- Barb Cattani: So I
wanna start by introducing

our keynote speaker,
Stephen Packard.

Stephen has led numerous efforts

to restore
high-quality prairies,

savannas, woodlands,
and wetlands.

He initiated the North
Branch Restoration Project,

a volunteer-driven project

to restore and
protect ecosystems

along the North Branch
of the Chicago River,

which was featured in the
book Miracle Under the Oaks .

His work led to careers as

the director of
science and stewardship

with the Illinois
Nature Conservancy,

and a teaching position with
Northwestern University.

He was a founding board member

of the Society for
Ecological Restoration,

which now has chapters
throughout the world

and is a preeminent organization
in this flourishing field.

Stephen currently collaborates
with a wide variety

of efforts to
conserve natural areas

and create a culture
of conservation.

Please join me in
welcoming Stephen Packard.

[audience applauding]

- Thank you, and
thank you Wild Ones.

Some of us in nature find
magic and fun, lots of it.

As Wild Ones,
we build community.

We the people
educate and restore.

Some of my friends
ask sometimes,

[audience laughing]

"What are you doing puttering
around in your garden

"when the Earth faces
such challenges?"

But in fact, we are only
beginning to understand

and doing the early experiments

of how to restore health
to the planetary ecosystem.

And I'll tell you some stories

and show you some experiments
from that struggle,

that struggle and that fun.

In the case of shooting stars,
we love beautiful flowers,

but we care more about the seeds

as we do ecosystem restoration.

The seeds from these
shooting stars,

which had been a rare
plant in our region,

take 10 years from germination
to flowering in the wild.

But once you get them
into the ecosystem,

the ecosystem is on the way.

This is Linda and
my house, garden,

little wilderness patches.

All the wild plants
we grow in our yards

are there for providing seed.

We need rare seed to
restore ecosystems.

We gather more than
200 species every year

and we put them in more
than a dozen different mixes

and put them out into the woods,

prairies, wetlands,
fens, sedge meadows.

Many of the seeds you can't
get very well in the wild

because they are way
down below other plants

by the time the seeds are set,

and hard to find in
large quantities.

Or like this
Bicknell's geranium,

they pop as soon
as they're ripe,

and you have to be
there at that moment

or you don't get the ripe seeds.

So as we do this
work, we get together,

we think about it, we plan
spring, summer, fall, winter.

When the seed season is
over starts our brush bash

and bonfire burn season, and
that goes all winter long.

And we look forward
to every season.

We like winter.

In winter, we do some of
our most profound work.

We think through the ecosystem,
what needs to be cut out

in order to provide the most
health as we move forward.

Our work events
are social events.

People bake delicious treats
and bring them to these events.

Would we rather be
inside watching TV?

Oh, please.

[audience laughing]

Winter is also a great
time to study history

and broaden the planning.

Most of Southern Wisconsin
and Northern Illinois

looked like this for
thousands of years.

Prairie to the west of rivers
and other fire obstacles,

savanna and woodland
to the east.

And we started with prairie.

In fact, the University of
Wisconsin Arboretum in Madison

was the first
place on the planet

where people truly engaged
with restoring health

to a natural
ecosystem: the prairie.

It seemed so rare
in the Midwest.

Less than one one-hundredth
of one percent

of the original
prairie survives.

The Amazon Rainforest,
50% surviving.

Very important, but there's
hardly anything left.

If we want to save the
genetic resources

of the temperate world for a
thousand different reasons,

we need to save the ecosystems
of the temperate world.

In this case, we
started on sown prairie,

two acres of high-quality
prairie surviving

in 100 acres of mostly
brush and weeds.

And over the last
40 years, we've done

what I will describe to
you throughout this talk

so that now most of that
hundred acres looks like this

or is on the way to it.

When we started out...

[audience applauding]
[Stephen laughing]

Go ecosystem! [laughing]

When we started out,

much of the site I'm showing
you looked like this.

Fun in this case meant
recreational vehicles,

which people meant no harm by,
they were having fun.

Most of the site looked like
this, mostly a few species,

mostly not part of the
native prairie ecosystem.

One part looked like this.

This turned out to be one

of the healthiest
parts of the site

because the kids
had kept it open,

it hadn't shaded over,

and endangered species
survived around the edge

where the brush hadn't
gotten too dark.

But now, 40 years later, this
exact place looks like this.

[audience murmuring]

It contains the endangered
bearded wheat grass,

it contains--

not 'cause we planted it,
but 'cause the seeds were

blowing around the site
from others we planted,

the federal endangered
prairie white-fringed orchid.

A great many rare and
endangered plants grew

where kids once had a
different kind of fun.

Here's what this
recovering ecosystem

looks like in early spring.

Here's what it looks
like in summer.

And much of what I'll
talk about takes place

in what survives as
the Midwest wilderness,

but a lot of what I'll talk
about to my Wild Ones friends

is in our little yard.

Here it is, the one
little patch of our yard

where there's enough
sun to grow prairie.

We don't do a lot of
prairie in our yard,

but about six feet across,
we have a bit of prairie.

Just to the northwest
of that, we have, or had,

woodland ecosystem
until the ash tree died.

You can see it mulched
in the middle here there.

How will these woodland plants,

which we're growing for seed,
do in full sun for a while?

Well, we're letting
some hazel bushes

and hickory trees grow,

and they're doing
reasonably well.

The flora of the open woodland

does okay in full
sun for a while.

Here, we're looking at
the whole front yard

and both of our neighbors'
houses on either side.

This is not a big lot, not a
big house, it's not a big yard,

but here and there, there
are the right conditions

for most of the plants we want.

If you look over to the left,

you'll see a little
hophornbeam tree,

and under that hophornbeam

there is Robin's plantain,
Erigeron pulchellus,

and a great many species that
we really wanna get seed from.

And on the very
bottom on the left

are the leaves of the
endangered Liatris scariosa,

savanna blazing star.

We'll hear more about
that later, too.

Here's the backyard.

It's wild and woolly.

Some of the neighbors were
a little nervous about it.

When one neighbor was selling
their house next door,

the real estate agent
came over and said,

"Your lawn is... what?"

And I said, "Oh, the lawn's
actually a little scraggly,

"the lawn part, we'll
mow that right up.

"But as for the rest of it..."

And I described it, and
the real estate agent,

and you can see the real
estate mind is at work, said,

"Oh, it's not unkempt,
it's special."

[audience laughing]

"I have a feature for
you, prospective owners.

"Your next house has a
yard that's special."

[audience laughing]

In this case, we
did not have much

purple Joe-Pye weed to
gather seeds of early on.

You can see it's more
than abundant here.

When we planted the seeds out

in hundreds of acres of
open woodland ecosystem,

we got more than we needed.

It's gone from our yard.

We do a lot of gardening
by subtraction.

When we don't need
the seeds anymore,

we cut it out and
given that pressure,

other stuff that we
wanna grow does well.

Some plants just don't
do well in our yard

in difficult competition,

so they grow a little
patch beside our garage

between a little walkway and...

We have many species of
rare and endangered plants

that thrive in here,

and we get seeds of
them year after year,

put them out in the ecosystem,

and pretty soon they're off
and running on their own.

This is our neighbor
Malcolm's yard.

You can see ours
in the background.

They have a very different look.

But those little red flags here

mark individual milkweed shoots.

We gave Malcolm a couple
of milkweed plants.

He put 'em right in his lawn.

He mows around them.

But they become big ranging
plants and are covered

during the rest of the
summer with monarch eggs.

And we grow lots of monarchs.

Here they are,
here's two monarchs

nectaring on the endangered
savanna blazing star.

They have a wonderful
time together.

The monarchs just love
the savanna blazing star,

spend a lot of time on it.

We also grow a lot of shrubs.

In the early days of
restoration,

there was a principle:

the prairie is most
threatened by woody plants,

cut 'em out.

We cut out a lot
of native shrubs.

We need to cut out a
lot of native shrubs

if the prairie's gonna recover.

Under modern conditions,

you have to burn an awful
lot to keep the shrubs down,

and some of the invertebrates

don't wanna burn
quite that often.

On the other hand, in the
savanna and in the oak woodland,

we want a lot of
shrubs in patches.

Much of the savanna and
woodland were open, too.

You could gallop a horse
through the woodland, they said.

But there were
patches here and there

which were critical
that many species

of birds, butterflies,
and others.

So this is American plum.

In order to get it to
germinate properly,

we sacrifice by personally
eating all the fruit.

[audience laughing]

And then some people have had
trouble germinating this one.

We just put it in dirt,
put it in the refrigerator,

let it stay there
over the winter,

and next spring
they've all sprouted

and we [coughs] plant them out.

In a four foot across
patch, weeded carefully,

we can get hundreds
of star grass bulbs,

hypoxis, and violet
wood-sorrel bulbs,

and a number of
species of violets,

some of which are
challenging to gather seed.

We gather a lot, but we
also take those bulbs,

harvest them, dig them
up, don't eat them,

put them out where they'll
be able to proliferate

so that formerly
very rare plants,

we now have tens of thousands
of yellow star grass

and violet wood-sorrel
plants blooming

in our restored prairies
and savannas nearby.

In the case of
some rare species,

this one is purple
prairie clover,

the purple one down underneath
the big compass plant,

it doesn't do very
well in our yard

and it doesn't need to
because we got it going

early in the restored area,

and we just gather
the seed and spread it

and gather the
seed and spread it,

and we have at
least 100,000 plants

of purple prairie clover.

So that was my introduction.

Now five little experiments

starring a couple of
species of orchids,

the quest for seed,
Bicknell's geranium,

and plant Guantanamo.

This is the small
white lady-slipper.

Had been endangered in Illinois

until we put a lot
of work into it,

and now it's doing well enough
to be taken off the list.

This one we found
did well for us

only when the seeds were planted
in a very high-quality system.

When I say did well, it was
not immediate gratification.

Having planted a few
times in a few places

and kept careful records,

we find that this one pops
up and blooms luxuriantly

after 10 years or so.
[audience laughing]

It spends most of its
early years underground,

not putting up a single leaf.

It forms a little
conspiracy with a fungus

and the orchid seed says,

"Oh, fungus tendrils
coming towards me,

"please don't infect my seed.

"My seed is so small,
it's just a few cells."

And then the fungus ties into
it and then the orchid says,

"Ha ha, I'm taking you over,
and we'll work together

"to build a nice, big root

"that after eight or ten years
is ready to come up

"and put up a flower,"
the first year very often.

But we found this
one only in a place

that was being bulldozed.

We found it at the last moment.

We raced out, dodging
people who thought

we weren't supposed to be there,

and dug up these plants.

We planted them in
badly disturbed areas

'cause we didn't wanna
dig up high-quality areas,

and they lived there, but
they refused to reproduce.

Later, we said "Let's
try, it's making seed,

"it's not reproducing at all,

"let's just move the seed
to the high-quality areas."

And they came up
by the hundreds,

so that was a wonderful
thing, except for one problem.

They grow in these, now, in
these little Guantanamo cages.

The deer eat every
one we don't cage.

Thank your hunters
in areas where

deer populations are imbalanced.

These are not people of evil

as they are portrayed
in some cases.

But for now,
generous people cage

every lady-slipper every
year, and they do great.

This is the prairie
white-fringed orchid.

Another one deer like to eat.

This one we found dwindling,
tiny little populations,

and what it needed
most, it turned out,

when we carefully watched it,
was hand pollination.

It was too rare for pollinators
to find it, figure it out.

Pollinators love it
once they figure it out.

Big hawk moths are the only
ones that can pollinate it.

But most weren't setting seed,

and so we learned how
to hand-pollinate them.

It's quite a process.

It's a very intimate process.

It's all sticky and you
get that little pollinium

on the end of a toothpick,

and this toothpick had
two pollinia on them

and it pushed one up against
this sticky, gooey surface,

the stigma of the flower.

And then it gets
all stuck in that

and you can see
it sort of is this

almost like elastic thing
as you're pulling back,

and it'll go back, "Sprong,"

and then you go to
the next flower.

For the moth, there's this
feature where when the moth,

if this is a moth tongue,

and it sticks itself
into the flower,

the pollinium is in there

and it gets stuck on
the moth like this,

and this is the part
with all the pollen,

and it flies to other
flowers on that plant

and gets its wonderful nectar.

And then after just
a minute or so,

after there's been time
to get to the next plant,

you can see this thing goes...

And now the pollen
is sticking forward,

and it's immoral of orchids

to exchange pollen
within the same plant.

They wanna go to another plant.

So that's how they do it.

So you learn these
kinds of things

in order to figure out how to
save these wonderful species.

Here's our graph of how many

white-fringed orchids
there were at Somme.

You can see from this experiment

that if you followed
it for merely

the first prothetic 20 years,

it wouldn't look like
it was doing much.

And we find many of
our plants do this.

It takes them a while
to figure out the site.

Maybe genes are exchanging and
they're finding combinations

that work with our
soils and our hydrology

and our predators or
whatever as a hypothesis.

We see so many graphs like this.

But now that there are 400
or 500 plants a year,

this site has more
white-fringed orchids

than any other
site on the planet

or any, one or two depending on,

who's leading the
charge that year.

And this is just because of

a few wonderful
people like yourselves

putting a lot of time into
it and figuring it out.

So seeds is a big part
of what we do all year.

All summer long,
we're gathering seeds,

starting with the
ones that ripen first,

then middle, then early
fall, then late fall.

Here we have seeds
of cream gentian,

a wonderful savanna species.

The three part, otherwise
spherical seeds in the middle

are New Jersey tea.

If you want that
one to germinate,

you need to pour
boiling water over it.

Don't ask me why, but that's
what the literature says.

And we trusted the literature,
but we tried it both ways.

No germination without
the boiling water,

full germination with
the boiling water.

Don't boil it, just
pour some over it.

Then the seeds in that
pod are of a species

that pioneer children used
to call sow and piglet.

And you can see those little
suckling baptisia seeds

inside their pods.

This one you chip with a knife

in order to get a
little coating off it

if you wanted to
germinate it right away.

If you don't care so much
about immediate gratification,

just throw it out
and the bacteria

will eat away at that
coating over the years,

and someday it will germinate.

When we gather seeds, all
kinds of people take part.

Little kids are sometimes
very competitive

and thoughtful and
smart and learn,

and a little kid
can learn to say

Eryngium yuccifolium
before you can turn around.

[audience chuckling]

And we get vast
numbers of seeds.

We also find that
for many people,

seed collecting is a stress
reducer, it's meditative.

We just do it.

You pare, you're thinking,
you're out with other people,

you might wanna chat with them,

then you might wanna get
away from them for a while,

and you're in the ecosystem.

One fellow during
seed-picking expeditions

used to come and
hide in the bushes,

we didn't notice he had
something under his jacket,

and quietly played the flute

[audience awws]
while... [laughs]

So this is culture, this
is building a culture.

Once again, we're thinking
about how to get seeds

and how some of them,
when you find in the wild,

you can get only a handful,

and to be effective,
you need to put

tens of thousands or
millions of seeds all over,

'cause many of them have to
find just the right place.

They bloom with
the right friends,

they bloom after the
right conditions.

And so one of the things we do

is we take the rarest,
most difficult,

the seeds that we need the most
of the most conservative plants,

the most important
ones to the ecosystem,

we give them to the
Chicago Botanic Garden

and their propagators
propagate them

and they grow them in
little pots like this

and give them to us, and
then we distribute them

among Wild Ones and
friendly gardeners

who promise not to
have any other species

of that kind in their yards,

'cause we don't want genes
from, god forbid, Wisconsin

or Nebraska to be mixing in.
[audience laughing]

We wanna save the
local gene pool.

And they grow these
plants, and they love them,

and they harvest the
seeds when they're ripe,

they manage to keep
an eye on them.

If something is
growing over them,

they know to look under
'cause it's in their garden

and they're watching it,

and we get a tremendous
amount of seed that way.

There are many species
that the propagators

at the Botanic Garden
were no good at growing,

couldn't get 'em, but one of
the volunteers, Rob Sulski,

said, "What's the matter
with these people?

"I can do this,
I'll figure it out."

And he tried a lot
of different things,

he did a lot of
different research.

One of his favorite
things to do is get seeds

and get a little soil
from around the plants

that the seeds came from,
grow them with great pains

until he's got a healthy plant,

and then he puts a
funnel around it.

It goes into the pot.

And then as the seeds pop or
fall off or whatever they do,

they all go down into
the soil in that pot.

And then he has maybe 100 little
plants growing in that pot.

And then he invites us all over

and we tease those plants apart
and put them in little new pots,

and then we can plant those
out into the ecosystem.

These people who are laughing

are having a profound
conversation,

looking down at the endangered
Bicknell's geranium.

In our area, we find
Bicknell geranium

only in one situation: around
the edges of brush pile burns.

We don't find it anywhere else.

And at least for our ecotypes,

a grass fire or a
woodland leaf fire

does not release the seeds.

Maybe for us it grew where
tree trunks fell over

and caught on fire and
sterilized the soil,

and then there are lines of
geraniums along the edge.

But this is a plant
that is in trouble.

We don't have enough
big, old, dead trees,

and we're not sure
how long those seeds

are gonna last in the soil.

So we decided to try and figure
out what to do with them.

This is Bicknell's geranium
reaching out of its cage.

We allow it to
escape Guantanamo.

When the plants
get a little older,

the deer eat 'em and kill 'em

and pull 'em up by the
roots when they're young,

and don't so much
go after them later.

This is that splendid
little flower.

This is that sprong
we saw earlier.

You have to get 'em
just before this stage.

But then how do we plant them?

And so we decided
to do experiments

of putting them in little
fires, under the fire,

on the edge of the fire, for
different amounts of time.

I encourage you
to do experiments.

They're fun.
[audience laughing]

But they're a lot more fun
if you keep careful notes.

For many years, we
thought, "Oh, this is so,

"what we're doing is so
significant, we'll surely

"remember all the details."
[audience laughing]

Maybe others have
had that experience.

So we kept careful notes,
we plotted, thought,

we gave the Botanic Garden
scientists our draft protocols.

They made wonderful
suggestions to improve them.

We did all these
many different tests,

and we found that we
basically learned nothing

'cause in every case
that they germinated,

we heated them for a short
time, for a long time,

right under the fire,
at the side of the fire,

just some coals put on 'em,

heavy burning logs,
they all germinated.

But we learned that,
and that was good.

Here's something we learned when
we used oak trees in the savanna

to mark corners of experiments.

We wanted the experiments
to be out in the open,

so we'd find a seedling oak
and we'd make a careful map

and put in other features
of the landscape,

and then we'd seed
within the rectangle

or quadrangle or whatever.

If we could find three
oaks, it was a triangle.

That's geometry.

[audience laughing]
And 40 years later,

we happened to notice
that these oaks

that we used as markers were
still a foot or two tall.

What happens to those
oaks if you watch them?

Well, we burn them every year
or two and the top burns off,

but oaks are
prodigious resprouters.

They resprout with great energy,
a great amount of protein

and the deer love it, and the
deer eat 'em down to nothing.

And they barely get a foot or
two tall before the next fire,

and then we burn 'em off again.

So we've started making

little Guantanamos
for our oak trees.

This one kept it from
the deer for a while.

Now it's hanging out,

so some volunteer has to
get to it and raise the cage

if we want it to keep going
and getting above deer height.

But we now have substantial
oaks that are off,

they've been launched,

and the cages can go and
guard something else.

This is what our
cages look like.

We get this stuff at Home Depot.

We have cage-making parties,
they're fun.

And they go around a
lot of different plants.

Prairie gentian is
one that we have

quite a bit of on some sites,

but we never seem to be
able to get any seed.

And for us, we found that
the deer were eating them

every time before
the seed formed.

So we put deer cages on them.

And then we found that the
voles were eating every one

[audience laughing]
before they were seeded,

so we invented vole cages.

These, they're a little
trickier to make,

but those nice little
things sticking up,

when you put 'em down into
the soil while it's wet,

when it hardens, they're
in there nice and solid.

And the gentians survive all
the way through seed season,

at which time we found
that caterpillars

were eating most of the seeds.
[audience laughing]

There's a sawfly
caterpillar that gets in.

But we get some, and with the
some we throw them around,

and the seeds, once you get
the seeds, they do great.

We also use the vole cages
on plum trees and oak trees

so the rabbits and voles won't
eat the bark off

during the winter.

We use big cages
in a few places.

This is a spot where
we didn't think

there was probably a
major impact of the deer,

but there was a small population

of the endangered wood
pea or cream vetchling,

Lathyrus ochroleucus,
almost gone from Illinois.

So we put this fence
around the whole patch

and that turned out
to be an experiment.

Looks like the deer
were having an impact

on the large-flowered trillium.

There it is, inside the cage.

I emphasize this
business with the deer

not because we don't
like them, we love them.

We like to see them,
we like to eat them,

we like them to be part
of a balanced ecosystem.

So three gravest threats.

It wouldn't be right
for me to give this talk

without saying, in
terms of conservation

challenges and realities,

there are really three
very grave threats

to our ecosystems these days.

Invasive species, overpopulated
deer, lack of fire.

Those are the three, and we
really need to think about them

and we need to
combat the problem.

I'll subject you to only one
picture of invasive plants.

Reed canary grass, teasel,
purple loosestrife in this case.

It's very important
to be on top of them

when just the first few
get there and get 'em out.

The reed canary grass,
we spray herbicide on it.

We don't know another
way to get rid of it.

We were too pure to use
herbicide in our early years.

We didn't paint the
stumps with herbicide.

Wonderful advisors told us,

"We'll advise you only if
you don't use herbicide,"

and I said, "Well, you
heard the mentors."

Well, the mentors were wrong,
and we found over the years,

many people would come and say,

"I'm interested, I'll be
a steward of a preserve,

"but I won't use herbicide,"

and I'm not one for
arguing with them.

I would say, "Thank
you, that's wonderful,

"use herbicide or don't,

"we can teach you
if you wanna learn,"

and we found, this is
another experiment,

that without exception,
every such steward

used herbicide or quit.

In other words, it didn't work.

On an area large
enough for conservation

of substantial populations
of plants and animals,

you can't do it without
herbiciding the invasives

under modern conditions.

Maybe someone can
prove it to be done.

We're eager to
see their results.

Same thing with deer,
I'll only show you one photo.

They're wonderful animals,
they deserve our respect.

Hunting and hunters also
deserves our respect, I think.

And fire, it's one
of many celebratory,

bright parts of the year.

Every year we burn a
part of the preserve,

and here are some results.

This is from 15
years of restoration,

carefully monitoring according
to a careful protocol

within the restored areas and
outside the restored areas

and similar habitats.

The bar on the left
shows after restoration,

the bar on the right
counterintuitively shows before.

The green is in the woodlands,
the blue is in the grasslands,

the orange is with
all the different

ecosystems put together.

Four times the
vegetation quality,

four times the number of species

per quadrant in the restored
areas compared to the others.

And initially we
just did prairie.

Later we discovered the savanna.

Later we discovered the oak
woodlands to be just as needy.

Here's one of our oak
woodlands when we started out.

Those pole trees are invaders.

They're native to the region,

but they're invaders
in the oak woods.

They utterly prevent the
oaks from reproducing.

The understory is
typically mostly buckthorn.

The buckthorn and the pole trees

kill off all the lower
limbs of the oaks,

which would tend to keep them

in a natural open oak
woodland or a savanna.

And when time comes for the
trees to meet their maker,

there are no young oaks.

In many cases, as in this one,

there's nothing
left but buckthorn.

So we started experiments.

Our first experiment
was we burned only.

We burned only for
a couple of years,

crawling around on the
ground looking for seedlings.

What's gonna come up?

Answer: Canada
thistle, dandelion,

[audience laughing]

reed canary grass,
there wasn't much.

So we started seeding,

and we discovered that
the seeds of the woods

are quite different from
the seeds of the prairie.

Lots of fruits.

I don't know why, someone
could research that.

Fruits are animal-dispersed.

Animals pick up big
fruits and fly with them

or walk around with them.

And that place that you
just saw looking so dismal

with nothing but buckthorn,

after a few years
it looked like this,

in early summer it looked
like this, in late summer.

It's inspiring.

Here's a study that's,
this is a partial graph.

It's now gone on since 1985.

Every two years we
sample the vegetation

on a transect through
this open woodland.

The green line is
quality species,

ones that we would
all love and cherish.

The red line is hated
weeds and aliens.

There was mostly weeds and
aliens when we started.

This project thrived
for a while,

but then there was
an explosion of deer,

then both the village and
the forest preserve district

that owns the land
started controlling them

and it looked like
the experiment

was on a good track again.

Then there was a
big political mess

and all restoration by
staff and volunteers

in three counties
was closed down.

But after time, that
was straightened out.

And look at that graph.

I don't have the
more recent years,

but the green line
keeps going up

and the red line
keeps going down.

It's inspiring, it's wonderful,

it's still in early stages
after 30-some years.

It's got a long way to go.

It's wonderful to watch.

We were there at the beginning.

I have every
confidence that people

will be watching it
50 years from now,

and I can't wait
to read the paper.

We don't have the shrubs.

There's a lot that is going
to become more complex

about this ecosystem,

but there's a lot
that we do have.

Ron Panzer, a
great entomologist,

studied this site before
we started and said,

"I don't think you've
got much to work with.

"It's pretty far gone.

"The Edwards' hairstreak,

"the commonest hairstreak of
the savannas is not there."

And four years later, he came
back and repeated his study

and said, "Packard,
you're a genius.

"We're finding white-fringed
orchids all over the place

"and the Edwards' hairstreak

"is the commonest
hairstreak on the site."

And of course we did
nothing for the hairstreak,

we just restored habitat.

Oh, that's the hairstreak.

It's a beautiful thing.

It's busy eating
some New Jersey tea

thanks to boiling water.

We also did a before and
after with breeding birds

in the large oak woods
where we got these numbers.

Surveys on 2002, 2006 before
the restoration started,

we found a total of 15 birds

on the transect
of eight species.

In 2016, 2017 after
restoration was well underway,

we found 88 birds of 26 species.

And the species we found

were species of
conservation concern.

The red-headed woodpecker,

the northern
flicker, a long list.

One that came into our woods,

it hadn't been
around at all before,

was the ruby-throated
hummingbird.

It eats a lot of
insects that maybe

other things don't eat so much.

It does a lot of pollination
of red-flowered species.

It just likes red.

The insects don't see
red, hummingbird does.

They are now a great
treat to watch.

The indigo buntings,
we didn't think of them

as woodland birds, but when
the woodland gets opened,

there are a lot of
buntings breeding.

She's the beautiful one and
she knows how to build the nest,

and they build it in
our open woodlands.

The bluebirds of
course came back.

The scarlet tanagers were
breeding in our savanna

when the savanna was
choked with brush,

and we drove them out,
we felt bad about that.

But there had been one pair
breeding in the savannas.

Now there are three or
four pair every year

breeding in the woodlands.

So you help some things
and you hurt others,

but if you're doing
good conservation,

overall you're
helping everything.

The coyotes came in.

They make a big
difference for the birds.

They control the mesopredators,

the raccoons, skunks,
opossums, weasels, that...

We like all those, but there
can be too much of a good thing

and without the coyotes,

those predators eat
most of the nestlings

of the black-billed
cuckoo and the woodcock

and some of the other birds

that nest on the
ground or close to it.

The woodcocks have returned
in such impressive numbers

that when I send my reports
in to Cornell every year,

I always get a note
saying, "You sure?

"You know, can we...

"How many do you say
in your area, we...

"That doesn't sound right."

And I say, "Yeah,
check recent years

"and come out and take a look
if you want, they're just..."

We find a ton of babies every
year, we find a ton of nests.

The woodhen starts
sitting on the nest

often when it's still snowing.

She's still on the nest
when the plants come out.

She sits right on the ground,
you can walk right up to her.

If you're tramping
around off-trail,

you'll step on them
or scare them up.

We encourage people to stay on
the trail during that season.

Here's a baby woodcock.
How many people can see it?

[all laughing]

Oh, I see people
pointing, that's good.

I wonder if I could point to it.

It's little eyes
looking up at it.

You could miss that if you
were just walking along.

And they won't move.

[audience awws]
And here it's a little older

and looks like it's
having more fun.

So I wanna end up
with a few comments

on the human community joining
the community of nature

and how that's a
beginning for the planet

of something very much needed:

a friendly, positive approach

that at least most
people can understand

of human beings reinhabiting,
re-participating,

re-becoming interdependent

in a knowledgeable
way with nature.

Many communities, here we're
at the Orland Grassland,

great numbers of regular
everyday citizens

come out and learn to gather
the seeds that are needed.

We prep the seeds,

lots of people get expert
at different types,

they learn how to teach
people how to do it.

When we put the seeds out,
everyone feels very generative,

and it's a wonderful feeling.

Here we are at Spring Creek,

here we're at the
Orland Grassland.

Kids, we used to be careful

not to give them
the rarest plants.

We found often, they
take the most care.

It's a personal area,
you have to pick the kid,

but we want them really
widely distributed.

A machine cannot do it as well
as these people can do it.

It's another seasonal
highlight, seasonal ritual.

After the seeds are out,

very often the
organizers celebrate

with someone's backyard
or here around a bonfire.

A few people cut brush

while other people
put the seeds out.

And it's part of
building community.

Once the seeds are out, we
start cutting brush again,

we invite the schools to come,

many kids who otherwise
don't ever see nature

see it, like it, it
has an impact on them.

Many families come.

Some kids grow up in
families of stewards.

And it's just a
valuable thing for them.

Every year for
thousands of years,

cultures that
understood the ecosystem

held bonfire festivals
on the solstice,

at New Year's, at midwinter,

to celebrate the
coming of spring.

You name it, there's an
excuse, hold a bonfire.

We, for ours at the Somme
Preserves in Northbrook,

invite a bagpiper every year
who leads a procession out.

400 neighbors come,

many of whom hadn't been
in the woods before,

to participate in
a wonderful event.

They're close to the
bonfire when it starts,

and then they move back

and back and back and back.
[audience laughing]

Once again, people
bake wonderful treats

and we have a great time.

And as a result of work
like the Wild Ones is doing

and these people are doing,

more and more
government agencies

are recognizing that
ecosystem restoration

is an important part of
the mission of the agency.

Cook County is now appropriating
millions of dollars annually

for restoration by contractors.

Young people, here they are,

a bunch of people being
paid to do restoration,

are finding careers
in the field,

which is a wonderful thing,

having professionals
is a wonderful thing.

But it will never
replace the volunteers

who are the participatory
democracy heart

of conservation,
environment, ecology.

Some of us are both
professionals and volunteers.

We plan for the future,
we pay attention to kids

because they are the
voters of the future,

and for their own benefits.

It enriches peoples' lives.

And my favorite slides to
end on, this is a butterfly

that's almost extinct in
Illinois, the silvery blue.

It eats this endangered plant,

the wood pea, cream vetchling
or the veined vetchling.

It depends on us as
stewards for its habitat.

It has no chance with
climate changing.

It needs robust
populations, large habitats.

Here's the caterpillar
of that plant,

and if you look
closely you can see

it is attended by ants.

And the ants and
the caterpillar have

an ancient relationship.

The ants protect the caterpillar

from parasites and
predators of certain kinds,

and the caterpillar in
return waits for the ants

to stroke its back
with their antennae,

at which it exudes up
a droplet of a food

that the ants find irresistible
and possibly important.

Does it have vitamins?
Is it intoxicating?

[audience laughing]

We don't know, but we know that

these plants and animals
depend on each other

as all plants and animals,

and we, the humans who
breathe the same air

that the animals and plants
exchange, critical for us.

So I wanna express appreciation

for everybody who
organized the conference,

for everybody who
does this work,

for the scientists
who are discovering

new components for us to
incorporate every day,

contractors, home
gardeners, everybody.

It's a wonderful world and
we're making it better.

Thank you.

[audience applauding]