Our Habitat-building Project Needs Your Input
Water willow plants recently installed by Friends volunteers in the North Shore Channel.
Each year Friends of the Chicago River installs thousands of native plants along our riverbanks to create healthy habitats for animals, stabilize river shorelines from soil erosion, and increase the river’s resiliency to the impacts of climate change. Over the next year, thanks to a $630,000 grant from the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, we will be analyzing the entire Chicago-Calumet River system for the best places to expand this habitat-building initiative.
Please take the survey here.
To start this process, we are seeking your input through a survey. Your responses will help us understand how to best get people involved in the project and what information people want to know as we explore potential future planting areas.
By next fall, Friends will have produced a plan to determine where plantings and associated habitat will be most implementable. The plan would also identify locations for erosion control measures and floating habitat, where instream planting solutions would not be successful. The completed plan would allow Friends to have a “shovel ready” designed and ready so we can apply for next phase funding and implement plantings throughout the entire river.
This initiative builds upon the successful work Friends in partnership with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources began in 2015 through a $105,000 Chi-Cal Rivers Fund habitat enhancement grant that we used to pilot native plant species reintroduction. The work has continued through Friends’ popular Paddle and Plant program, through which with the Shedd Aquarium we have engaged volunteers to install thousands more plants in the Little Calumet River, the North Branch, and the North Shore Channel.
Established in 2018, the National Coastal Resilience Fund invests in projects that restore, increase, and strengthen natural infrastructure to protect coastal communities while enhancing habitats for fish and wildlife. Illinois became part of the federal coastal program administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2012.
