Only 18 high-quality acres remain of Illinois' endangered dry gravel prairie. Now, Chicago-Rockford International Airport plans to destroy Bell Bowl Prairie, which contains five acres of this precious biome, as part of a planned expansion
, a botanist with the Illinois Natural History Survey. “It bothers me to no end that a site like this could be destroyed.”
A view of Bell Bowl prairie, a unique landscape that faces imminent destruction due to the expansion of the Rockford Airport. But many are fighting back to save it.The pollinator community is equally diverse. On another prairie in a nearby county,, a biologist with Cook County Forest Preserve District, has found up to a hundred bee species in an area less than half the size of Bell Bowl. At that managed site, only 70 percent or less of the species are the same from one foot to the next.
Even the small remaining sections of prairie “should be worshipped in and of themselves,” revered for their 8,000-year ecological history, says Rericha-Anchor. The state government seemed to agree when, last September, the governorLast summer, Rockford residents noticed excavating equipment at the airport and notified the Natural Land Institute and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Leigh and representatives from the Natural Land Institute asked to meet with airport officials and pushed them to redesign the expansion but got little traction. The institute filed lawsuits in October to delay construction, saying the original environmental assessment completed by the airport was inadequate.
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