Sugar Savanna Creek is located near Cardinal Courts Residence Halls. It is currently the site of a School of Biology project to restore the amount of native plants in the area.
To the naked eye, a patch of vegetation might seem like a good thing, but some plants can hinder the natural growth of others. The School of Biological Sciences is looking to save some native flora and fauna from another invasive species.
The school is looking to renovate Sugar Savanna Creek and create space for educational use and enable insects to migrate back on campus.
Before first-year graduate student Jesse Smith came to Illinois State University, he worked as an administrative assistant at the University of Akron and worked on the Ohio Bee Atlas project.
At the time, he was surveying bumblebees across the state. Smith brought his research experience to ISU.
“On my lunch, while at Illinois State, I would walk around, eat my sandwich in the Quad and look at bees. The first year I was super impressed because I found six different species of bumblebees,” Smith said. “Then my next year I found like two species of bumblebees, which is odd, we should see more bumblebees than this, and so it made me want to do something.”
Smith talked to facilities to encourage a change in planting due to the plants’ differences from previous years.
“The planters in the Quad put into my mind this idea and concept of conservation and restoration ecology, and urban ecology. We could be doing more with our landscapes than what we’re doing,” Smith said.
“I started talking to faculty members, including associate professor Dr. Angelo Capparella and he told me about this site.”
Smith began volunteering time with friends and once the department got involved, a committee formed, organizing events with other biology grad students, undergraduates, friends and NexSTEM students from Heartland Community College.
“I’ve worked with them and had a couple of people come and help, and they did some science over there,” Smith said.
“I’ve done pollinator surveys with them as well as looking at effects of the honeysuckle and what amount of sunlight is coming through the honeysuckle canopy, where honeysuckle rose below the forest trees.”
Student Environmental Action Coalition, a registered student organization on campus, became interested and helped organize a trash cleanup day.
“I just wanted to get some hands-on experience, and I know that undergraduates in the Biology Department want to get this hands-on experience with plants and outdoor research,” Smith said.
“That’s something that isn’t necessarily always offered to undergraduates but is very helpful when getting a job. It turned into a big project; the Biology Department was fully onboard.”
Smith is a member of the committee and a big part of this project.
Discussion of what is next, what is happening and how the committee will move forward was planned.
“Individual people come and volunteer their time on any particular day, to either pick up trash, to help plant some native plants out there, to cut off the seed head of non-native plants and then cutting honeysuckle, so I had probably close to 50 people, not just students,” Smith said.
After getting grounds on board, Smith met and worked with the facilities on the site.
While biologists were grinding up tree stumps, facility members helped remove the stumps and provided tools.
Scattered across the area was a particular giant shrub that could endanger plants growing on the site.
“It’s called amur honeysuckle, it can be 10 almost 20 feet tall and what it does is it creates a second canopy to the woods to the forest and in doing that it blocks out all sunlight from getting down to the bottom floor,” Smith said.
The grounds facility has helped remove branches and 25 trees from the site, not high in value, in order to create space for a functional ecosystem at Sugar Savanna Creek.
“It kills the things that should be living on the forest floor. There are native honeysuckles,” Smith said.
“There’s a difference between a native plant, a non-native plant and then a non-native plant that takes over and it’s invasive to the environment.”
The four acres of space will be dedicated to natural environment education. Smith wants to offer students and the community the most that can be provided.
Designated in the four-acre area is a long-term research plot. There will be 24 replicator plots and four rows of the plantation.
Scientifically, to test through academic research in measuring the action happening to the plants and below ground, the project will look at common landscaping plants. Then, they will look at the native plants that can be substituted for the landscaping plants to see the ecological impact of either plant.
“The plants are serving a purpose more than just being pretty,” Smith said.
“It’s serving a channel purpose, which is, I hope for the university to not only have the Quad and campus be beautiful but to make it functional for bees, birds and other living things, not just us.”
Smith went on to discuss how humans should take a step back and serve the environment.
“We have designed for humans in mind, but maybe we should take a step back and design for more than just us,” Smith said.
“Let’s see what we can put good [and what] we can do for our environment.”
Smith gave a couple of steps leading up to the big picture and hopes the site is seeded and complete in years.
“Initially this year we have I would say almost a third of the space cleared of honeysuckle ready to be planted, and I would like to see that done, and that’s very likely to be done,” Smith said.
“I graduate, but there are still plenty of things to be done, and things I would still like to be done or see even though I may not be here, having dedicated classroom space for students.”
Students utilizing the space have involved planning with assistant professor Matthew Dugas, who will be using the site for teaching purposes, ensuring what the students can do at the site.
“The way to integrate research which I think is broadly a goal across most institutions right now,” Dugas said.
“The best is to do a more comprehensive job of integrating research to improve teaching, focus on inquiry-based learning, asking and answering questions and dealing with the fact that things don’t always work out like the way they think they’re going to.”
Dugas expressed good things for the future.
“We’re focusing on making sure that these are equitable opportunities for everybody. I do integrate original research in my course and have students have this as a place to go than be in the classroom,” Dugas said.
“I think that’s something that we hope is that this is going to be something people remember in 10 to 15 years from now, that they went out there.”
The Biology Department’s superiors have provided money to have someone devoted to managing the project without the support of the campus community and the community in general.
“I think Ben Wodika especially, and Jesse have been the drivers and getting stuff done, and I will say that I was more than skeptical when I heard the plans,” Dugas said.
“I was wrong, they’ve accomplished more than I could’ve imagined.”
Instructional assistant professor Ben Wodika is involved in restoration ecology and has been helping Smith on the site cutting down honeysuckle for a year and a half now.
“We’ve divided up what we hope to do in two short intermediate and long-term goals, and so the short-term then to make the setting so it’s useful, which involves clearing honeysuckle,” Wodika said.
“We’re also going to be implementing or planting and putting in place an experiment where you practice all the experimental areas, but a rigorous experiment that will allow us to test and evaluate some interesting ecological questions.”
The team is interested in creating an area where the general public is going to have a positive outcome.
Choosing plants that grow in this area focuses on one experimental group to have native prairie plants.
The question is, are native plants truly outperforming non-native plants?
“Less than 1/10 of 1% of native prairie exists in Illinois,” Wodika said. “That’s just a small fraction of what used to be here, so there have been considerable losses in plant life and animal life and function when we lose those ecosystems.”
Incorporating native plants into the experimental design and having the other group or the other part of the experiment. This referred to as exotic plants that didn’t involve in this area, but homeowners commonly plant.”
Depending on plants, native plants typically attract more than just pollinators.
Still, many other types of insects typically result in having more birds.
“We essentially end up with a richer or a more interesting as well as healthier ecosystem for not just ourselves but for the animals that they live in this area,” Wodika said.
Smith and the team plan to put seeds down by March.
While the site continues being renovated, members of the project plan to make the grassland area blossom as it once did 30 years ago.