By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — Jillian Neece sunk her hands deep into a pile of soil on Tuesday outside Severson Dells Nature Center.
The search was on for bulbs, seeds and other beneficial remnants in the topsoil that was scrapped off Bell Bowl Prairie and collected by the Forest Preserves of Winnebago County for transplanting.
This isn’t how conservationists like Neece wanted to save Bell Bowl Prairie, but it’s part of a new effort to preserve the ancient gravel prairie. One they had to take up after the Rockford airport resumed construction on its cargo expansion and bulldozed part of the land last month.
“The fight to save Bell Bowl Prairie isn’t over. It’s just shifted its focus a little bit,” Neece said. “Even though this isn’t even close to the solution that we wanted, we have to keep rolling with what the situation adapts to.”
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The Chicago Rockford International Airport’s cargo expansion will leave more than 6 acres of Bell Bowl Prairie in tact, including 3 acres of high-quality prairie, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Neece and others who fought for 18 months to try to convince airport officials to redesign the expansion now say they’ll work to ensure the remaining acreage is preserved.
“We now have to adapt our fight to being (about) how to preserve and protect the remaining acres of prairie that are still at the airport and also how to make the best use out of the scrap material,” she said.
The Forest Preserves of Winnebago County, along with Illinois Nature Preserves and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, approached the airport after learning construction would resume to make sure any soil that was removed from the prairie could be saved and used for restorations in the area.
The Forest Preserves collected about 20 loads of soil from two dump trucks, collecting an estimated 150 cubic yards of material, according to Mike Brien, director of natural resources for the Forest Preserves.
Brien and Neece, along with a team of Forest Preserve employees and volunteers, sifted through the soil Tuesday for live plant material. Finding that material is one of two goals for the Forest Preserves.
“The other part of that is conserving that soil,” Brien said. “There’s a seed bank in there. There’s soil bacteria. There’s mycorrhizal fungi. There’s a lot of beneficial stuff still in that soil that we hope will enhance our prairie restorations.”
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Some of the soil was potted at Severson Dells’ greenhouse facility. It will eventually be planted at Cedar Cliff Forest Preserve, which is less than four miles southwest of the airport land that includes Bell Bowl Prairie.
The Forest Preserves had used soil maps to identify Cedar Cliff, a former farmland that was restored as prairie, as having historically similar conditions to Bell Bowl Prairie.
“It’s certainly not a replacement for an established remnant prairie, but by integrating some of these pieces into our restorations we’re capturing those remnant genetics,” Brien said. “We’re capturing the soil diversity that’s present in that prairie sod and that prairie soil that was removed from the airport.”
Workers and volunteers mostly found grasses in their search through the soil Tuesday morning, but they also turned up a prickly pear cactus. The flowering cactus is native to Bell Bowl Prairie, and Forest Preserves workers have previously transplanted it from the prairie to other sites in the region.
“This is the star so far, but we’re just getting started,” Brien said of the cactus.
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Brien and Neece said the transplanted prairie will have the potential support pollinators such as the rusty patched bumblebee, the endangered fuzzy bee that was found on the Bell Bowl Prairie site last summer.
Gail Burgeson, a conservationist and activist from Mount Prospect, has been coming here for months to urge the airport board to reconsider its design. She said the transplanting work she came to the area to do Tuesday never should have had to take place. She said there needs to be more education around prairies and other fragile ecosystems so that people understand the importance of saving them.
“We’re trying to handle its remains as best as possible,” Burgeson said. “It feels very ominously sad. It feels like death. … This is not OK, and we should never do this again.”
This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on Twitter at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas