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This Team is a Winner BY JOHN ALLEN What makes a team successful? Good players, smart coaches, enlightened ownership and up-to-date practice and playing facilities all have a role, but many teams that have them still aren't successful. They don't always win. A successful team has something that's intangible: a common focus on a goal and the willingness to work together to overcome any and all obstacles to attain that goal. Illinois has such a team, but it's not the Bears, Cubs, Sox, Bulls, Blackhawks, Illini or Salukis. Our team is called Conservation 2000, and to borrow another sports metaphor, it appears to have the makings of a "dynasty." Known as C2000, the team was created in 1995 by then-Gov. Jim Edgar and the members of the 89th General Assembly in response to recommendations from the first Conservation Congress and the Governor's Water Resources and Land Use Priorities Task Force. Using data garnered by the Critical Trends Assessment Project (CTAP), these advisory bodies recognized that although more than 90 percent of state land is privately owned and more than 75 percent is farmland, Illinois is rich in natural resources that need to be protected. C2000 pools the expertise of three state agencies, private, public and corporate landowners, scientists and volunteers in a broad-based, long-term effort to conserve and manage Illinois' natural resources. Originally a six-year, $100 million initiative, C2000 has been so successful and has generated so much enthusiasm that the
The Streambank Stabilization Program is an important part of the C2000 effort.
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Using three $200,000 C2000 Ecosystem grants and S150,000 in matching funds from landowners, the Cache River Partnership obtained easements on more than 6,000 acres of marginal crop land through the Special Wetland Reserve Program in the last three years. This has resulted in a total wetlands restoration, with more than 70 percent of the acres planted in native vegetation. Legislature last year extended its life through 2009. "The way C2000 is designed now isn't necessarily the way we thought it would be five years ago," said Tom Flattery, director of DNR's Office of Realty and Environmental Planning, which directs the Department's C2000 efforts. "It's been a learning experience, but we went in knowing we'd have to be flexible in the design and implementation of the program. When we first started we thought there would be 10 Local Partnership Councils. Now there are 30" LPCs are part of the Ecosystems Program, one of nine components of C2000. The other eight and the state agencies that administer them are: Ecosystem Monitoring Program (Department of Natural Resources); Natural Resources Information Network (DNR); Review of Illinois Water Law (DNR); Illinois Clean Lakes Program (Environmental Protection Agency); Conservation Practices Cost-Share Program (Department of Agriculture); Streambank Stabilization and Restoration Program (DOA); Sustainable Agriculture Grants Program (DOA); and Soil and Water Conservation District Program Development (DOA). Depending on their purpose, the components are further subdivided into numerous smaller programs. Also, some of the components overlap, allowing the aforementioned pooling of state agency expertise. C2000 is basically a three-phase program: identifying areas that need preserving and/or restoring; determining what actions are necessary to affect that preservation or restoration; and following up with monitoring to make sure the actions are having the desired effect. Most of the programs are voluntary, locally organized and based on incentives, not state mandates. Like football, C2000 appears complicated at first glance, but is more readily understood when broken down into its component pieces: The Ecosystems Program CTAP identified 30 "Resource Rich Areas" scattered across the state that were large enough to have a properly functioning ecosystem, had potential for large-scale preservation or restoration, contained good examples of native plant and animal communities, and had the types of habitat that are becoming rare in Illinois. The Ecosystems Program provides grant funds and technical support to the 30 Ecosystem Partnerships that have formed around watershed boundaries covering more than 65 percent of the total land in Illinois. Febraury 2000 3
Partnerships are comprised of public, private and corporate landowners, recreation and conservation interest groups, local elected officials, businesses and others interested in preservation. Some partnerships have as few as 30 members, while others have more than 600. Since the program began, the partnerships have received more than $10.7 million in C2000 grants to fund nearly 400 projects for habitat protection or restoration, land acquisitions, cost-shares or easements that protect or restore habitat, scientific research and educational outreach programs. "The partnerships we've developed are this program's strongest point," Flattery said. "We're working together, not force feeding anyone. These landowners are often putting their own money into the program as a match, which shows they're good stewards of the land." Ecosystem Monitoring Program The Ecosystem Monitoring Program pairs professional scientists from DNR with private citizens to keep track of changes in the state's landscape. Five DNR field biologists are monitoring 150 randomly selected forest, grassland, wetland and stream habitats across the state to establish long-term data sets. They visit 30 sites per year for five years, returning to the original 30 in the sixth year. The goal is to determine what changes have been taking place in the landscape over a long term. A second part of this program is the Illinois EcoWatch Network, which consists of hundreds of volunteers, high school science teachers and their students monitoring rivers and forests, and soon, prairies and wetlands. Called "Citizen Scientists," these volunteers receive 6-8 hours of training in monitoring techniques, with follow-up practice and review sessions scheduled periodically throughout the year. RiverWatch is the oldest of these programs, originally established in 1993. Between May 1 and June 30 each year, the volunteers monitor a specific area of an assigned stream or river in search of 33 organisms, mostly aquatic insects, mussels, snails, clams and worms, that give an indication of the relative health of the waterway. They also record the depth, width, temperature, turbidity and velocity of the water, as well as the conditions they see along the banks. Established in 1996, Forest-Watch teaches its volunteers to identify and measure trees, monitor
Since 1996, the EPA has funded detailed studies on 15 lakes and awarded grants for six protection/restoration projects on those lakes at a total cost of $2.1 million. Seventeen bodies of water identified as "priority lakes" (high-quality recreation or aquatic resources and/or lakes with multiple uses) have received grant funds to control shoreline erosion or install aeration systems. A Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program in existence since 1981 utilizes private citizens to measure water clarity on about 200 lakes per year. They check three sites per lake twice a month from April to October to document changes in water transparency. They also look for zebra mussel infestations and take water samples that are analyzed at EPA labs for the presence of ammonia, nitrates, phosphorus, chlorophyll and suspended solids. EPAs educational efforts under C2000 include the Lake Education Assistance Program, in which grants of up to $500 are awarded to schools and not-for-profit organizations to fund educational field trips for teachers and students and atten-
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dance at workshops and seminars for teachers and lake managers. The agency also supplies the activity guides promoting awareness and appreciation of water resources for Project WET, a national water education program for teachers in grades K-12. Conservation Practices Cost-Share Program The Conservation Practices Cost-Share Program encourages farming practices that reduce soil loss. Farmers apply through their local Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) for C2000 matching grant funds to install terraces, filter strips, grass waterways, grade stabilization structures, cover crops, no-till planting systems, water and sediment control basins or any of six other practices that reduce erosion. Landowners receiving funding agree to continue the conservation practice for a minimum of 10 years. Streambank Stabilization and Restoration Program The Streambank Stabilization and Restoration Program helps landowners control shoreline erosion through vegetation and bio-engineering. The DOA, local SWCDs and the NRCS are partners in the program that provides both cost-share and demonstration project funds to sites meeting strict eligibility criteria. Landowners applying for stream-bank stabilization funds must be sponsored by the local SWCD and agree to continue the program for a minimum of 10 years. Sustainable Agriculture Grants Program The Sustainable Agriculture Grants Program offers funding for research, education and demonstration projects that balance economic and environmental concerns. Such projects are designed to show farmers how to grow crops profitably while causing the least harm to the environment. Soil and Water Conservation District Grants Local SWCDs provide a variety of services to landowners, including technical assistance in soil conservation, preservation of water quality, wetlands management, flood control and conservation education. The grants, program assists landowners in this work by providing funds that offset operating expenses. Conservation 2000 has been a success because it involves thousands of Illinoisans working together at the grassroots level to preserve, restore and manage this state's natural resources. It's a new concept, one that other states will probably try to emulate as they attempt to build their own winning teams.
A revolutionary no-till corn planter developed in New Zealand was purchased with C2000 funds for demonstration plots in Douglas, Coles, Cumberland, Jasper and Lawrence counties in the Embarras River Partnership.
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The 1,100 RiverWatch volunteers have monitored more than 600 sites since the program began, usually doing about 400 sites per year on about 300 streams.
Volunteers check for infestations of zebra mussels.
