Every now and then, the Tribune lets me pretend I’m a wildlife photographer for an assignment. Reporter Ted Gregory is usually involved. These are some of my favorite kind of days.
A few weeks back I got a phone call from our assignment editor at the Tribune asking if I’d be able to start early for an assignment down near Lewistown, Ill., to photograph a story about the Nature Conservancy’s Emiquon Preserve. “We’re hoping you can be there right around sunrise,” I remembered him saying just as I was looking up how far Lewistown is from Chicago. Just over three hours. This was going to be a very early morning.
The story we were going to tell was about the Emiquon Preserve, a 7,000-acre wetlands site near the midway point on the Illinois River but separated from it by a levee. The Nature Conservancy, which owns the preserve, is moving forward with a controversial plan to exchange water between the wetlands and the polluted Illinois River. The conservancy’s objective is to re-create in Emiquon the natural water fluctuations that native wetland plants and animals need, however it’s an untested method and what the effects will be are still unknown.
For me it was very important to document not only the land, but the animals that live there and the people studying them. I left the city in the dead of night and made it to Emiquon just as the sun was breaking. Once there I met with Doug Blodgett, director of the conservancy’s Illinois River Program. I gathered up all of my gear, including a 600mm lens with a 2x extender on it, and we drove along the levee in search of wildlife.
Riding along with Blodgett, I felt like I was sitting next to David Attenborough as he narrated to me what I was seeing out the window. He pointed out muskrat lodges, a coyote, black-crowned night-herons, and we even spotted a pair of otters taking in the morning. He drove me out to the water management system, and we watched as the crews worked on its construction.
Soon, Gregory met up with us. Blodgett handed out life jackets and led us over to an awaiting airboat, the only way to easily navigate the wetlands. From the boat launch we toured the preserve, gliding over the water and anything else that happened in our way. While we were out, Blodgett showed us several species of plants and animals that each play a unique role in the wetlands. We also met with a team from the Illinois Natural History Survey that was tagging and recording fish in the area. Not a bad way to spend the day.
To see Ted’s story click HERE.
