Restoration starts on glacial lake

A glacial pothole that remains a snapshot of the Lake County landscape as it appeared 200 years ago, will get some attention to keep it that way.

Workers with chain saws Monday began mowing down buckthorn, an invasive species, to start the five-year Cranberry Lake restoration project in Hainesville.

"We're doing buckthorn and honeysuckle -- it crowds out the native plants that would grow," said Georgeann Duberstein, a retiree who moved to a home on the lake five years ago and has become self-schooled on the restoration process.

"This is the beginning of the project. There's certainly more things we can do as our budget becomes bigger."

The village-backed project is designed to enhance an already valuable resource and is unique in that it is locally driven. At about 17 acres, the circular lake west of Hainesville Road, south of Washington Street, is considered small but special.

"There are a lot of rare plants and animals there," said Ken Klick, a restoration ecologist with the Lake County Forest Preserve District. "What we hope is to preserve and protect what's there now."

The half-inch tall bladderwort, for example, grows in shallow water or mud. It's extremely rare in the Chicago area, according to Klick.

"It's unique in the plant world because it eats animals," he said.

Geologically, Cranberry Lake is considered a kettle lake. It was formed 16,000 or more years ago when a chunk of ice fell off a glacier and was covered over by earth. When it melted, a small crater filled with water was left behind.

The area graduates from open water to lakeside plants to sedge meadow to woodlands, including bur oak trees thought to be more than 200 years old. Animals such as turtles, for example, need the geographic variety because they live in and around water, but lay their eggs on land.

While many natural areas have vanished over the years as the suburbs developed, protections for Cranberry Lake were put in place prior to development of the area in the 1990s.

More than 500 households pay annually into a special service area designed to provide for maintenance and other aspects of the lake, which is encircled by a path. Those and village funds will be used for the $64,000 contract with Native Restoration Services of Island Lake.

Duberstein and her husband, George, have been pushing the issue.

The work includes herbicide treatments in spring for the invasive species. Future work could include a controlled burn with subsequent reseeding with wildflowers and other plants and the installation of homes for mosquito-eating purple martins and bats, she said.

"It's meant a great deal to see this begin," she said.