Forest district pursues bad policies
As a former Cook County Forest Preserves employee, I feel compelled to express my profound disapproval of the corrosive, misguided policies euphemistically referred to as "prairie restoration" and "savanna restoration." I strongly support the efforts of the Urban Wildlife Coalition, Trees For Life and Natural Forest Advocates in opposing these ill-considered, ineffective policies, which are producing profound and perhaps irreversible degradation of our Forest Preserve holdings. These policies are proposed, elaborated, sanctioned and defended by policy makers with the personal conviction to be right at any price.
Consider the betrayal of our natural environmental heritage these policies represent. After receiving its charter, the very first property acquired by the Cook County Forest Preserves was Deer Grove Preserves. This property encompasses vast acres of woodlands, deep ravines, hills, a pinery. If early planners had wanted prairie and savanna, there were innumerable other parcels they might have chosen. Current custodians of these previous resources, seemingly, have been misdirected and completely lost their way. In recent times, the well-being and vitality of the Forest Preserves is of even more pressing concern, and has become ... a quality-of-life issue. The Forest Preserves, today, unlike the past, are islands surrounded on all sides by residential and commercial development.
In an age when the reduction of greenhouse gases are of global concern; when hundreds of thousands of children and adults in the county suffer from asthma and other respiratory diseases; it is not only counterproductive, but egregiously misguided to remove trees and woodland for the purpose of creating prairie. Trees in their carbon-cycle are untiring engines absorbing carbon dioxide from air and expiring oxygen to replace it.
Beyond this, who among us has not felt the ennobling pleasure of a walk through a wooded area and the peace, assurance, and serenity such areas engender.
William Eiden
Elk Grove Village