Volunteers work to restore West Chicago prairie

Volunteers with the West Chicago Prairie Stewardship Group are continuing restoration efforts at a DuPage County Forest Preserve started by their founder almost 30 years ago.

Melvern Hoff was one of the first to remove nonnative vegetation and plant native seeds on the what is now known as the Truitt-Hoff Nature Preserve, located off Industrial Drive, south of Hawthorne Lane in West Chicago. Former Mayor Richard Truitt worked with ecologists to inventory species on the site as early as 1975, and the city and forest preserve district jointly purchased the land four years later.

On Sunday, 12 of the group’s members gathered for a “restoration workday” to spread native seeds throughout the preserve, in hopes to return it to its natural prairie landscape.

Volunteers worked in pairs — one raking, the other spreading seed. It could take at least three years for prairie grasses to take root and bloom, said Steve Sentoff, the group’s president.

Group members already worked through the winter months to cut down thick brush of nonnative species such as honeysuckle and buckthorn. They also cleared native gray dogwood, which has overgrown and is still 8 feet tall in some areas.

“We’d rather cut brush when it’s cold than when it’s hot,” Sentoff said.

He said he coordinates a fairly regular schedule with the forest preserve district for restoration workdays. The volunteer group, which he says has a core of 20 regular members, works to clear the brush and seed, while district crews burn the large piles of brush.

He estimates they put in at least 1,000 volunteer hours per year at the preserve.

The 313-acre prairie forest preserve is the former site of a stockyard owned by the Galena and Union Railroad, which became Chicago and Northwestern. It was sold for development in 1960, but went unused because of its wetness.