Healing the Land: Restoring the Prairie
Restoring the former Joliet Army Ammunition Plant to tallgrass prairie will be a long process. Restoration efforts at other sites have shown that it takes years to reestablish a basic prairie matrix, and may take several decades to recreate landscapes like the original prairies.
	An eroded area, formerly used for agriculture, is gradually colonized by aggressive and mostly nonnative weeds, grasses, and shrubs. Restoring such land to prairie will require significant time and effort. (Eric Ulasek)

Most of the landscape of Midewin is currently NOT tallgrass prairie. About 8,000 acres of the site are currently grazed by cattle or planted in corn, soybeans, alfalfa, oats, or hay. If farming was abandoned today, the land would not revert to tallgrass prairie by itself; instead, the fields would become dominated by aggressive and mostly nonnative weeds, grasses, and shrubs.

Restoring prairie on crop fields will require replanting prairie using seeds and plants of native prairie species. Given the scale of the Midewin's prairie restoration program, immense amounts of plant materials will be needed. Midewin has decided to grow much of its own seeds and plants. This decision is based in part on economics and in part on the availability of material. Neither commercial sources nor other agencies can produce the total amount of plant materials required to accomplish the restoration.

A high priority, therefore, was the development of the River Road native seed production area. This facility consists of several fields planted with forb seed beds and prairie grass fields. Each forb or wildflower seed bed is planted with one species, and seed for the prairie restoration will be harvested from these beds. Eventually, there will be about 200 acres of forb beds, producing seed for at least 350 species of native plants. This diversity will allow restoration of woodlands, savannas, and wetlands at Midewin, in addition to prairies. Individual grass fields, 2 to 35 acres in size, are each being planted with a different species of prairie grass. Once established, prairie grass seed can be harvested from these fields for years. The grass seed production fields will eventually cover 200 acres, providing seed for at least 8 different types of prairie grasses.

Two smaller native seed production areas have also been developed and are producing seed. One is directly opposite the Midewin Supervisor's Office and Welcome Center. The other is located on the east side of Midewin along Old Chicago Road.

The materials planted in the seed production areas come from several different sources, including the Illinois Department of Natural Resources' Mason State Nursery, commercial sources from northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, and from local wild seed collected by volunteers. Volunteers also assist in the very labor-intensive work of planting and maintaining the seed production beds.