Restoring Volo Bog

At Volo Bog State Natural Area (SNA), a hard-working, collaborative team of volunteers and staff recently embarked on a pioneering restoration of Illinois’ only open-water bog. Prior, important work at this Lake County site has focused on the surrounding marsh and adjacent uplands, but this is the first time restoration is taking place in the heart of the bog itself. Sphagnum mosses, pitcher plants, calla lilies, orchids – along with countless rare fungi, spiders, butterflies, and other creatures adapted to this remarkable habitat – may depend on this new effort.

Some might ask: why the sudden need? Why risk upsetting the delicate balance of an ecosystem, where some say a single footstep can take years to heal over?

Melissa Grycan, Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ (IDNR) District Heritage Biologist for Volo Bog SNA, says the reason is simple: invasive species have been steadily reducing the diversity of life in the bog for years. It’s been painful for her to watch such a rich ecosystem being slowly lost.

For a long time, many believed the bog could best take care of itself if it was just left alone. But like the proverbial frog in hot water, we’re realizing now – just in time before we’re cooked – that the cost of inaction has been too great. Drainage, agriculture and habitat fragmentation have fundamentally changed the landscape. We’re increasingly recognizing that under today’s conditions some plants – “invasive” to some, “malignant,” “aggressive” or “bullies” to others –gradually destroy rare biodiversity by squeezing out the living tissue of a healthy ecosystem.

Some species, such as glossy buckthorn, are relative newcomers to the bog. Others, including winterberry, have been there for eons, but fire and other factors controlled them in the past. It is known, for example, that Indigenous people once burned bogs in many parts of the country, usually to promote the growth of fire-dependent bog cranberries and blueberries. Today, with the responsibility to safeguard biodiversity for the future, reestablishing that sort of connection with the land is a big part of what this group is about.

Recent plant surveys and studies demonstrate that our current management regime (almost no management at all) brings with it the loss of many of the species unique to bogs. Because bogs are so rare in Illinois, many of these species are found almost nowhere else in the state.

Plants, animals and ecosystems don’t believe in political boundaries. Further north bogs, fens and other peatlands are common. But drainage, agriculture, changes in hydrology, and habitat fragmentation have degraded nearly all bogs in Illinois. And much of the individual genetic material of the plants in Volo Bog can likely not be found anywhere else. These plants live at the far southern range of this habitat type. The climate is changing and warming in Illinois. Perhaps these hardy species, already adapted to the warmest, driest bogs in the country, may hold the keys to the future of this ecosystem.

Bogs and other peatlands capture and store carbon from the atmosphere in impressive amounts. When drained for timber or agriculture, dried by a warming Earth, or otherwise exposed to the elements that decompose their eons of preserved organic matter, they became terrible polluters. Action by conservationists in the 1950s and 1960s, (including the founder of the Illinois Nature Preserve System, George Fell) has protected Volo Bog from the threat of major hydrological disturbance and kept its carbon stores in the earth, for now. A dedicated group caring for its ecology may prove indispensable in protecting it from future threats.

Bogs are sensitive. Scholarship also shows that for the thousands of years before Europeans arrived in Illinois, humans lived atop, harvested from, lit aflame, and otherwise “disturbed” these landscapes. And certainly, humans and large animals walked across them. Despite all this, we have inherited biodiverse, healthy intact bogs. And so, stepping on them once again, but with an eye to protect, love and restore health to the ecosystem, and preserve what rare things still call the bogs home, seems reasonable and right.

Because of the uncommon chemical characteristics of bogs, with low nutrient levels, acidic water and peat soils, many of the plants and animals that live in bogs don’t live elsewhere. In some ways, bogs are uniquely resilient to the threat of habitat fragmentation: they have always been islands. Some scientists have described how “hunkering down” in these islands has led to the evolution of species unique to bogs.

We often hear about the climate crisis. An interrelated and perhaps just as existentially threatening crisis looms: the biodiversity crisis. Biodiversity–the richness of rare species of plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, and other living things– is decreasing at unprecedented rates. Species and gene pools which we run the risk of losing with inaction can play a role in slowing and reversing this trend. These efforts are ongoing at Illinois Beach State Park, Old Plank Road Prairie Nature Preserve, Nachusa Grasslands, Kishwaukee Fen Nature Preserve and many other places.

A new chapter is beginning as citizens engage in careful, crucial work at Volo Bog. Their work at Volo Bog Nature Preserve is under the supervision of IDNR staff and designed to implement the Illinois Nature Preserve Commission’s approved management plan and schedule.

Each species saved holds value beyond its ecosystem function, drawing down carbon, pollinating our food or preventing floods. We risk living in a world where there are simply fewer birds, butterflies and flowers that our children may have the privilege of knowing. Some say that saving these species is an almost spiritual calling. The life we share this planet with is an irreplaceable part of creation. To lose it through inaction seems beyond foolish.

The staff and volunteers doing this work share profound joy in learning the intimate details of the precious biodiversity we still have. And we are inspired by the honor of helping it to survive.

Volunteers experience the now rare pleasure of stepping off the boardwalk and onto a floating mat of Sphagnum moss. Some describe it as standing on the boundary to another world. Didder, a word now almost never used, describes the uncanny way the mat quivers underfoot. And to feel the diddering bog is a privilege reserved for those coming to help save those rare organisms that so dearly need us there.

Different versions of this privilege are available at Nature Preserves and natural areas across the state. All are welcome to join in this crucial work. Many preserves had been declining. The building of caring communities to reverse the losses is an historic effort!

References and Further Reading

For a fascinating profile of the ecology of Volo Bog as it existed in the 1920s, and for an early discussion of its geologic formation, see Waterman, W. G. “Ecological Problems from the Sphagnum Bogs of Illinois.” Ecology 7(3, July 1926): 255–72. https://doi.org/10.2307/1929310.

For an overview of the threats to bogs the world over, and for a brief summary of the argument of why it might be worth stepping on bogs if it helps us save them, see Moore, Peter D. “The Future of Cool Temperate Bogs.” Environmental Conservation 29(1, March 2002): 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892902000024.

Recent scholarship on what we should have known for centuries – that humans are part of these ecosystems, and “fortress conservation” is a new, potentially costly mistake – can be found in this excellent literature survey on Indigenous uses of bogs: Speller, Jeffrey, and Véronique Forbes. “On the Role of Peat Bogs as Components of Indigenous Cultural Landscapes in Northern North America.” Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research 54(1, December 31, 2022): 96–110. https://doi.org/10.1080/15230430.2022.2049957.

For a recent history on peatland destruction, with numerous and delightful forays into the cultural history of the world’s peat wetlands – including a description of other bog words like “didder,” see Proulx, Annie. Fen, Bog & Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis. First Scribner hardcover edition. New York: Scribner, 2022.

For an excellent summary of the ecology of midwestern bogs, see https://mnfi.anr.msu.edu/abstracts/ecology/Bog.pdf

For the most recent update to the planetary boundaries framework, see Katherine Richardson et al., Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries. Sci. Adv. 9,eadh2458(2023).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adh2458

More Citations
Laroche, Vincent, Stéphanie Pellerin, and Luc Brouillet. “White Fringed Orchid as Indicator of Sphagnum Bog Integrity.” Ecological Indicators 14(1, March 2012): 50–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2011.08.014.

Lavoie, Claude, and Stéphanie Pellerin. “Fires in Temperate Peatlands (Southern Quebec): Past and Recent Trends.” Canadian Journal of Botany 85(3, March 2007): 263–72. https://doi.org/10.1139/B07-012.

Scott, Alan G., Geoff S. Oxford, and Paul A. Selden. “Epigeic Spiders as Ecological Indicators of Conservation Value for Peat Bogs.” Biological Conservation 127(4, February 2006): 420–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2005.09.001.

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Jonathan Sabath works with the Volo Bog Restoration Project in his capacity as a field representative with Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves, where he has been since the beginning of 2023. In addition to Volo Bog, he works with communities at Superior Street Prairie, Illinois Beach State Park, Somme Prairie Grove and beyond. Working with communities across Illinois to share in the care of our nature preserves – our most precious and important wildlife and botanical habitats – inspires him every day. He would love to hear from you if the work at Volo similarly inspires you to get involved at your local nature preserve. You can reach him at jonathan@friendsilnature.org.

Stephen Packard is an American conservationist, author and ecological restoration practitioner active in the Chicago area. Packard began his career in restoration ecology in 1977 as a volunteer with the “North Branch Prairie Project” in Cook County.

Christos Economou, professionally, is a PhD research chemist looking for novel medicines to treat human diseases. After years of anguished reading about the global decline of biodiversity, a few years ago he was lucky enough to fall in with the North Branch Restoration Project’s Somme Woods team – and felt empowered that he might be able to do something about it. Now working on his “second PhD,” he spends a lot of his free time studying tallgrass nature, seeking out treatments for ecosystem diseases as a Somme Woods zone steward, and supporting newer stewards with Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves.

Heidi Gibson is a local volunteer and birder from Northeast Illinois. She’s been volunteering at Volo Bog since 2023 but is currently on hiatus while studying environmental science in Indiana. She looks forward to returning to the bog next summer.

Betty Sollman is a volunteer with Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves.