Irish Oaks Nature Preserve Restoration Workday

Would you like to get outside, meet new people and do something great for our local environment? Here’s how you can help:

Volunteers assist with cutting, stacking and burning invasive brush to allow native trees and plants to grow!

Please bring a pair of work gloves if you have them and wear sturdy boots or shoes as well as old clothing (may get burn holes). Tools will be provided.

Irish Oaks Savanna is a vast 40-acre wetland and oak savanna complex that has been preserved outside of Harvard. This site was listed by the Illinois Natural Area Inventory as the best remaining example of a dry-mesic oak savanna, and now it is being maintained and preserved forever! Giant white oaks and bur oaks dapple the landscape while prairie and shrub thickets fill in the spaces between the trees. Historic grazing and recent growth of invasive shrubs have degraded the native wildflowers and grasses, but our workdays will help the native plants that are hanging on like ferns, club mosses, and orchids! This site is clearly visible from the metra train track between Harvard and Woodstock.

Come see this site as we continue our habitat restoration workdays!