Related Links

Every year, Northwest Side residents and conservation advocates protest the Cook County Forest Preserve District’s "land management" fires on the 3,690 acres it manages within Chicago city limits.

At the district’s controlled burn last Sunday at Bunker Hill Forest Preserve, local conservation advocates arrived with protest signs reading “leave nature alone” and “big cities need big old trees,” despite snow and strong winds. The 90-plus acre preserve borders the Edgebrook neighborhood.

The activists say that instead of restoring the land, the district is decreasing biodiversity and animal habitat in the forest.

“Our last urban forests are at stake,” said Bathsheba Birman, co-founder of the Urban Wildlife Coalition, a Northwest Side group that seeks to preserve natural areas in its community. “This isn’t good science against emotion. It’s bad science against common sense.”

But environmental organizations including the Sierra Club and the Illinois Audubon Society maintain that the fires are necessary to promote biodiversity. Other forest preserve districts throughout the area follow similar land management practices based on broad-based restoration ecology research. 

Still, members of the coalition and other like-minded local groups, Trees for Life and Natural Forest Advocates, argue that the district’s tree cutting, burning and herbicide applications are not restoration. They have called for a ban on these practices at forest preserves including LaBagh Woods, Edgebrook Woods, Indian Woods, Bunker Hill and Miami Woods.

Many of Sunday’s protestors criticized the district for cutting down a grove of aspen trees from Bunker Hill.

“They’re just 100 percent against what we’re doing,” said John McCabe, a training and safety coordinator who has worked for the forest preserve district for 15 years. “But, without a doubt, unequivocally, we’re doing the right thing,” he said, noting that the district is applying the “best management practices” available to the land by removing non-native, invasive species such as the buckthorn and garlic mustard.

“The forest preserve is more than a forest. It’s made up of different habitats,” McCabe said.

Jane Balaban, a volunteer restorationist with district and member of the North Branch Restoration Project agreed with McCabe. Balaban, is the master steward of the Bunker Hill site, which means she has undergone a forest preserve district training program and is qualified to oversee restoration activities.

Balaban said that nature has been “cut up into tiny little pieces” as urbanization occurred in Chicago and streets and buildings dissected naturally-occurring forests.

“We have not let nature takes its course for the last 200 years,” Balaban said, in response to the advocates who want to leave forest preserves untouched. “These little remnants of nature need a helping hand if they’re going to survive in the future.”

“I don’t know why there isn’t more oversight,” said Chicagoan Petra Blix, member of Trees for Life, who opposes the district’s practices. “There seems to be this global approval for any and all restoration with really no scientific basis to look at each site individually and manage each site appropriately.”

But according to the forest preserve district, each site does have its own management plan to enhance the natural ecology. 

Wayne Vanderploeg, a resource ecologist and 10-year veteran with the forest district, said that each forest preserve site is first surveyed by ecologists and after a review of the assessment, a broad-based management plan is developed for each site. 

Vanderploeg also noted that the district always implements best management practices, which are "are developed by an array of ecological research centers worldwide, such as universities, private industry, government and not-for-profits."

But the prescribed burns remain a chief concern of area advocates.

Birman said she asked the district last year to produce the burning permit it received from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, but officials told her she must submit a Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of it.

Birman later received a five-page copy of the district’s most recent EPA permit. The permit, renewed each year, gave the district permission to burn on the 63,357 of the 68,000 acres it manages across Cook County.

Last March, Ald. Brian Doherty (41st Ward), Ald. Margaret Laurino (39th Ward) and Ald. Patrick Levar (45th Ward) introduced an ordinance prohibiting open burning of any kind on Cook County Forest Preserves within Chicago city limits. The ordinance is stalled in the Committee on Energy, Environmental Protection and Public Utilities after not receiving enough votes to get to the City Council floor.

Doherty, who said he jogs on trails adjacent to forest preserve land, said that he’s concerned that the district’s controlled burns take place too close to residential neighborhoods bordering the land. Doherty’s concern echoes that of residents who also cite health concerns due to the smoke caused by the district’s burns.

“I’m not interested in the science. I’m interested in the safety of my residents,” said Doherty, who is part of the anti-burn movement. “I don’t know much of a difference between a daffodil and a daisy, and I don’t much care.”

“This area is unique. Homes and forest preserves are almost fused,” said Birman, describing her neighborhood.

In 1996, Cook County Board President John Stroger put a moratorium on restoration practices on forest preserve land after receiving complaints from residents. But the moratorium was lifted by Interim President Bobbie Steele in 2006 and the district resumed its activities on the land.

“What is good about management that decreases biodiversity, decreases habitat, impacts the health and safety of the neighborhood by aerosoling particulate matter and toxic things into the air?” Blix asked during the Bunker Hill burn.

“If we don’t manage it, we’ll lose it,” Balaban said, defending restoration efforts. “It’s really important to understand the whole ecosystem and not just one part of it.”

Ironically, both restorationists and conservationists want the same thing: a healthy, biodiverse ecosystem.

“It is complex. There’s no question about it,” Balaban said.