Caption
Illinois ranks 49th of the 50 states in the percentage of natural areas surviving. Only 2,300 of the original 21.6 million acres of tallgrass prairie remain today. Of the 13.2 millions acres of forest that existed in 1820, only 4 million remained by 1990. In McLean County, where I currently live, the situation is not much better. In a ten-year span from 1957 to 1967 timberland in McLean County was reduced from 17,000 acres to 7000 acres. In addition, Illinois has lost more than 90 percent of its original wetlands and currently has 424 state and 24 federally listed threatened and endangered species within its boundaries.
A short distance north of the cities Bloomington/Normal lies Merwin Nature Preserve, administered by the Nature Conservancy and the Parklands Foundation. A small remnant of a much larger community that once was.
Statistics from the Nature Conservancy and The Parklands Foundation