~500,000 Acres sound about right? Check out the KANKAKEE - IROQUOIS segment.
http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/cwe/rra/rra.html
I think Ranger Bob's tagline is appropriate here, but this gives a bit of
hope:
http://midwest.fws.gov/planning/kanknews1.htm
And to think it was all sand barrens and dunes to the north and east... And
the gateway to the massive prairies to the west... and they stuck Gary,
Indiana right in the middle of it. But, life persists... We saw lupine and
puccoon right along the turnpike behind a trailer park in Gary last spring.
So... May trip next year on the Kankakee (where legal of course)??? I'm only
4 hours away :)
-----Original Message-----
From: Crail, Todd
Sent: Monday, December 30, 2002 3:55 PM
To: nanfa_at_aquaria.net
Subject: RE: NANFA-- mmmmm...
Here's an abstract Scott:
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/index.html?ts=1041280678
Click on search, go down to "KANKAKEE RIVER A WATERWAY TO TREASURE" Seems it
was Sept 19, 1999. That might get you somewhere if you have the Tribune on
disc or microfiche at the library? Or maybe as a subscriber you have
permission to look?
You're right. Google is a mess on this one :)
If you can't find it, let me know off list.. I'll see if our friends who're
doing restoration there for TNC can lend us a lead. I'll keep looking for
the
prairie info too, as I have a similar interest in this. I wouldn't be
suprised if it were the largest marsh. Anywhere you have sand on top of
clay,
sand piles in places... And in between the dunes, the trapped water makes
for
an elaborate mass of rushes, sedges and the most fantastic forbs :) And
there's a whole lotta sand piled up there.
You do realize that one of these days you Illinois boyz are gonna have to
show
me the real prairie/sand barrens/dunes right? This Ohio 8,000 years older
remnant stuff we're fighting tooth and nail to protect gets old sometimes
("Whee... another 10' dune no body cares if it gets plowed over and
developed").
I wanna see some REAL dunes! And mountains of lupine... oh take me there! :)
-----Original Message-----
From: unclescott
Sent: Monday, December 30, 2002 2:46 PM
To: nanfa_at_aquaria.net
Subject: Re: NANFA-- mmmmm...
> Well Ray... What do you think? The Wisconsin Marsh water table about the
same? All we'd need is a backhoe and some cattle troughs :)
Speaking of former marshes...list thoughts on what happened to too much of
Ohio a while back made me ponder the fate of NE Illinois.
Read a book review (Chicago Tribune) of a new work on this area some time
back. The very favorable review noted that the region stretching from the
Kankakee River to former sand dunes of what is now Chicago and into
Indiana's Calumet region was a huge marshland, now drained, farmed,
urbanized, suburbanized and sometimes obscenely channelized. The review
contended this was the largest march in the country at one time - improbable
as that sounds. Indeed a word for wetland in the Algonquin languages is
Kankakee...
I can't remember the name of the book to recommend it. And it was going to
be on my wanted list.
Google searches give lots of works on Illinois by somebody named Carol Marsh
along with 640,000 other hits.
Would anybody, off hand, know what that work is?
Thanks,
Scott
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/"Unless stated otherwise, comments made on this list do not necessarily
/ reflect the beliefs or goals of the North American Native Fishes
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/ This is the discussion list of the North American Native Fishes Association
/ nanfa_at_aquaria.net. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get help, send the word
/ subscribe, unsubscribe, or help in the body (not subject) of an email to
/ nanfa-request_at_aquaria.net. For a digest version, send the command to
/ nanfa-digest-request_at_aquaria.net instead.
/ For more information about NANFA, visit our web page, http://www.nanfa.org