Fourteen Chicago-area Wetlands to Visit This Summer

In honor of American Wetlands Month, TWI and Openlands have teamed up to spotlight 14 of the best wetlands to visit around the Chicago region this summer using Openlands' Get Outside Map. From quiet marshes to biodiverse sloughs, these sites offer a chance to explore and reconnect with nature.


14 Chicago-Area Wetlands to Visit This Summer:

1.       Volo Bog State Natural Area: Volo Bog is the only open-water quaking bog in Illinois, formed more than 10,000 years ago by glacial retreat. Visitors can follow a floating boardwalk across wetland vegetation including plants and trees rooted in a spongy, peat-rich floating mat.

TWI Targets Over 400 Acres of Wetland and Prairie for Prescribed Burns

Last month, Spring got a jumpstart at the Dixon Refuge—and at Square Marsh in the Calumet region, where TWI conducts restoration efforts—thanks to a series of prescribed burns. TWI ecologists and restoration technicians took to the fields to burn around 400 acres at the sites over three days. While fire may not be the first thing that comes to mind when envisioning the needs of a wetland, when it comes to prescribed burning, fire represents opportunities for new life and abundant vegetation!

TWI Featured in Natural Awakenings Magazine, Part 2

For the second month in a row, TWI's work is featured in Natural Awakenings, a healthy living magazine. The May issue continues the conversation with TWI ecologist Katie Kucera, this time focusing on the plant and animal species— both rare and abundant— that rely on wetland habitat.

Species such as sandhill cranes, pied-billed grebes, and Blanding’s turtles are discussed, as well as wetland plants such as the wild iris and the rare eastern prairie white-fringed orchid.

Read the full article here.

TWI Featured in Natural Awakenings Magazine

The most recent issue of Natural Awakenings, a healthy living magazine, features TWI’s wetland restoration efforts across the Chicago region and beyond. The piece traces the history of wetland loss in Illinois — once home to twenty times the amount of wetlands as we see today — and explains how restoration efforts like TWI’s are helping to reverse decades of habitat destruction.

The article describes various environmental benefits of wetland restoration, from reducing flood risk to helping migratory birds and rare species recover.

Read the full article here.

TWI Ecologists Collaborate on Tallgrass Prairie Restoration Case Study

TWI ecologists Gary Sullivan and Katie Kucera have partnered with ecologist William Sluis to co-author a research article on tallgrass prairie restoration, published in the latest issue of Ecological Solutions and Evidence.

Their study investigates the use of a remnant reference ecosystem model to guide the establishment of plant communities in tallgrass prairie restoration efforts. Their results demonstrated the feasibility of replicating the plant composition and species richness of mesic prairie remnants through ecological restoration.

Read the full article here.

Year of the Cicada

By Brier Gunderson

“2024 is a big year for periodical cicadas in Illinois, where Broods XII and XIX will be emerging throughout much of the state at the same time. This simultaneous emergence is the first time since 1803 and will not happen again until 2245.”

Back home in Illinois, this is the summer of the cicada—where trillions will emerge after seventeen years of life underground. Every summer, cicadas have been a part of my life, and I’ve found them only more and more fascinating as I’ve spent less and less time in the Midwest.

Plant power: Ecologists map vegetative makeup of Smart Wetlands to guide ecosystem management

In an exciting development for TWI’s Smart Wetlands program, staff ecologists have taken a step toward better understanding the evolving vegetative makeup of our farm-based Smart Wetlands sites, designed to improve water quality. Beginning in 2023, plant surveys were conducted at the sites for the first time. The surveys add to an existing body of water, soil, and nutrient data already collected for the purpose of better understanding, monitoring, and improving the Smart Wetlands going forward.

Openlands and the Wetlands Initiative awarded historic $1.5M for grassland habitat expansion and restoration at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie

Openlands and the Wetlands Initiative (TWI) have received a $1.5 million America the Beautiful Challenge (ATBC) grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF). The awarded project, titled “Grassland Habitat Expansion and Restoration across Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in Illinois,” aims to enhance landscape-scale habitat restoration at the U.S. Forest Service's Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in Will County, the first and only national tallgrass prairie in the country. The project focuses on Grant Creek, a Forest Service-designated Priority Watershed, and aims to transform an area the size of 1,000 football fields into healthy prairie, savanna, and floodplain wetland habitat.

Birders flock to the Refuge to see unusual avian guests

Longtime birder Vicky Sroczynski typically doesn’t “chase” rare birds, but she considered the opportunity to see a Roseate Spoonbill—normally a resident of the Gulf Coast and rarely seen further north—at TWI’s Dixon Waterfowl Refuge too good to miss. As soon as Vicky entered the Refuge gates after a two-hour drive from her home in Darien, she craned her neck toward the boat launch… just in time to glimpse a pink-winged bird fly behind the island and disappear.

Cranes at the Dixon Refuge and beyond

About five years ago, the International Crane Foundation (ICF) began to explore with the Wetlands Initiative (TWI) the potential of our Dixon Waterfowl Refuge as high-quality habitat for the reintroduction of seriously endangered Whooping Cranes. As part of this partnership, we began to more methodically monitor the Sandhill Cranes that have already chosen to nest and breed at the Refuge, since Sandhill Crane habitat will also often be good for Whooping Cranes.

New ag partnership with Ducks Unlimited

Long known for the restoration of lost wetlands, the Wetlands Initiative (TWI) is now also a leader in the practice of farm-based constructed wetlands that reduce nutrient pollution in agricultural runoff. This efficient and effective way to naturally improve water quality needs to be adopted on a large scale to really make a difference, and TWI has found the perfect partner in Ducks Unlimited (DU) to spread the practice in Illinois.

Milkweed project helps keep monarchs flying across Illinois

The Wetlands Initiative recently completed a five-year monarch butterfly conservation project that, for the first time, crossed two of our major project sites: Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie and the Dixon Waterfowl Refuge. Funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the project focused on increasing high-quality habitat for monarchs and also increasing availability of a range of milkweed species, the monarch caterpillar’s only food, across Illinois.

Motus towers at the Dixon Refuge: Helping to unlock migration mysteries

Most of us humans stayed close to home over the past 18 months, but the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t impact birds’ incredible migration journeys. This summer, researchers with the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC) and the Forbes Biological Station partnered with TWI to install three Motus towers at our Dixon Waterfowl Refuge in north-central Illinois to learn more about birds passing through the area.

When ecology meets engineering: Restoring wetlands in the Calumet

At TWI, successful wetland restoration involves more than getting rid of invasive species and planting native wildflowers and sedges. While these are important steps, it’s ecology combined with engineering that makes the magic happen. This is especially true in the Calumet region along the southern shores of Lake Michigan, where the hydrology has been extensively altered by industrial and residential development.