News

DuPage Votes Conservation

By a commanding margin of 65 percent, voters in DuPage County approved a $68 million bond referendum on November 7 to support acquisition of up to 600 acres of open space, to construct trails and other public use facilities, and to restore critical wildlife habitat.

This follows a 1997 ballot initiative for $75 million that allowed the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County to purchase and protect nearly 1,000 acres of natural lands. Over the past ten years, 24 referenda (county, township, park district, and municipal combined) to support land acquisition and land management have passed in the Chicago region totaling approximately $815 million. Moreover, not one county open space referendum has failed in that time. Now Kane County is considering a similar ballot initiative, says The Conservation Foundation's Brook McDonald, because the residents there want to protect open space before it's gone. The Conservation Foundation led the campaign to garner support for the referendum.

A poll conducted in 2005 to gauge public willingness to support another bond referendum found that “there is clearly a very strong and widespread sentiment in the County that preserving open space plays a vital role in preserving [their] quality of life,” the report noted, “and that preserving open space can play an important role in controlling overdevelopment. For these and other reasons, voters feel that action should be taken to preserve even more open space and natural lands before they are lost to development.”

The Forest Preserve District of DuPage County currently owns more than 24,000 acres of land.