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Cook County President Lifts Restoration Moratorium

In early October, ten years after Cook County Board President John Stroger summarily imposed a moratorium on habitat restoration activities in the Cook County forest preserves systemwide, current Board President Bobbie L. Steele issued an executive order lifting the few restrictions remaining on a handful of sites. Conservation advocates, including Friends of the Forest Preserves, Friends of the Parks, Audubon-Chicago Region, the North Branch Restoration Project, The Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, the Chicago Area Mountain Bikers, and many others had long sought to have sound land management practices adopted throughout the preserves.

President Steele's order signaled widespread recognition that, as she stated, "research by the District's own professional ecologists and by scientists throughout our region shows that without active management, the biological diversity of our natural lands is in decline." Steele noted, too, that the Community Advisory Council, convened ten years ago by President Stroger, had reviewed and approved management plans for priority sites throughout the forest preserve system and had approved adoption of all management activities in the forest preserves. "Our professional resource managers must have the full array of tools at their disposal to protect and restore our woods, wetlands, grasslands and streams," Steele stated in her executive order. She also pointed out that the Forest Preserve District of Cook County had adopted a variety of measures, including notification by mail and posted signs, to inform preserve neighbors and users about land management activities, including controlled burns and the application of herbicides.

"These practices have been endorsed by land management agencies across the country at every level of government, including local park districts, neighboring forest preserve and conservation districts, and the National Park Service. The techniques of managing natural areas are based on science and the judgment of experienced ecologists and land managers.

"When land managers are able to implement these best practices," Steele concluded, "controlling invasive species, returning fire processes, restoring historic water flows and balancing the populations of plants and animals — nature flourishes; birds and butterflies and wildflowers return in abundance making for a better quality of life for people and all other creatures."

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