all the wildlife on Earth with man and that if we could farm 90 percent of the land we could leave 10 percent for the wildlife. He thought that would be an even trade.”
With that philosophy in mind, the Stroms began 30 years ago to create a sanctuary that would provide the three basic requirements for wildlife survival: food and water, protection from the elements and/or predators and a safe place to raise their young.
One major step toward the refuge came in the 1960s when the family constructed a lake that, along with the area of natural springs and wetlands, provides an essential water source on the property.
Mini-forests were created with much of the early labor done by hand. Warren recalled planting his first tree as an eighth grader in the 1950s, trees that now are 25-30 feet tall. Included in the early plantings were white, red and Scotch pine, tulip poplars, white ash and black walnut.
Over the years, trees, shrubs and grasses have been carefully selected and planted not only for their potential as food sources but also for protective cover. Such a shrub doing double-duty is the multi-flora rose, which offers edible rose hips for the deer in the fall. Its bramble of thorny branches gives smaller animals such as rabbits protection from predators.
Recent tree plantings in the thousands have required increased mechanization, and Lee said the family now uses a custom-made planter, one of only two of its kind in the county, which enables them to plant up to 1,000 trees per day.
Warren said last year alone 4,000 trees were planted, and he expects that 1,000 more will be added this spring. New species that have been added are the Norway, white, black and blue spruces, Frazier firs and a variety of oak trees.
In addition to trees, the Stroms have paid close attention to prairie grasses and weeds that smaller animals use for nesting, cover and protection. Approximately 10 acres of the 40-acre refuge is planted in prairie grasses such as Indian grass and red top. Lee said you can plant an acre in alfalfa for $20, but it costs approximately $150 to plant the same acre in native grasses.
A weed expert who spends much of his time trying to encourage preservation of native grasses, plants and trees wishes there were more refuges such as the Strom`s. ”The people who own the land have to be the ones who help protect the land,” said Jerome Johnson, executive director of the Garfield Farm Museum near Geneva in Kane County. ”Absentee landlords who invest in the land for development or speculation may not have a strong commitment to the land like farmers and homeowners have,” he said.
The push for such refuges has hit almost a solid wall of resistance. Tom Ritursky, conservation officer with the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service in Kane County said the federal government offers a nominal compensation under their farm set-aside program, but only ten individuals in the last three years have taken advantage of the program.
”Lee is really the only one in tne county who has gone with the wildlife habitat,” Ritursky said, ”and he started out with the idea of planting species to attract wildlife.” Conservation officials provide expertise and help with planning, but Ritursky said it is difficult to get farmers to use the service because of the land`s high productivity and because many farmers rent large tracts from Chicago landowners who may be reluctant to develop grasslands or refuges.
In addition to native grasses and trees, the Strom brothers also have introduced several types of birds to the refuge. Lee said after the disappearance of bob white quail in the area in the 1970s, the family introduced about 30 of the birds in 1982. Another species that the Stroms brought to the refuge was the Chinese black neck pheasant.
On a nearby piece of family property, the Stroms have begun development of another 30-acre wildlife refuge under the direction of John Strom, whom Lee described as the family`s in-house cover expert. They also have plans to continue improvements to the existing refuge such as expanding the lake and building a waterfall area for ducks and geese.
”Some farmers will stop by and want to know why we`re letting the field grow up in grass and why we`re planting trees on perfectly good farmland,”
Lee said. ”I guess they just can`t see what we see.”
What the Stroms see is a past when wildlife abounded in Kane County and a future when prairie and woodland animals may vanish from the area. They have seen the need for conservation and preservation and they have seen the need to leave the land a little better than they found it. When it comes to wildlife, the Stroms have 20-20 vision.
