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Before Euro-American
settlers arrived in the early 1800s, the land which is now Illinois was covered with a 36
million-acre wilderness of tall grasses and wildflowers, wetlands, and forests. Of this 36
million acres, 21 million acres were tallgrass prairie.
The tallgrass prairie
supported abundant wildlife including bison, elk, wolves, black bears, and hundreds of
species of birds.
Within a few short generations of
Euro-American settlers' arrival, over 99% of this biologically diverse landscape had been
altered by agriculture and urbanization.
Although Illinois still is known as the "Prairie State," less than 0.01% of
Illinois' original 21 million acres of prairie remains. What once was a vast sea of rich
prairie now survives only as tiny, isolated patches. Many species of prairie plants and
animals have either disappeared or are in rapid decline due to loss of habitat.
Some preserved parcels of the original
prairie are included in the 40,000-acre Prairie Parklands Macrosite -- a constellation of
public, private and corporate lands managed to protect diversity -- situated at the
confluence of the Des Plaines and Kankakee Rivers, which forms the Illinois River. The
Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, a keystone in that macrosite, adds a
large prairie complex that includes dolomite prairies, one of the rarest natural
communities in North America, in addition to "grasslands," savanna, wetlands and
seeps, upland forests and three streams. The creation of Midewin offers a rare opportunity
to regain some of what has been lost, and on a scale that can make a significant
difference to the survival of threatened and endangered prairie species. |