Volunteers preserving West Chicago Prairie

For a quarter-century, the West Chicago Prairie Stewardship Group has been maintaining a hidden gem.

Since 1983 the group of volunteers has been dedicated to habitat restoration at West Chicago Prairie, a 300-acre refuge owned by the DuPage County Forest Preserve District.

The roughly 100 volunteers spend a combined 1,000 hours a year helping keep the prairie as natural as possible. They were out there again on Saturday, removing unwanted brush.

"The thing that I get out of it is the satisfaction of seeing the work get done and knowing the difference we can make out there," group President Steve Sentoff of West Chicago said.

The group mostly removes invasive plants, including buckthorn, honeysuckle, gray dogwood and other brush and weeds. Volunteers also collect seeds of the native plants in the fall and redistribute them to areas that need more sprout.

"Gradually, we raise up the quality of the preserve," Sentoff said.

The group originated when area resident Mel Hoff was looking for a project and prepared a group to clean up the prairie. He was president of the stewardship until 2001, when he passed away.

"I've always been interested in volunteering for natural areas, and Mel had gotten a really well-organized group off the ground so it was good to be working with him," Sentoff said. "You could always count on getting significant work done and a lot of satisfaction from what you could accomplish."

The prairie, along Industrial Drive between Western Avenue and Downs Drive, is bordered by an industrial park and railroad.

When Sentoff started volunteering in 1990, he said he couldn't see across the prairie because there was still brush everywhere.

"Since then, we've pushed the brush back and now it really looks like a prairie," he said. "It takes work to keep it at that level."