Meet Your Neighbors

Nicole Kamins: team builder

Nicole Kamins fell in love with the outdoors at summer camp in Wisconsin, and the natural world has inspired her ever since. After studying journalism and the environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she worked for several years in advertising. But her focus soon returned to nature. Ten years ago, she took an internship at the Chicago Department of Environment and started work in the Calumet region. Today she’s project coordinator for the department’s Calumet Initiative, a multi-organization collaboration to rejuvenate both the environment of the area and its economy.

“I asked to get involved in the Calumet project because I was fascinated by its challenges and opportunities,” she says. Kamins helps lead efforts to rehabilitate the region’s natural areas, reviewing restoration plans, coordinating the efforts of various partner organizations, and leveraging funding for projects.

Kamins is excited by the enthusiastic participation of all the stakeholders in the Calumet region. Government agencies, cultural and educational institutions, environmental groups, businesses, and area residents have gotten involved. “It is something to be proud of,” she says. “We’re a strong team.” She’s particularly honored to work with the residents, who have shown long-term commitment to making the area sustainable and healthy.

Kamins notes that there are some unique challenges involved in protecting nature in an area as degraded and industrialized as the Calumet region. “Instead of calling our work ‘restoration,’ we call it ‘rehabilitation’ because it is impossible to create presettlement conditions on sites that have ten feet of slag over 70 acres,” she says.

While the Calumet region may never again look quite like it did hundreds of years ago, Kamins believes it can be returned to health. She has found ways to make what she calls “environmental lemonade” in the Hegewisch Marsh area. “It has been incredibly rewarding watching the site changes underway,” she says. Since 2006, the Chicago Department of Environment and other partners have removed trash, cleared invasive plants, planted trees, and started prescribed burns. They’ve also found ways to make the most of some of the marks that people have left on the land.

“Off-road vehicles used to drive through the site, leaving ruts,” says Kamins. “We decided to preserve some of these ruts and plant them as if the were vernal pools to improve amphibian and reptile habitat.” She says the pools are now teeming with life.

— Stephanie Folk