Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Daily Southtown
Letter to the Editor

Cook County Board President Bobbie Steele deserves great credit for her fine leadership in ending the 10-year moratorium on ecological stewardship in the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. The moratorium, which was lifted in 1997 for all but five sites along the North Branch of the Chicago River, had a destructive effect on these preserves.

District staff and volunteers who had spent as many as 20 years restoring these sites to good health had to watch on the sidelines as much of their hard work was gradually lost. Native plants and animals declined. Forest Preserve commissioners heard increasingly from people who visit the preserves that wildflowers and animals were disappearing as their habitat was slowly destroyed by invasive brush.

President Steele gave strong direction to district staff on Oct. 3 "to adopt and implement broadly-accepted best management

Bruce Boyd, Executive director, The Nature Conservancy of Illinois
Benjamin Cox, Executive director, Friends of the Forest Preserves
Jack Darin, Director, Illinois Chapter of the Sierra Club
Joyce O'Keefe, Deputy director, Openlands
Stephen Packard, Director, Audubon-Chicago Region
Erma Tranter, President, Friends of the Parks