A Prairie Rendezvous

SPRING VOL. 13, NO. 2, 2011

Volunteers: John Taft, Valerie Sivicek, Beckie Green, Nancy Snellen, Jesse Kurylo, Tara Beveroth and Jamie Ellis

THIS YEAR’S LODA BURN

How do we live our lives in alignment with our beliefs? What does it mean to be “green,” a “conservationist,” or an “environmentalist?” How does this direct our everyday actions? I don’t have any intentions to answer these thoughts her in this column. It only takes a few minutes of searching the Internet on your computer to find lists of thing to do to be green. I just want to report that these are recurring questions for me, and I hope for you too.

As for GPF, we have moved from winter into the magic of spring. Salamanders in the woods, fire in the prairie, and the first green shoots of emerging life. At the end of January, we scat-tered another acre’s worth of seeds on the Loda Prairie expansion property. Only three left to go. GPF sincerely thanks all of the volunteers who collected, threshed, and planted seeds.

We asked you to renew your membership with a monetary donation to GPF, and I’m happy to report many of you responded. GPF continues to have a strong donor base which means we can continue to carry out our con-servation mission. Thank you.

By the time you read this we should have two summer interns hired, and because of strong member support, we have slightly ex-panded the internship by raising the rate of pay and by starting the internship in early May rather than early June. We also thank one of our members for a generous donation, which helped with this expansion.

Pellsville Cemetery Prairie is a small, high-quality prairie remnant near Rankin the north-west corn of Vermilion County. GPF volunteer have managed this remnant for 20 years, but over that time we lost contact with the own-er—Butler Township. I’m happy to report that contact has been re-established with the Butler Township Board. While they aren’t going to pursue permanent protection of the prairie at this time, they do want GPF to con-tinue to steward this site.

Seeds are in the soil for the annual native plant sale set for Saturday May 7. Come out Thursdays in April to help transplant seed-lings, and definitely be there for the sale.

The winter meeting in early March was well attended with plenty of camaraderie and yum-my desserts to share. Greg Spyreas gave a great talk shedding light on historic fir fre-

(Continued on page 5)

2 A Prairie Rendezvous

A Prairie Rendezvous

P.O. Box 36 • Urbana, IL 61803-0036 Editor: Brenda Molano-Flores Assistant Editors: Jamie Ellis, Mary Ann Feist, and Jean Mengelkoch Production Designer: Ray Meredith A Prairie Rendezvous is a publication of Grand Prairie Friends for the restora-tion community of East Central Illinois. In February 2004, the membership of GPF voted to broaden the group’s Constitution and By-laws, bringing the missions of GPF and Prairie Grove Volunteers together through a merger of two groups. A Prairie Rendezvous is published quarterly. Article submissions should be sent electronically to the editor at james.ellis72@gmail.com or by mail to the GPF P.O. Box (above). Member submissions are gladly welcomed. Grand Prairie Friends is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization dedicated to natural community preservation, restoration, and education in East Central Illinois. Our stewards help coordinate volunteer workdays at native prairie, savanna, wetland, and woodland remnants. Inquiries and tax-deductible donations should be sent to the GPF P.O. Box (above).

www.prairienet.org/gpf GPF Board of Directors (term ends) Jamie Ellis, President (2012) Dan Olson, Vice-President (2011) Fred Delcomyn, Treasurer (2012) Rob Kanter, Secretary (2011) Terry Rathgeber (2011) Jim Payne (2012) Eliana Brown (2013) Derek Liebert (2012) Gail Snowdon (2013)

Board meetings are not regularly scheduled. The next meeting is Tuesday, April 14. Meeting times and directions can be obtained by contacting the President, Jamie Ellis (james.ellis72@gmail.com). GPF Committees For information on volunteering and getting involved with any committees, please contact the following: Membership & Volunteerism: Brenda Molano-Flores Stewardship: VACANT Education: VACANT Publicity: Derek Liebert Land Acquisition: Dan Olson and Jim Payne Fund Raising: Derek Liebert, Terry Rathgeber, and Jamie Ellis Submission Deadlines

Summer Issue (June, July, Aug.): May 1, 2011

Fall Issue (Sept., Oct., Nov.): Aug. 1, 2011

Winter Issue (Dec., Jan. 2012, Feb.): Nov. 1, 2011

Printed on Recycled Paper

From The President by Jamie Ellis, President, GPF

3 A Prairie Rendezvous

2011 GPF prescribed burns GPF volunteers assisted with the prescribed burns at Delcomyn Prairie and Barnhart Prairie. Thank you to Tara Beveroth, Bill Handel, Bruce Hannon, Jack Paxton, Jesse Kurylo, Valerie Sivicek, Rich Sivicek, Tim Rye, Bruce Stikkers, Donald Barnhart, and Jim Zimmerman. Photos by Fred Delcomyn and Jen Mui

4 A Prairie Rendezvous

SPRING 2011

Volunteer Stewardship Activities Saturday, June 11: Jasmine Hollow. We will concentrate on the removal of an old fence, and woody brush. Bring gloves and drinking water. The address is 1172 N. 200 East Rd., Piatt County. Phone 344-7840 or email jpayne@shout.net if you need directions. Saturday, June 18: Buffalo Trace Prairie (Lake of the Woods Forest Preserve). Help eradicate wild parsnip and sweet clover from this expanding prairie reconstruction. Bring gloves, drinking water, and wear long sleeves. Workday will be from 9:00 a.m. to noon. Directions: From Champaign take Interstate I-74 west to the Mahomet exit 172. Turn right at the stop sign at the end of the ramp and go north on Rt 47. Park in the lot on the west side of Rt 47. Contact: Phil Hult 708/692-4776 or pyrobison@yahoo.com. Spring 2011 Urbana Park District Workdays: Spring is here, and the Urbana Park District could use your help keeping our natural areas looking great! During a workday you will help remove invasive plants, improve trails, plant native trees and flowers, or assist with general clean-up. This is a great way to learn more about local natural areas while providing some much needed assistance with their care. Please dress accordingly. Tools, gloves, instruction, and snacks will be provided. For more information or to sign up, call the Anita Purves Nature Center at (217) 384-4062. Saturday, April 23 - Meadowbrook Park - 9 to 11 a.m. - Perkins Road Wet Prairie - 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, May 14 - Busey Woods - 9 to 11 a.m. - Weaver Park - 1 to 3 p.m. For Meadowbrook Park: meet at the parking lot just south of Windsor and Race Streets. For Busey Woods: meet at the Anita Purves Nature Center - 1505 N. Broadway. For Perkins Prairie: meet at the Dog Park on Perkins Road - ½ mile east of Cunningham Ave. For Weaver Park: meet at the intersection of Main Street and Smith Road.

Grand Prairie Friends

Activity Calendar

APNC (Anita Purves Nature Center) is located at 1505 N. Broadway Ave. in Urbana.

N A T U R A L R E S O U R C E S STUDIES ANNEX: 1910 Griffith Drive, Champaign. Griffith Drive runs south from St. Mary's Road just east of the Illinois Central railroad viaduct (next to St. Mary's Cemetery).

Workday reminders and updates will be posted on the ecostewards email list.

Please leave your pets at home. Pets are not allowed on Nature Preserves. Activities such as pre-scribed burnings may endanger pets, even if they are on leashes or otherwise supervised.

Please wear clean clothes and boots as a general precaution. After a workday wire brush or scrape lug soles clean. Also, do not wear the same clothes that were used to visit a site with mature exotic seed into another site before laundering them. This is to avoid becoming unwitting carriers of the very invasive species that we are trying to control!

5 A Prairie Rendezvous

W inter still grips central Illinois, but that does not stop us from always thinking of spring. As the ice thaws

in March and April, you know it’s time to start gardening, and you know it’s time for the Grand Prairie Friends Annual Native Plant Sale. The sale will once again take place at Lin-coln Square Village in downtown Urbana on Saturday May 7 from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

We will be transplanting seedling into the pots, Thursday evenings from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. through April for this task--April 7, 14, 21, 28, and May 5--in the Natural Resources Building (NRB) Greenhouse near the intersection of Sixth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Champaign..

On Friday May 6 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. we will move plants from the greenhouse to Lincoln Square to get ready for the big sale on Saturday morning. We hope to set up and sell plants on a couple of Saturdays later in May at the Farmer’s Market.

GPF needs all the help it can muster. If you like to get your

hands dirty, come out and help transplant in the greenhouse. We’ll need strong hands and backs as well as a few people with trucks on May 6 to move plants. Volunteers are vital on the day of the sale to help custom-ers, to answer questions about native plants and GPF, and to serve as cashiers.

The Native Plant Sale is GPF’s biggest fund raiser of the year. This event provides money for us to carry out our conservation mission of protecting natural areas in east-central Illinois by allowing us to hire summer interns. Tell your friends.

If you have any questions please contact Jamie Ellis (244-5695 or james.ellis72@gmail.com). If you’re ready to sign up and help, let us know.

quencies in the Illinois landscape using fire scar data collected from oak tree cross sections. If you weren’t there you missed a great talk.

Communication is an important part of any organization. Meetings, phone calls, email, a website, and the newslet-ter have all been and will continue to be important tools for one-way and two-

way communication. If you haven’t already noticed this feature, we have a Google Calendar embedded on the web-site, and if you use Google, you can subscribed to the GPF calendar. Next, GPF is on Facebook! Looks us up and be our friend. We’re still figuring out how to best use this tool. Let us know what you think. Finally, if you’re reading this (good for you), you’re probably doing

so on your computer screen. Yes, we have moved to electronic delivery of the newsletter. The delivery is easier, and we have options to expand (color pic-tures, embedded links, etc.). Escalating printing and postage costs also helped with this decision. Any thoughts or comments--drop us a line by phone, email, or post a comment on our “wall.”

(Continued from page 2)

CONFERENCE

America’s Grasslands: Status, Threats, and Opportunities: A conference co-hosted by the National Wildlife Federation and South Dakota State University, August 15-17, 2011, at the Sheraton Sioux Falls Hotel and Convention Center, Sioux Falls, SD.

The conference will bring together re-searchers, natural resource profession-als, agricultural pro-ducers, policy experts and conservationists to discuss the status of North America’s grassland ecosystems,

current threats, opportunities for conservation and the out-look for these ecosystems in a changing climate. The confer-

ence will be immediately followed by a Grasslands Policy Summit on August 17-18, sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation and Ducks Unlimited. Topics: Status of North American grassland ecosystems and grass-

land-dependent wildlife Climate change and grasslands (topics might include im-

pacts of climate change and adaptation needs) Threats to North American grasslands (topics might in-

clude invasive species and agricultural management re-gimes)

Energy development and grasslands (topics might include wind, biomass, oil, and transmission)

Grasslands and greenhouse gas mitigation Grasslands and grazing (topics might include maintaining

grasslands for grazing, grazing management, etc.) Grasslands in federal policy

2011 Native Plant Sale

6 A Prairie Rendezvous

STEWARDSHIP UPDATE FOR LODA CEMETERY PRAIRIE PRESERVE by Beckie Green

T o all, this has been a busy season for Loda

Cemetery Prairie Preserve. At the end of

January, we seeded an additional acre at the

Loda Prairie expansion property (see photos,

this page and following) and conducted a con-

trolled burn. Approximately 20 acres of the

eastern section of the prairie were burned (see

photos, page 1). Thank you to all the volunteers

that assisted with these activities.

Volunteers: Bill Handel, Eric Smith, Rob Kanter, Val Siv-icek, Jamie Ellis, Dave Trout, Justine Trout and Jim Kietzman.

7 A Prairie Rendezvous

Nonprofit Org.

U.S. Postage

Paid

Urbana, IL

Permit No. 168

In this issue… Prairie Burning Winter Seeding Annual Plant Sale

… and more

Grand Prairie Friends

A Prairie Rendezvous P.O. Box 36 Urbana, IL 61803-0036

RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED

M ost of you know that Grand Prairie Friends preserves and restores natural communities in east-central Illinois and pro-motes an understanding and appreciation of natural resources. But GPF’s opportunities and responsibilities are much

greater than that. Here are some important facts you may not have known: Grand Prairie Friends is a 501(c)(3) private non-profit organization founded in 1984. GPF has never had any paid employees. Our hard working summer seasonals have been paid through grants and donations. On occasion we hire contractors for larger tasks. We have roughly 50 active members each year. Thank you for your valuable time. We have about 170 financial supporters each year. Thank you, Thank you. There are nine GPF Board of Directors members each with specialized backgrounds. If you are interesting in serving as a

future director please let Jamie Ellis know. GPF has a strategic plan and several policies in place to help guide the group. Many of these can be found on our website at

www.grandprairiefriends.org. We partner with dozens of agencies and groups throughout the state. Last year our annual operating budget was around $24,000. GPF has 46 acres of fee owned land in six properties. Additionally, GPF volunteers work on dozens of other public and pri-

vate sites. We currently have no conservation easements but have the ability to provide easement opportunities. We allow public access to our sites. GPF is working towards land trust accreditation with the Land Trust Alliance. A process that will take many months.

GRAND PRAIRIE FRIENDS: THERE IS MORE TO US THAN THE NAME TELLS by Daniel J. Olsen

Like what you see? Let us know. Grand Prairie Friends now has a Facebook page. To join, please click the link on our website.