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People of all ages are welcome to attend these FREE events to enjoy active exploration and guided activities. Check our website for registration and more details about these adventures! These events are made possible by an Illinois American Water Environmental Grant, our partners at The Alpine Shop, and an outdoor grant from MTN Dew.

Step into Fountain Creek at Baebler Educational Farm (near Waterloo) and explore riffles, pools, and root mats. Use a net to collect samples of tiny organisms, called macroinvertebrates, from these habitats. Staff will help you identify the organisms in your net and learn about their connection to water quality and stream health with water testing kits.

Join HeartLands Conservancy and the Alpine Shop for a paddling trek on the Kaskaskia River! Kayaks and safety gear will be provided for a leisurely, beginner-level paddle down the river. Along the way, identify wildlife in the river corridor, learn about the Kaskaskia River watershed, and determine how water quality impacts recreation on the river.

Fishing Day by IDNR

Let’s go fishing and learn about pond wildlife, large and small, at the Exploration Garden at Clinton Hills Conservation Park in Swansea. See tiny organisms that live in pond water and try to catch (and release) a fish. Bring your fishing pole or use one we provide and learn the basics of fishing.

Arlington Wetlands is buzzing with life. Spend an evening learning about wetlands and the variety of life they support. Participants will conduct a Bio-Blitz to inventory species and learn about fireflies as the sun sets over the wetland and sand prairie.

Instead, for June and July, HeartLands is asking for your donations to support ongoing restoration and stewardship at Arlington Wetlands - a unique wetland and prairie habitat just outside of Collinsville near I-255. What’s more, the Illinois Clean

TRIPLE the first $7,000 in donations! That means, if we raise $7,000 for Arlington Wetlands, the foundation will contribute $21,000. Anything raised over that amount will go to HeartLands’ other conservation and community programs in southwestern Illinois.

Before Europeans settled in the American Bottom (the historic floodplain of the Mississippi River), the Mississippi River twisted and turned through its entire floodplain, from bluff to bluff. The river resembled a loosely braided rope, much different than the broad and deep Mighty Mississippi we are familiar with today. Settlers drained the wetlands and lakes for agriculture, built levees and canals to protect property from floodwaters, and channeled the river for shipping. All of this nearly erased the historic natural landscape and functioning ecosystem. However, little clues remain about this past landscape. Remnants of the Mississippi River channels, now lakes, remain in the area. Horseshoe Lake, for example, is the largest remnant river lake in the area. Arlington Wetlands is another. Today, the 80-acre Arlington Wetlands is a work in progress. There are many types of habitat on the site for visitors to explore, including wetland, floodplain forest, and sand prairies. The wetland is the heart of the site. Stretching the length of the property, but only reaching depths of about 5-6 feet. In the summer, the lake becomes completely covered with water-loving vegetation like American lotus, rushes, and water lilies, while buttonbushes In 2012, HeartLands Conservancy purchased and restored Arlington Wetlands with funding from Conoco Philips, Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation, Illinois EPA, and US Fish and Wildlife Service.

The functioning habit was turned over to Madison County (and formerly the Collinsville Area Recreation District) for permanent public recreation and stormwater management.

To donate (and triple your donation) to Arlington Wetlands, see the enclosed envelope or visit our website to donate under the support tab.

crowd the bank. Arlington becomes a great resting place for thousands of migratory birds, like ducks, geese, swans, herons, and smaller songbirds. In the water, frogs, turtles, and sometimes beavers can be spotted on warm summer days. One of the highlights of visiting Arlington Wetlands is crossing the floating boardwalk. Here visitors can get a unique and up-close view of the center of a wetland. Surrounding the wetlands is a floodplain forest, full of cottonwoods, persimmons, and oaks. This is where visitors could see deer, turkey, rabbits, birds, and turtles. The sand prairies are the first thing many people see when they arrive at Arlington Wetlands. As you take the path from the parking lot to the floating boardwalk, you meander through a small section of sand prairie, and again on the other side of the wetland, many paths wind through this habitat. Sand prairies are one of Illinois’ rarest landscapes. Only 2,400 acres of sand prairies remain in Illinois, an area about the size of SIUE. Some of the unique species that could be found in the sand prairie include Tiger salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum), Bobwhite Quail (Colinus virginianus), Purpleheaded sneezeweed (Helenium flexuosum), Eastern prickly pear (Optotia cespitosa), Ohio spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis), and ornate box turtles (Terrapene ornata ornata). In addition to being a great natural area, habitat, and home for wildlife, and a nice recreation area, all of these habitats together provide another benefit to human life. Arlington Wetlands acts like a sponge during significant rains. It can hold a lot of stormwater and then slowly release it over many days. This helps reduce flooding in neighborhoods downstream. While slowing and storing the stormwater, the wetland filters pollutants out of the water, helping to improve water quality. So far, volunteers have been working hard removing non-native Bradford Pear (Pyrus calleryana) from the sand prairie. They have successfully cleared a small section in the front. Also, partners from the Illinois Forestry Association, through a grant from the Illinois Forestry Development Council, used a forestry mower to clear honeysuckle from the forest on the east side of the wetland. However, much work remains to remove invasive plants from the rest of the site. If not removed, these invasive species will crowd out the plants that the animals need to survive. The invasive plants can also eventually cause the wetland to lose function as floodwater storage. In addition to removing invasive species, the prairie is overdue for a prescribed burn. Prescribed fire helps control non-native plants and encourages native plants to grow. Some native species need fire to survive. HeartLands Conservancy may even need to plant native wildflowers, grasses, and sedges where non-native have been removed to complete this restoration project. We can’t do this alone. In addition to matching cash donations, the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation will also match volunteer hours! If we can log 400 volunteer hours at Arlington Wetlands, we will receive an additional $4,000 from the Foundation for restoration. As such, we will be planning several volunteer dates throughout the remainder of the year. A group meets on the first Friday of each month, from 9-11 am to volunteer. They always welcome new faces to help a great cause. Want to experience Arlington Wetlands up-close? Join us in the evening on July 17th for Discover

Arlington Wetlands. We will explore the wetland and walk among the fireflies in the sand prairie. More details are available on our website.

The program has prevented hundreds of tons of sediment from entering the drinking water source for the city. A vital member of these projects is Ryan Hummert, the Natural Resource Manager for Highland. In addition to managing Silver Lake, Silver Lake Park, and the watershed, Ryan serves as Highland’s Arborist. Ryan was gracious enough to talk to us about the watershed and how residents can be involved.

A: Silver Lake and the Silver Lake watershed is one of the most unique and vast natural resource areas in Illinois, in my opinion, as it not only provides the City of Highland residents their drinking water but also offers so many benefits to farmers, recreation enthusiasts, hunters, fisherman, forestry enthusiasts and so on. We, the City of Highland, take our role in protecting and harnessing those natural resources very seriously and take pride in offering programs that residents and nonresidents of Highland can enjoy daily. We strive to keep our waterways clean and actively work with landowners around the lake to incorporate best management practices on their properties, which benefits everyone as a whole.

A: Some of the recreational opportunities which can be found in and around Silver Lake are: canoe/ kayaking, boating, fishing, archery hunting, archery target shooting, waterfowl hunting, 6-mile forested natural trail system for hiking & biking, disc golf, volleyball courts, and pavilion rentals.

A: I’ve been with the City in my role as Natural Resource Manager for 13 years. In my time here, I have seen a vast transformation in water clarity and overall water quality in the lake, primarily due to the partnership programs we have been fortunate enough to incorporate into the lake and the watershed. HeartLands Conservancy, the federal and state EPA, the Corps of Engineers, IDNR Fisheries, local engineers and contractors, and local landowners have all been instrumental in developing and implementing best management practices. We are seeing a drastic reduction in erosion and farm field runoff. Water clarity has never been better.

A: Past projects include various key benefits such as shoreline stabilization, grass waterways, livestock exclusionary ponds, wetland ponds, re-building of islands within the lake to slow the flow of sediment, forestry invasive species control around the lake, basins/ sediment traps in farm fields, and most recently fish rearing pond which will allow the city to raise and stock our fish based on the fishery needs. Over the past couple of years, we have had great success partnering and working with local farmers and landowners to identify areas around the lake in which management practices could be applied. This has been a gratifying process for me personally because private landowners are willing and ready to improve their land to protect the flow of water/ sediment downstream. There are grant opportunities and project costshare available each year through the

NRCS, EPA, Heartlands Conservancy, and the City of Highland, which allow private landowners in the watershed to partner with these organizations to greatly reduce the costs of improving their land, which is a win-win for all parties involved.

A: We are very fortunate to have great local landowners in the Silver Lake Watershed who practice best management practices. Some of these landowners create buffer areas for reduced runoff, grass waterways, no-till planting practices, water retention basins in their farm fields, WASCOB installation in drainage areas, and cover crop applications. All of these strategies are great ways to protect their land as well as the land next to them and on down the line. Landowners in the Silver Lake Watershed can contact the NRCS, HeartLands Conservancy, or the City of Highland if they have any questions or would like someone to look at their property to see if it meets the guidelines for future cost-share programs. See a virtual tour of some of the recently installed projects at Highland Silver Lake on June 10, 2021 at 6pm. See page 20 and website for details.

When many people think of infrastructure, images of pipes, highways, storm drains, and concrete ditches often come to mind. Although necessary for cities to function, this “grey” infrastructure comes at a cost to the health of streams, rivers, and lakes. Rainwater cannot be filtered or penetrate through these hard surfaces before reaching streams, resulting in flash flooding and pollution of our region’s water. But what if there was an infrastructure that captured water and allowed it to be absorbed in the ground, increased the energy efficiency of buildings, and promoted economic growth. That would seem like something cities would like to invest in, right? Well, that infrastructure is called green infrastructure. These rainwater management practices can be installed in any community, neighborhood, or business and include basins, bioswales (i.e., landscaped ditches), rain gardens, green roofs, community forests, rain barrels, permeable pavement, and stream restoration. All of these practices are designed to capture rainfall and slow or prevent water from flowing into drains or ditches. Green roofs, rain barrels, and rain gardens can all be used together as a system. The plants and soil of the green roof absorb the initial wave of rain. Extra rain can be directed to rain barrels attached to the downspouts. After the barrels fill, any remaining water can finally be filtered through the rain garden, which is filled with native deep-rooted vegetation. Community forests, permeable pavement, basins, and bioswales can be used in a similar system on a larger scale to help capture and filter rainwater. Beyond ecological benefits, these green practices have significant economic benefits. Green infrastructure can be an attractive landscape when properly maintained. Green infrastructure improves property values by 18% and saves energy consumption by providing shade and insulation to buildings. By using these natural practices, communities can control stormwater AND increase greenspace - a considerable benefit to the people of our region. That seems like a plan everyone can get behind.