State Acquires Property for New State Habitat Area

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) recently acquired 160 acres in Chatsworth Township which has been established as the Chatsworth State Habitat Area (SHA). The first public hunting area in Livingston County, the Chatsworth SHA will help meet the high demand for hunting opportunities in northeast Illinois. With the addition of this acreage, nearly 900 acres of grassland exist within a 2.5-mile radius of Chatsworth SHA. That much grassland in a relatively small area provides great habitat for a variety of grassland birds.

The Chatsworth property lies within the Grand Prairie Natural Division of Illinois. Bison once roamed the former vast tallgrass prairie plain of central and east-central Illinois. Thousands of greater prairie-chickens boomed on historic leks, and teams of waterfowl and shorebirds nested in once numerous marshes and potholes. Today the region is one of the most productive agriculture areas of Illinois.

The Grand Prairie Natural Division is among the priority regions addressed by the Farmland and Prairie Campaign of the Illinois Wildlife Action Plan. One initiative of the Campaign is to establish an additional 1 million acres of treeless grasslands across the state that are larger than 0.5 miles wide and provide ecological connectivity among grasslands and other habitat patches.

Vernon and Grace Hummel purchased the 160 acres now identified as the Chatsworth property about 1947, paying $140 per acre. Eventually the property was passed to his son, Boyd Hummel, and his daughter, Margery Gail Helwig, and upon her death her children inherited half the property. Two of Boyd’s siblings, Don and Joyce, own an adjacent 160 acres.

In the early years the Hummel family farmed for hay and pasture used to support the family dairy operation, with a transition to row crops—including one labor-intensive year growing 40 acres of tomatoes for a major soup manufacturer—in the early 1960s.

“The land was highly erodible, and even though we had terraced the land, and worked the land with small equipment, I still felt too much erosion was occurring,” explained Boyd Hummel. “I enrolled the property in the USDA Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) State Acres for Wildlife (SAFE) program in 2011 and planted a mixture of native warm-season grasses and forbs.”

The family’s interest in conservation of the land has deep roots.

“Dad was an excellent shot and quite the squirrel hunter,” Boyd Hummel explained. “He was one of the first members of the Livingston County Soil and Water Conservation District when it was established in 1945. The family wasn’t interested in selling off pieces of the grassland, and we wanted it to remain a conservation area, so the opportunity to sell the property to the state was a win-win.”

As the newest Habitat Area in Illinois, in fall of 2108 the Livingston County property will be added to IDNR’s Free Upland Game Permit Lottery System. Applicants must apply online between August 1 and August 31 for a chance at a permit to hunt this site, or one of the many other Habitat Areas across the state.

“The Free Upland Game Permit Lottery System is extremely popular and generates far more applications than we have Habitat Areas to hunt,” explained IDNR Agricultural and Grassland Wildlife Program Manager Stan McTaggart. “Acquisition of the Chatsworth property helps IDNR provide more quality hunting opportunities, thanks to license fees, Habitat Stamp revenue and Pittman-Robertson funds paid by hunters themselves. This is another example of sportsmen and women paying the bill to protect and establish habitat for game species that will provide far-reaching benefits to many other species.”

“Many species of grassland birds are considered area-sensitive, meaning they require large tracts of grasslands to successfully nest and rear young,” McTaggart said. “Among the species likely to benefit from the preservation and management of this grassland are bobolink, dickcissel, Henslow’s sparrow, grasshopper sparrow, eastern meadowlark, LeConte’s sparrow, northern harrier, short-eared owl and vesper sparrow.”

The story of the Chatsworth State Habitat Area is a great example of the IDNR working with private landowners who have a strong conservation ethic and a desire to leave things better than they found them. This property will provide habitat for wildlife as well as recreational opportunity for sportsmen and women for generations to come.

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On April 1, 2018 Stan McTaggart accepted the position as the Wildlife Diversity Program Manager with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Wildlife Resources.

Kathy Andrews Wright is retired from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources where she was editor of Outdoor Illinois magazine. She is currently the editor of Outdoor Illinois Wildlife Journal and Illinois Audubon magazine.