Photo credit: Jeff Skrentny
Meet at LaBagh's Cicero parking lot near Grove #3
Join us for a stewardship workday at COS’s adopted site LaBagh Woods and help bring back critical bird habitat. Help us defeat the invasive plant menace and bring back the thriving native habitats that birds and so any other organisms rely on.
NO EXPERIENCE IS NECESSARY. We will teach you everything you need to know to be productive for this workday. The weather is unpredictable in July. Watch for an update on that here as we get closer to our workday. As always, we will make sure to have plenty of water and a snack for break time. We encourage all our volunteers to work within their abilities, and take plenty of breaks as the weather dictates.
Workday Leader: Jeff Skrentny
The LaBagh Woods Restoration began in October of 2014 after a grant was made to form Centennial Volunteers. That group was a collaborative effort that now involves Friends of the CC Forest Preserve, Friends of the Chicago River, COS, North Branch Restoration Project, and of course the Forest Preserves of Cook County. LaBagh Woods is avain based restoration because this 162 acre urban parcel along the North Branch of the Chicago River is one of the first green places birds migrating over the city find during the spring, and it is the last green space before they have to fly over the city in the fall. Our work is based around creating habitat for migrating birds. That means forest structure and food sources. Replacing buckthorn with 40 different native shrubs is one of our key initiatives. We raise all the money for the native shrubs and the required fencing, we find all the seed that a grower uses to raise those plants to a size that makes sense for planting, we do all the site selection and then planting and fencing. After the plants are in the ground, we inventory, manage and maintain those plantings for maximum success. To date we have removed almost 30 acres of buckthorn and planted 2500 native shrubs. We believe we have above a 60% survival rate with our efforts over the last nearly 4 years.