Preserving Illinois’s vanishing natural areas 

Open lands are crucial for clean water, species diversity, recreation, hunting and healthy lifestyles, but Illinois has consistently neglected them. With less than

4 percent of Illinois’s land publicly owned for recreation or conservation, we rank 48th out of 50 states nationally in open space per capita.

Illinois also spends far less than other states to fix the problem. During the peak year of investment, Illinois spent $2.67 per resident annually on open spaces. In contrast, Ohio spent $4.36, Minnesota spent $5.76 and Wisconsin spent $9.80.

A legacy of loss

Illinois’s history of neglecting open spaces has had real impacts. The state has lost more than 90 percent of Illinois’s wetlands and 99 percent of its original prairie. Nearly 450 threatened and endangered species live within state boundaries.

Illinois needs to build parks and acquire and maintain ecologically sensitive lands before the cost becomes prohibitive or the opportunities disappear. Real estate prices in Illinois’s rural farmland rose

68 percent from 2000 to 2006. Acting now is especially important in the collar counties, which are among the nation’s fastest growing counties.

Moreover, we know what lands need to be protected in the state. Illinois’s State Wildlife Action Plan, top-rated nationally, provides a blueprint for habitat needs. The Natural Areas Inventory identifies the most important vanishing natural areas. What’s been missing is consistent funding to make land acquisition possible.

Calling for full funding

This session, Environment Illinois and our allies called on legislators to fully fund the state’s two on-going land acquisitions programs, the Open Space Land Acquisition and Development fund (OSLAD) and the Natural Areas Acquisition Fund (NAAF), which help communities build parks and playgrounds and provide habitat for the state’s most vulnerable endangered species. Although these programs have a dedicated funding source in the Real Estate Transfer Tax, Illinois consistently diverts those funds—typically allocating less than half of earmarked revenue toward open space acquisition.

Real results in the Legislature

For the first time in recent memory, this session was different. Although early draft budgets would have again under-funded these program, Environment Illinois teamed up with a coalition of over 30 other public interest organizations and successfully pushed for full-funding of OSLAD and NAFF.

This session, Environment Illinois also helped pass a resolution in which Illinois legislators urged Gov. Rod Blagojevich to include in the next capital budget funding for the Illinois Special Places Acquisition, Conservation, and Enhancement Program (iSPACE), which would fund state acquisition and conservation of open spaces. The resolution passed both the House and Senate unanimously and serves as a powerful statement of the Legislature’s intent to use a fraction of any capital budget to protect Illinois’s open spaces for future generations.