Winter 2004

People Who Are Taking Nature's Pulse
By Katherine Millett | Photography by Rob Warner
> Overview

Elizabeth Plonka: Apprentice to Many
Eyes glowed through the dark at Elizabeth Plonka. She was crouching by a pond, alone, near midnight, shielded by a patch of sawtooth sunflowers. Frightened and fascinated, she stared back at the brilliant eyes. They gleamed, disappeared, and ignited again. She held her breath.

"Then I realized they were fireflies," Plonka laughed. "There were dozens more right behind those two, and I hadn't even noticed them."

Her eye for wildlife has sharpened considerably since that night as a rookie frog monitor in the West DuPage Woods. Now, trained by five years of monitoring butterflies, dragonflies, frogs, and woodland and grassland plants, she recognizes a green darner dragonfly by its flight pattern and an eastern tailed blue butterfly by the minute orange dots on the underside of its wing.

Plonka is one of the Habitat Project's most dedicated volunteers. Several days a week, she leaves the Lincoln Park apartment she shares with her husband, cats, and prairie plants for the parks and forest preserves of Cook and DuPage Counties. Her itinerary would dazzle a pollinator, as she flits from North Pond Nature Sanctuary in Chicago, where she leads plant identification walks, to West DuPage Woods in Winfield, where she works as a steward and monitors frogs and rare plants. Plonka hones her naturalist skills as a butterfly monitor at Belmont Prairie and studies grassland plants with Bob Claus in the outback at Willowbrook Wildlife Center. At Wolf Road Prairie she monitors dragonflies, and at the North Branch of the Chicago River, she gets her hands dirty on restoration workdays.

"I'll apprentice myself to anyone who wants to teach me," she says. "I love the scientific process, and I think interpretation is hugely important. You see the beauty of a functioning ecological community once you know what to look for, the beauty in diversity."

Plonka, 31, grew up in Westmont and Lisle, graduated from the University of Chicago, and earned a naturalist's certificate at the Morton Arboretum. Her deliberate commitment to the Midwestern landscape leaves her little desire to travel. In fact, she says, the mountain scenery of the American West makes her feel claustrophobic.

"Illinois is totally interesting," she says, clearly in her element as she hikes through a field of tall grasses and sedges, a pair of close-focus binoculars harnessed to the bib of her overalls. "There are millions of dramas unfolding here all the time. Our wild places don't involve large carnivores, but they're no less interesting than Africa's. Both Illinois and Africa have savannas," she points out. "The thing is, our savannas are more endangered."

Overview < Profile 1 > Profile 2 | Profile 3 | Profile 4 | Profile 5 | Profile 6 | Volunteers Needed