Monday I attended an event to announce the acquisition of Black Crown Marsh near the Lake-McHenry county line. The key purchase finlized last week was the IDNR buying 113 acres that used to be a private hunting club. The tract is home to nine threatened or endangered bird species, and features high quality wetlands, wooded areas, and rolling terrain.
The area around the Marsh is under severe development pressure, of course, and most of the woods and wetlands in the area seemed to have for sale signs in them. Event as we stood to celebrate the purchase with the protect landscape behind us, off in another direction heavy construction equipment could be seen finishing scraping the topsoil off of an adjacent parcel, soon to be another subdivision.
But that won't happen to Black Crown Marsh, thanks to the State of Illinois, which ponied up close to $5 million for the purchase, and its partners in the deal, the Lake County Forest Preserve District, and Corlands, a nonprofit land protection organization. Thanks to their efforts and their dollars, the residents of those new subdivisions, and the entire region, will have a beautiful piece of Illinois' natural heritage to enjoy.
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