Earth Day 2017  is upon us on April 22.

Meet at the Prairie House to work on beautiful Wolf Road Prairie which will have many of its Spring plants blooming.  A workday is also scheduled for both the Wolf Road Prairie and the garden of the Prairie House from 1 to 3 PM.

Also, from 1 to 4 PM you can drop off Food Pantry items on the Prairie House deck for those in need.

As part of the work of restoring Wolf Road Prairie is to remove and manage the invasive species –  doing what nature did before the Europeans came to the Americas.  Prairie fires would sweep across sometimes hundreds of thousands of acres periodically.  This natural cycle of periodic burns were necessary to maintain the balance between prairies, savannas and woods.  This spring, as in previous years, volunteers participated in burns as well as removing invasive plants at Wolf Road Prairie.

E.J. Neafsey will be conducting our Woodcock spotting event on both March 31,  and April 8.

John Banaszak will be hosting the event on April 1 and April 7. Starting time just before sunset.

Meet at the Franzosenbusch Prairie House at 11225 Constitution Drive in Westchester, Illinois.

The new Franzosenbusch Heritage Project website is available.  The new site (www.fhproject.org) will include all the old material and over the next few weeks add some new material along with some re-writes.  Please be patient during the transition.

Franzosenbusch, a mid-nineteenth century community of German immigrants, was centered around the crossroads of 22^nd Street and Wolf Road.  The name Franzosenbusch is German for “Frenchman’s Woods”.  The different construction periods of the Prairie House depict more than 150 years of human history against the backdrop of Wolf Road Prairie Nature Preserve.

America’s Lost Landscape: The Tallgrass Prairie

January 22, 2017 – 2 PM at the LaGrange Park Library,  555 N LaGrange Road

This beautiful and informative film was crafted by some of the same people that worked with Ken Burns on many of his historic films.

“This is the story of the rich and complex story of one of the most astonishing alterations of nature in human history.

“Prior to Euro-American settlement in the 1820’s, one of the major landscape features of North America was 240 million acres of tallgrass prairie. But between 1830 and 1900 – in the space of a single lifetime- the tallgrass prairie was steadily transformed to farmland.

“This drastic change in the landscape also brought about an enormous social change for Native Americans, in an equally short term their cultural imprint was reduced, in essence, to a handful of place-names appearing on maps.

“The extraordinary cinematography of prairie remnants, original score and archival images are all delicately interwoven to create a powerful and moving viewing experience about the natural and cultural history of America.”