By Ben Joravsky
To the untrained, who can’t tell one plant from another, it’s a dubious cause. But to scientists and environmentalists it’s a noble effort, nothing less than an opportunity to guarantee that the “ecosystem stability can be maintained, evolutionary processes can continue, new species can eventually emerge, and biodiversity can continue to be maintained into the future,” as New York Times science reporter William Stevens once put it. Certainly, their diligence is beyond dispute. It’s been a massive undertaking involving a diverse and dedicated bunch of volunteers eager to spend their weekends toiling in the fields. At first they limited their efforts to weeding out invading species (destroying aliens, as they might say). Eventually they resorted to fires, tree cutting, and herbicides.
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The fires burn away the brush that cuts off the sunlight that native plants and trees (particularly the oak) need to survive. “The Indians set fires all the time,” says Balaban. “They discovered the vegetation and ground was fresh, green, and young after a fire. And that animals flocked there. It’s not drastic–we take care to make sure the fire doesn’t get out of control.”
“We went into this thinking we were not going to use chemicals. Then we cut a buckthorn without herbicides and the next year we came back and there were four buckthorn there. Restoration isn’t going to work if we have to cut the same acre every year. We use herbicides the safest way, applying them directly to the stump with a paintbrush. And the herbicides we use [Garlon, Rodeo, and Roundup] have been selected because of their low toxicity and low persistence in the soil. You know, Tylenol is more toxic than the Garlon we use.”
The restorationists’ work didn’t look so “stable and lovely” to her. She walked through nearby Miami Woods, part of the forest preserve east of Caldwell in Morton Grove, and was aghast to discover that she could see a road, a parking lot, and the back of a warehouse. “You could never see that before–they knocked down our buffer,” she says. “No wonder they were sneaky. They wanted to avoid an open debate because they knew there would be opposition. Outside those woods are roads, factories, and malls. These trees, even the buckthorn, are our buffer. Who are they to destroy that? Who made them gods of the forest preserve?”
The controversy caught the commissioners of the Cook County Board by surprise. Few of them had been paying attention to what the restorationists were up to. “I thought they were, you know, weeding–you know, like you do in your garden,” says one commissioner. “When I saw pictures of the stumps, I said, ‘Hey, what’s going on here?’”
“Have you seen Miami Woods?” she asked.
