North Park Village Nature Center Applies for Grant to Enhance Wetlands

Chicago’s North Park Village Nature Center will be applying for a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to enhance the wetlands on the nature center grounds.

If the grant is awarded, work on the wetland will begin this coming May and is estimated to last one year. Goals of the restoration project include increasing local biodiversity, educating visitors about the wetland and maintaining appropriate water levels in the wetlands. Ecologists will also focus on restoring the swale which lacks proper drainage along its length and sometimes fills up with too much runoff water from the streets. Swales are wet, marshy depressions through which water flows. Ecologists will also plant wetland prairie grasses and shrubs and remove invasive species like buckthorn.

A major component of the project will be monitoring wildlife in the area including birds, butterflies, frogs, toads, damselflies and dragonflies. In the past, a wetland restoration project that took place in 1996 resulted in significant increases in numbers and diversity of birds in the area. Ecologists were able to measure this change thanks in part to the Chicago Audubon Society, which has been monitoring birds at North Park Nature Center since 1987.

"The bird species numbers jumped from around 90 to 200 in the first year after restoration in 1996," says Claudia Regojo, director of the North Park Village Nature Center. "We hope a second restoration will boost these numbers even higher."

The grant specifies that ecologists plan on continuing to work with the Chicago Audubon Society to monitor birds before, during and after the wetland restoration project.