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Sangamon River Sweep
We had a perfect day yesterday for being on the Sangamon. We hauled two full canoes of trash out. Tires, a TV, lawn chairs, house siding, buckets full of broken glass, cans and bottles, a plastic barrel…..and there’s more out there we didn’t have room for this time. Where does it all come from!?!? The weather was perfect, we saw a couple bald eagles, lots of killdeer, a great blue heron.
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IDNR Volunteer of the Year Award
On August 17, 2024, Menard County Trails & Greenways received an Illinois Department of Natural Resources Volunteer of the Year award for the work we’ve done at the Lincoln’s New Salem State Historic Site Habitat Restoration Project! Since the spring of 2021 over 50 volunteers have contributed 973 volunteer hours over 128 days cutting & treating extremely dense and often very large honeysuckle bushes; and 195 hours hand pulling 196 garbage bags of garlic mustard. There’s more work to be done!! Let us know if you’d like to join the volunteer crew!
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Ways to celebrate Pollinator Week (June 17-23, 2024)!
Volunteer! Join MCTG members working at Wayside Park or on the square in Petersburg this week—or later this summer. We’ll be weeding, trimming, planting, watering, mulching, and eventually collecting seeds. If you’re interested in adopting a bed or a corner on the square, we can show you the ropes! Scout blooming plants now for later seed collection (see a blog on this subject soon!) Be a citizen scientist! Download the iNaturalist app and participate in the Illinois Monarch Project’s Bioblitz to document local insect activity. Create pollinator habitat at home! While the heat makes planting a little challenging this week, with ample water during establishment, natives will tough it out! Consider…
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Protecting the Earth for our Young Ones
We owe it to future generations to follow the advice Sara gives us all in her drawing. Let’s all pitch in for Petersburg on Saturday, April 27th. Meet at Hurie Park a 9:00 AM to sign-in and pick up supplies (trash bags, gloves, etc).
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Announcement, Community Service, Events, Native plants, Native Seed Sowing, Presentation, Volunteering
Planting Party for Wee Ones
Trails & Greenway is a proud sponsor of this family event organized by Birth to Five Illinois: Region 51 to introduce little ones to gardening with hands on experience of planting vegetable and native pollinator plant seeds. They will also learn about the importance of pollinators for our food supply. See the image below for event details and list of sponsors. If you’re interested in helping out let us know.
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Scary Invasive Plants in Your Landscape
Scarier than goblins, witches and ghosts are all the invasive plants we have planted in our yards and gardens! This Halloween we bring you a post about the horrors of invasive plants in your landscape. Some of our Menard County Trails & Greenways members have already been hard at work on the restoration efforts at New Salem in recent weeks. With the arrival of cooler temperatures, we’ll be scheduling volunteer work days soon! Be watching our Facebook page or your email if you’re an MCTG member for those dates. If you’d like to contribute to our forest restoration efforts at New Salem, but you can’t make it to our work…
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Riverfront Development
The Sangamon River shares a place in Petersburg’s rich history since the town was formed nearly 200 years ago. Its waters led to the arrival of a young Abraham Lincoln who later surveyed land that is now Petersburg. The river and the tracks along it shuttled 100,000 visitors in the 10 day mega-event each year known as Chautauqua on a site just a mile south of town in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Sangamon River was the subject of popular writings of Edgar Lee Masters as he described the beloved Sangamon River and the people who called the area home. Native Americans utilized the river for food, water…
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Prescribed Fire — New Salem Habitat Restoration Project
On April 10th the Illinois Department of Natural Resources conducted a prescribed fire on approximately 20 acres within the MCTG New Salem Habitat Restoration project area. Project supervisor, Ray Geroff, was the burn boss, with help from IDNR staff and MCTG project volunteers. Even though we had removed leaves (fuel) from the base of dead and dying trees, because of the low humid that day several large, dead trees caught fire and had to be cut down. Our hats off to the skill and hard work that was required to accomplish that task!
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Garlic Mustard Pulls at New Salem
Why do we pull garlic mustard? Each garlic mustard plant grows pods called siliques and each plant produces on average 22 siliques, each silique containing as many as 28 seeds. That is over 600 seeds on an average per plant, with some particularly robust plants producing almost 8,000 seeds. That’s why it is so important to remove the plant before it sets seed.
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New Salem Habitat Restoration Project Featured in Outdoor Illinois Journal
Outdoor Illinois Journal, the Department of Natural Resource’s online magazine, has published a piece about Trails & Greenways’ New Salem Habitat Restoration Project. Check it out here! More Project Information Our Projects & Activities
