By Nicole Glastetter
“The Efroymsom Restoration at Kankakee Sands is an 8,000 acre prairie restoration project located on the Indiana/Illinois border that aims to rejuvenate the local plant and wildlife to what it was before agricultural development. Before the 1920s, the entire area plus some was Beaver Lake, the largest lake in Indiana, but only measured 10 feet at its deepest. The lake was home to countless species of plants, insects, birds, and larger wildlife, but was drained in order to develop the land. The Kankakee Sands lands was purchased by The Nature Conservancy, a national organization whose goal is to preserve and restore American lands. Since it’s purchase, the land has been planted with thousands of native plants species, and controlling invasive species. With the new plant species, insects and birds from nearby preserves have migrated and colonized the area. This natural bridge between preserves promotes genetic variation in these “islands” and increases the size of preserved land. While the visitors in the past have been avid bird and plant enthusiasts, the project has recently received new residents that are drawing the public eye! Twenty-three Bison bison were transferred from South Dakota to complete the prairie landscape.
The above sounds like a info blurb from the Kankakee Sands website, but I actually got all of that information from our crew leader at Kankakee Sands today. Alyssa (pronounced ah-LEE-sah) greeted us at the Efroymsom Restoration Office with a warm smile and soft greeting. Even though the windchill left the temperature below 19 o , Alyssa cheerfully and knowledgeably led us to the bison viewing area where we could see what, honestly, looked like large boulders about 300 yards away. After the tour, we headed on to our service at the nursery. Our job today was to transplant seedlings in order for them to grow enough to be put out into the prairie. Alyssa informed our group that these seedlings would be apart of the last 43 acres that needed these specially grown plants. The seeds were harvested from locally-grown, native Indiana plants so that they were already adapted to the Indiana soil. Delicately placing one teeny-tiny stalk of prairie grass, roots intact, was soothing work somehow. We became invested in our work and in these plants, so Alyssa promised to send pictures after they had grown. We ended up transplanting over 1,700 seedlings in just a few short hours. Over the last 18 years, they have seeded the entire 8,000 acres (which requires approximately 2 tons of seeds).
Sustainability in land restoration is not straightforward like wind- or solar-power and, for me, it was hard to make the connection between what was being done at Kankakee and promoting a sustainable future. Upon reflecting this evening about the work we did today, I am in awe of the transformation the land has gone through in the past century. With the work of people like Alyssa and the other employees, as well as The Nature Conservancy and its partners the soil is producing and maintaining nutrients that promote native plant life. The plants, in turn, nourish the ecosystem, an ecosystem that hasn’t not been challenged by development, agriculture, or invasive species in a long time.