In the middle of a continent more than 2,500 miles wide, a burnt-orange dawn breaks. Here, throughout a stretch of land nearly 425 miles long and bordered on the northeast by an inland sea, wispy clouds streak the horizon, as if swept by a giant paint brush. Trees whisper in the early-morning breeze as the sun eases into the sky, turning it pale blue and making diamonds of the dew that covers fields of grass, plants and colorful flowers.
All kinds of wild creatures-many whose future is uncertain-await a new day.
Say “endangered species” and the images that inevitably come to mind are rhinoceros and elephants in Africa or rain forests in South America. But there are wild things and wild places in danger of extinction-and many that have already disappeared-a lot closer to home.
Right here, right now, in Illinos, there are 501 threatened or endangered species: 10 mammals, 9 reptiles, 3 amphibians, 51 invertebrates, 29 fish, 43 birds and 356 plants. Some, such as the bobcat, bald eagle, river otter, gray bat, barn owl, spotted turtle, are familiar. Others, such as the river cooter (turtle), snuffbox (mollusk), pallid shiner (fish), northern harrier (hawk), southeastern myotis (bat), bog bedstraw (plant), are less so. But each plays an integral role in the various Illinois ecosystems of oak savannah, wetland, lakefront, aquatic, forest and prairie, and they all have the unfortunate distinction of appearing on the Illinois threatened and endangered species list.
The list was adopted in 1980 under the Illinois Endangered Species Act of 1972 and, as required by amendments to the Act in 1985, it is completely revised every five years by the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Board, a Springfield-based agency that works in conjunction with the Illinois Department of Conservation’s Division of Natural Heritage. The board’s first major revisions to the list were codified under state statute in 1989 and remain in effect today.
The board will adopt its second major revisions to the list on Friday when, pending a 90-day period for public hearings before becoming law, the number of species will increase to 512. The fact that the list is increasing is only a part of the story.
“Some species will be taken off the list, but that’s not necessarily good news,” says Susan Lauzon, the executive director who oversees the nine-person, governor-appointed board made up of local scientists, wildlife biologists, university professors and a botanist. “For example, the endangered white-tailed jack rabbit has not been sighted in the state since 1983, so we are classifying it as extirpated-or extinct-in Illinois. The same is true of 13 species of freshwater mussels. We believe they have disappeared.”
Other proposed changes include adding the timber rattlesnake, yellow-crowned night heron and sturgeon chub; switching the status of four birds-the upland sandpiper, double-crested cormorant, great egret and pied-billed grebe-from endangered to threatened; and moving the lake sturgeon and Henslow’s sparrow from threatened to endangered. The status of others, such as the endangered greater prairie chicken, short-eared owl and Illinois mud turtle, will remain unchanged.
“The Illinois Act defines a species as `endangered’ if it is facing extinction as a breeding species within Illinois, and `threatened’ if it is likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future,” says Deanna Glosser. She is endangered species program manager for the Division of Natural Heritage, and, with the Department of Conservation, is responsible for the implementation of the Illinois act. “The operative words here are `a breeding species within Illinois.’ Just because a species is listed in Illinois doesn’t mean the species is listed in the other states it is found in.”
For instance, the sandhill crane is endangered in Illinois and secure in Wisconsin. On the other hand, the plains garter snake is common in Illinois and endangered in Ohio.
“There is no set formula approach to reviewing a species,” Lauzon explains, “but there are routine questions we ask: Did the species once range statewide but now only in a few counties? Is the species still in its original range but much less so? Is the species low in numbers but well protected? What are the species’ known threats? The board, and its technical advisory groups representing six major taxonomic subdivisions from fish to mammals, are truly a panel of scientific experts-they put the puzzle together and assess it.”
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At Wildlife Prairie Park, near Peoria, a lone male bobcat, basking in the forest-filtered light of the mid-morning sun, stretches his three-foot length and slowly stands. As he shakes off dirt from the forest floor, the tip of his stumpy tail flashes its black markings. The rest of his fur-reddish gray sprinkled with black-fluffs and smoothes. Leaning his head on the trunk of a nearby tree, he gently rubs his face against the rough bark and runs a small paw across the whiskers and dark gray stripes marking his cheeks.
A noise in the abundant underbrush makes him snap to attention: the small tufts of hair at the tip of each ear stand straight up. His acute hearing and keen eyesight immediately track his prey-a light snack of squirrel. The cat crouches and waits, silent and still. Then, in a blink, it pounces. After finishing his meal, he bounds up the trunk of a tree, drapes himself on a high branch and settles in for a nap.
The Federal Endangered Species Act, which marks its 20th anniversary this year, is the most far-reaching law ever enacted by any nation for the preservation of endangered species. It holds that listed species of animals and plants “are of esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational and scientific value to the nation and its people.” In the news frequently during the past year because of the controversy involving the northern spotted owl and the timber industry, which harvests the forests where the bird lives, the federal act is up for its five-year reauthorization by Congress this year.
“The federal act defines `endangered’ as a species that is in danger of extinction throughout all or most of its natural range,” says Amelia Orton-Palmer, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service endangered species biologist at the Chicago Metro-Wetlands field office. “Natural range can mean anything from one state to 50.” Similar to the state statute, the federal law defines threatened species as those likely to become endangered.
“There is an overlap between state and federal listings. Federally listed species that occur in Illinois are automatically on the Illinois list too,” explains Orton-Palmer, whose office works with the Illinois Department of Conservation and other state agencies to recover and protect the 28 “overlap” species including the bald eagle, peregrine falcon, least tern, gray bat, piping plover, Iowa pleistocene snail, eastern prairie fringed orchid and Indiana bat.
There are other species that are federally listed and would be on the Illinois list, too, except they haven’t bred or been in the state for years, some for longer than a century. Black bear, bison, timber wolf, red wolf, whooping crane, common loon and cougar are just a few of the several dozen species extinct in Illinois. Additionally, there are others that once lived here but are extinct in the world: the passenger pigeon, Carolina parakeet, longjaw cisco and Sampson’s pearly mussel.
Whether threatened, endangered or extirpated, Illinois species have consistently been stalked by the most common and formidable predator of all: habitat loss.
“Habitat loss-the reduction, alteration and degradation of places where species live-is the single biggest threat to listed species, no matter what,” Glosser says. “When we develop subdivisions and strip malls, we’re destroying our landscape in the same way as clearing tropical rainforests.”
Glosser’s comment is frequently echoed by her counterparts. “Illinois has less than one-tenth of 1 percent of its original natural landscape left,” says Steve Packard, director of science and stewardship at the Illinois chapter of The Nature Conservancy, the largest environmental organization in the country. “And people think of the tropics as being in trouble! With these kind of statistics, Illinois ranks right up there.”
Packard’s group gets directly to the point with its main method of ecological preservation: It buys parcels of land, then works to restore and protect ecosystems. Since founding its Illinois chapter in 1957, the 28,000-member organization has purchased 24,562 acres in the state, turning much of the land over to governmental agencies-from forest preserve districts to the federal government-that carry on the management of the land to preserve biodiversity. The conservancy itself, with the help of nearly 5,000 volunteers, currently manages 57,695 acres statewide.
Major projects include 1,100 acres at Cedar Glen Eagle Roost in Hancock County, which attracts 500 eagles each winter and is second in size only to roosts in Alaska; and, 8,422 acres at The Cache River Wetlands in Pulaski and Johnson counties where 36 listed species, including the bobcat, live.
“Our national office has a plan in the works to designate 100,000 acres in metropolitan Chicago, including forest preserves and state parks, as among the world’s `Last Great Places,’ an international campaign whose scope includes Latin America,” says Adele Meyer, director of development for the conservancy’s Illinois office. “The Chicago area has one of the greatest concentrations of listed species in the state and is the only urban nature conservation project slated in the $300- million campaign; it really is as important as the rain forest.”
Illinois’ version of the rain forest may be wetlands, the vanishing (90 percent lost statewide) habitat of approximately 40 percent of the state’s listed species. Although 90 percent of Illinois wetlands have been lost, the Chicago area has a significant quantity of quality wetlands left.
At high noon, the sun glints off the surface of Bakers Lake in Barrington. A black feathered, double-crested cormorant revealing a patch of yellow-orange skin on her throat and a narrow blue line around her eyes, paddles lazily by, studying the shoreline. Suddenly she dives underwater and disappears. Emerging nearly a minute later, with a great splash and a bill filled with fish, she fans the dripping feathers in her 4 1/2-foot wingspan and heads for shore.
On the damp ground, a nest made of sticks and weed stems is lined with leafy twigs and grass and pale blue egg shells. Four baby chicks, covered with black down, cry for food until mother obliges, regurgitating part of her catch into their tiny beaks.
The Illinois Act reflects an emphasis on habitat, making it one of the most progressive endangered species laws in the country. It is the only act with a statutory mandate requiring state agencies and local government to consult with the Department of Conservation before disturbing land.
“Although our final recommendations are voluntary, not legally binding, the process is educational and sensitizing for everyone involved,” Glosser says. “If no known listed species is involved in a project review, we practically rubber stamp the approval. An `occurence’ of a listed species-not a simple sighting of a red-shouldered hawk, for instance, but an actual nesting-requires that we take a detailed look at the project and find ways to minimize environmental impact. We can’t simply protect the nest itself; we need to find a circumference area suitable to the species-a buffer zone. And the red-shouldered hawk feeds as far away as 10 miles.”
Buffers are a big issue: the more area needed, the higher the cost to developers. “Increased buffer zones are the most difficult recommendation to convince developers to agree to,” Glosser says. “But there are many developers who make changes to accommodate species and consider wildlife needs at the beginning of a project.”
“It’s not as if we’re standing in front of bulldozers yelling `Stop,’ ” Lauzon says. “We work with agencies and are sympathetic to their agendas. We know roads need improvement and homes must be built.”
When the Illinois Endangered Species Act was passed in 1972, it was both ahead of its time-the Federal Act wasn’t enacted until a year later-and out of touch: It protected only exotic animals in the state such as leopards, tigers, cheetahs, polar bears and jaguars, not native animals.
“Initially, Illinois’ heart was in the right place, but we didn’t completely understand the situation,” Lauzon says. “The act authorized the arrest of people with alligator-skin shoes, regulated circus travel and zoos and basically focused on the entire world, except for what was out there in the wild in Illinois.”
Plants weren’t added to the act until 1977; then they were only listed, not protected. It took until 1985 for specific protections and prohibitions regarding listed plant species to become effective. That year also marked the addition of invertebrates to the list of protected species.
“The `nonglamorous’ species have traditionally been given short shrift in public attention and legal protection,” says U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Orton-Palmer. “But their value is real and must be taken into account. Biological diversity is part of our natural heritage. Erase one part of the ecosystem, and you’ll get a chain reaction: Lose a plant and you’ll lose dependent animals. The Karner blue butterfly was believed to be extirpated in Illinois for years; it was recently rediscovered and added to the federal and state lists. To verify its status in Illinois, we had to search out the lupin, the plant the butterfly’s larvae is solely dependent upon.”
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A small sea of tall-grass prairie glows in the late afternoon light at Indian Boundary Prairies, near Markham. Amid the grasses are a few plants with pure white petals: Eastern prairie fringed orchids. Nearly two feet tall, with slender green stalks and tassle-like tendrils swaying in the gentle breeze, the plant goes to great lengths to live: it needs three different partners simply to survive.
Under the soil, the orchid finds necessary support: Because its own roots are incapable of branching out, they attach to a prairie mushroom root, which can spread, and the two grow together. The orchid also depends on its host root for nutrients. For pollination, it relies on a prairie insect, a species of hawk moth that feeds from flower to flower. When there aren’t enough plants to support the moths, the orchids die out too. And the orchids are so well adapted to the old prairie fires that the surface land they live on must burn in order for the species to continue. For them, fire means rebirth, not destruction.
Many non-glamorous species are “indicator species” that send a signal of trouble with the environment. “Mussels, for example, are very sensitive to water quality,” Orton-Palmer says. “By their decline, they tell us of polluted waters. Bald eagle and peregrine falcon eggshell thinning was discovered in the 1950s and traced to the pesticide DDT. As a result, crop-spraying of the chemical was nationally banned in 1972.” That also helped save both species from extinction. Although both are still on federal and state endangered lists, they are in successful recovery programs.
The Illinois Audubon Society, the Open Lands Association, the Morton Arboretum, Chicago’s Botanical Garden, local nature centers and others devote their time to protecting Illinois’ native species. Even Commonwealth Edison has begun producing energy of another kind: the power to preserve. In a joint program with the Department of Conservation, the electric utility has designated portions of 11 of its cooling plant properties throughout Illinois as recreational and natural areas and wildlife refuges.
And if the key to Illinois species survival is for people to learn about its wildlife, the opportunity exists at 266 state parks and recreational sites throughout Illinois and at Chicago’s famous cultural institutions-including the Field Museum of Natural History, the John G. Shedd Aquarium, the Chicago Academy of Sciences and Brookfield and Lincoln Park Zoos-that focus on putting pieces of the complex environmental puzzle together.
But nowhere in the state can one see and learn more about Illinois threatened, endangered and extirpated species than at the 2,000-acre Wildlife Prairie Park in Peoria. The pet project of founder William Rutherford, an attorney and former director of Illinois State Parks, the park replicates old Illinois with restored species and landscape: Bison roam the rolling prairie, black bear amble through forests, elk graze on grassy plains, river otters splash in streams, cougar kittens romp in meadows, fuzzy owlets perch in trees and timber wolf pups pounce on one another.
Visitors can choose from a full schedule of daily naturalist activities and even spend the night in a cabin on the open prairie. It’s Illinois as it used to be, a bit more concentrated, a lot more accessible and one of the best kept secrets in the state.
