The Wetlands Initiative had a role in sessions covering both conservation and outreach at this year’s Illinois River Conference in Peoria on October 27–29. 

August has been an exciting and ground-breaking month for the Wetlands Initiative—literally! During the week of August 3, 2015, the Wetlands Initiative's senior environmental engineer, Jill Kostel, coordinated construction of the first farm-based wetland designed for nutrient removal in the Big Bureau Creek Watershed in north-central Illinois.

On June 13 and 14, TWI held its first-ever “BioBlitz” to survey biodiversity at the Dixon Waterfowl Refuge at Hennepin & Hopper Lakes in north-central Illinois. Guided by more than 30 scientists and expert leaders from across the state, participants recorded 675 species at the site over a 24-hour period, including many that were previously unknown at the Refuge or unusual for the area.

Thanks to a $100,000 gift from Marquis Energy, LLC, in Hennepin, Illinois, TWI will be able to complete a significant new trail at the Sue and Wes Dixon Waterfowl Refuge. When finished in 2016, the 2.7-mile Marquis Oak Ridge Trail will open the Refuge’s interior to the public for the first time and more than double the site’s existing trail system.

The Wetlands Initiative has acquired a 417-acre parcel to expand its Sue and Wes Dixon Waterfowl Refuge at Hennepin & Hopper Lakes in north-central Illinois.

Through a major ongoing partnership with the National Forest Foundation and the U.S. Forest Service, the Wetlands Initiative is doing significant restoration work this year within a new area at the Forest Service’s Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie called the South Prairie Creek Outwash Plain.

Key work items have begun and TWI is already seeing progress on the 27-month Oak Ridge Trail and Restoration Project at our Dixon Waterfowl Refuge, which began in May 2014.

In spring 2014, a team of three students from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s College of Engineering helped design a farm-based wetland to capture nutrient runoff for TWI’s project in the Big Bureau Creek Watershed in north-central Illinois. The students turned the opportunity into their senior design project, while the partnership allowed TWI to complete a needed initial engineering design at no cost.

The Wetlands Initiative will begin a new project at the Dixon Waterfowl Refuge in 2014 that will restore rare oak savanna habitat and more than double the existing trail system, allowing visitors to access and explore the interior of the 3.5-square-mile site for the first time.

A grant from Coca-Cola, together with match funding from the National Forest Foundation (NFF), is helping TWI expand its restoration work at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie to a large new parcel known as the South Prairie Creek Outwash Plain.

With no traces remaining of any invasive carp, numbers of migratory waterfowl visiting the Wetlands Initiative's Dixon Waterfowl Refuge at Hennepin & Hopper Lakes this fall are the highest ever recorded, and populations of reintroduced game and native fish are thriving.

In July, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that the Gulf of Mexico's toxic "dead zone" measures 5,840 square miles this year—about the size of Connecticut. But many small wetlands placed far upstream can help solve this very large problem.

Several members of TWI's technical staff got a chance to share their work with peers at the fifth National Conference on Ecosystem Restoration (NCER), held in Schaumburg, Illinois, from July 29 to August 2.

On Thursday, June 27, TWI senior ecologist Gary Sullivan and board member Mark Maffei talked wetlands on NPR's Worldview with Jerome McDonnell.

The Wetlands Initiative is seeing very positive signs that the invasive common carp has finally been eradicated in Hennepin & Hopper Lakes, which provided a window of opportunity this spring to reestablish higher-quality native lake vegetation.

The partnership between TWI and the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County to restore a degraded stream has expanded to include public and private "neighbors" of the two targeted forest preserves and individual homeowners throughout the Spring Brook watershed.

Just four months into the Wetlands Initiative's new Lobelia Meadows Restoration at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, the site looks much different. Earth-moving contractors, overseen by TWI, have removed nearly all manmade alterations to the landscape.

More than 100 people—including area residents, local officials, long-time Initiative supporters, and first-time guests—attended the Ramsar event August 8th to celebrate the Dixon Waterfowl Refuge's recognition as a Wetland of International Importance.

The Wetlands Initiative worked with the Friends of the Big Bureau Creek Watershed, a coalition for clean water, to hold a free producer workshop on March 2nd in Princeton, Illinois, on the economics of land stewardship and nutrient management practices.

The Wetlands Initiative has completed the second phase of a new boardwalk trail to increase public access at the Dixon Waterfowl Refuge at Hennepin & Hopper Lakes.