The author is Director of Communications of the Chicago Wilderness consortium.

Citation: This paper may be cited as: [Authors.] 2005. [Article title.] In Ted Trzyna, ed., The Urban Imperative. California Institute of Public Affairs, Sacramento, California.

1. Introduction

Stretching across parts of three U.S. states – from southeastern Wisconsin, through northeastern Illinois and into northwestern Indiana – Chicago Wilderness is a regional nature reserve containing rich biodiversity. Embedded in one of North America’s largest metropolitan regions, Chicago Wilderness is a mosaic of natural areas that includes more than 250,000 acres (102,000 ha) of protected lands and waters, as well as many that are unprotected. The natural communities within Chicago Wilderness are home to a wide diversity of life: thousands of species of native plants and animals live here among the more than nine million people who also call the region home.

The Chicago region is one of only a few metropolitan areas in the world that have a high concentration of globally significant natural communities. These include tallgrass prairies, oak woodlands, oak savannas, sedge meadows, marshes, bogs, and fens. Less than one-tenth of one percent of Illinois’ original tallgrass prairies remains, but within Chicago Wilderness some of the best remaining examples of these can be found, as well as rare oak savanna communities. These communities contain a number of species that are rare worldwide and listed as threatened or endangered in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana.

To protect these communities and their inhabitants, area conservation groups in the 1990s formed the Chicago Wilderness consortium, an alliance of more than 175 public and private organizations working together to protect, restore, study and manage the natural ecosystems of the Chicago region, enrich local residents’ quality of life, and contribute to the preservation of global biodiversity.

The roots of conservation run deep in the Chicago region. Early in the 20th century, local visionaries had the foresight to create a system of nature preserves, set aside as protected lands and waters within the metropolitan area. Later, in the 1960s and 1970s, a grassroots network of volunteers became active in the region, formed by citizens who cared about the restoration and protection of their natural heritage. This network of volunteers grew over the next three decades, with thousands of area residents now working in the forest and nature preserves every week to restore and nurture the landscape (Ross 1997).

So when the founding members of Chicago Wilderness came together in the 1990s with the idea of working together on conservation issues, they had a solid foundation on which to build. They knew that because nature does not recognize political or institutional boundaries, they too would need to reach across such artificial boundaries and take a collaborative, regional approach to achieve their collective conservation goals.

Although officially launched in the spring of 1996, the consortium’s beginnings came years earlier, as conservation organizations in the Chicago area began to realize that together they could accomplish even more than they could independently. In 1993, representatives from 13 agencies met to discuss their common challenge: that while significant biological resources could still be found in the greater Chicago metropolitan area, their health and survival was threatened (Ross 1997). During the organizations’ initial meetings, the delegates were enthusiastic about the idea of working collaboratively. While each organization wanted to retain its own identity, the attendees recognized that there could be significant benefits to working together.

From 1993 to 1995, the groups continued to meet and expanded the number of organizations participating. They identified more specific goals for collaboration. These included expanding popular support for biodiversity conservation, increasing the amount of funding available for their collective endeavors, and increasing the amount of information sharing and coordination among scientists and land managers (Ross 1997). They developed a memorandum of understanding to guide their initial work, and identified a structure by which they would govern their collective endeavors. They sought and received some initial funding for their work, which came from the federal government through the U.S. Forest Service (one of the consortium’s founding organizations). Finally, 34 founding partners, including the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5, Brookfield Zoo, Openlands, The Nature Conservancy, The Morton Arboretum, and others, launched Chicago Wilderness during a public event in 1996. Today, more than 170 public and private organizations are members.

Several factors contributed to the successful initiation and continued growth of the Chicago Wilderness consortium (Moskovits, et al. 2002). These include:

(a) A critical mass of people thoroughly committed to making the work succeed and willing to invest time and effort in consensus building. The members of Chicago Wilderness have shown a great deal of flexibility in working together, making plans, and adjusting their collective course as needed to make their collaborative work successful.

(b) Early successes. In 1997 the consortium published the Atlas of Biodiversity (Sullivan 1997), a comprehensive, full-color guide to the natural communities of Chicago Wilderness. More than 50,000 copies of the Atlas have been distributed. It is used by educators and conservation institutions throughout the region as a way to present to the public the vision of Chicago Wilderness and the region’s rich natural history. Another early success was the creation of the Biodiversity Recovery Plan, the consortium’s detailed plan and collective recommendations for restoring and protecting local native biodiversity. Three years in the making, the Biodiversity Recovery Plan reflects the best thinking and consensus of the region’s scientists, land managers, educators, and policy-makers. The Plan is the first of its kind in the region, and was awarded the Outstanding Planning Award by the American Planning Association in 2001. The Biodiversity Recovery Plan now serves as the guide for the work of the Chicago Wilderness consortium.

(c) Mission-related benefits to member organizations. For the consortium to achieve its conservation goals, individual member institutions must realize benefits from participation in terms of increased capacity to carry out their own work and achieve their own conservation missions. This increased capacity comes from sharing of expertise and resources.

The membership of Chicago Wilderness varies greatly. Currently, there are 178 organizational members representing federal, state, and local governments; municipalities and park districts; large nongovernmental conservation organizations; small volunteer groups; educational and research organizations; cultural institutions; and others. Until 2002, the consortium limited its membership to non-profit organizations and government agencies. However, in 2002, the members of Chicago Wilderness once more reached across institutional boundaries to forge a partnership with the local business community. Recognizing that business corporations play an important role in promoting community vitality and quality of life, Chicago Wilderness joined with local business leaders to form the Chicago Wilderness corporate council. The corporate council currently consists of 25 for-profit organizations that have pledged their support to biodiversity conservation and the mission of Chicago Wilderness.

An ongoing challenge is to find innovative ways to bring together such a diverse group of organizations, but all Chicago Wilderness members have the opportunity to participate in the consortium’s governance and collaborative work.

From the beginning, the members of Chicago Wilderness made a conscious decision not to define the consortium as an entity unto itself, but rather as a loose network of partners. Chicago Wilderness is not designed to be an organization that competes with its members; instead, its sole purpose is to facilitate collaboration among them. Chicago Wilderness is its members, and vice versa. To that end, the consortium employs only a small staff, whose main purpose is to help the member organizations work together on common challenges. There are seven full-time and two part-time staff members who are housed within various member organizations rather than being centrally located.

The consortium’s organizational structure consists of an executive council and general members; the coordinating group; the steering committee; four teams; and the nine staff members.

Member organizations decide whether to join Chicago Wilderness as executive council members or as general members. Executive members commit to donating substantial time and resources to the collaborative work of the consortium, and receive a voting seat on the council. The executive council approves actions on behalf of the entire consortium, such as acceptance of new members and adoption of new policies. General members donate resources to a lesser extent and are able to render opinions on all issues related to the consortium’s work, although they do not vote at the council meetings. The coordinating group serves as "staff" to the executive council, and meets every other month to ensure that the strategies developed by the executive council are implemented.

The steering committee is a subset of executive council members, selected by the council to represent the consortium on operational matters such as approval of budgets and allocation of funding to various Chicago Wilderness projects.

The four teams of Chicago Wilderness are Science, Natural Resource Management, Education and Communication, and Sustainability. They are the venues for members to meet, discuss common challenges and develop plans for collaborative work. Each team receives administrative support from one of the Chicago Wilderness staff members.

The Biodiversity Recovery Plan was the first significant product of collaboration by Chicago Wilderness members. Since then, collaborative projects have become the most prominent way by which Chicago Wilderness members work together to address common challenges. The benefits of collaborative work include the sharing of expertise and best practices across professions and institutions, more strategic use of limited resources, increased credibility for conservation agencies, and increased capacity of institutions to carry out their conservation work. Chicago Wilderness members have implemented more than 150 collaborative projects, covering a broad spectrum of work. These include inventory and monitoring projects, restoration projects, sustainability and policy work, and a variety of education and communication programs.

Two related projects provide a good example of the benefits of this collaborative approach: the Chicago Wilderness controlled burn training project and the Chicago Wilderness controlled burn communication project.

In the Chicago region, ecosystems have evolved with fire and depend on periodic burning for their overall health. For many years, local land management agencies in the region used national training programs for conducting controlled burns. While the programs covered some essential material, they were designed for use by land managers across the U.S. and therefore did not include information specific to Midwestern ecosystems. Seeing the need for more region-specific information, and recognizing the efficiency that could be realized by having a common approach, members of Chicago Wilderness produced a training program on how to conduct controlled burns in the area. The training program is now held several times a year at different locations around the region. This collaborative approach builds consistency in land management techniques, prevents duplication of efforts, and allows resources that would otherwise be used administering individual training programs to be put toward other conservation efforts.

In a related example of capacity building, Chicago Wilderness members in 2001 launched a burn communication project, designed to help members learn the most effective ways to communicate with the public about controlled burn programs. To begin to understand how to build public support for controlled burn programs, the burn communication project team worked with researchers from DePaul University and the Illinois Natural History Survey to conduct research on local residents’ knowledge of, attitudes toward, and concerns about controlled burns. The studies confirmed that when people understand the role of fire in ecosystems, they are largely supportive of controlled burn programs. The research also provided insight into the best communication techniques. For example, in the Chicago metropolitan region, people understand the phrase "controlled burn" more often than "prescribed burn," and prefer specific visual cues, such as process diagrams and photos of multiple, well-equipped personnel conducting burns. Local land managing agencies have incorporated these findings into their communication programs, and templates for communication tools using the research findings have been developed for Chicago Wilderness members’ use. The templates include sample press releases, brochures, fact sheets, and other tools, and are available free on the Chicago Wilderness members’ web site.

The Chicago Wilderness consortium has thrived because of several factors: It was built on a strong history of local conservation; there has been a critical mass of people dedicated to making this unique collaborative approach work; the consortium enjoyed several early, public successes; and the members of the consortium benefit from participation in terms of an increased ability to achieve their individual missions. As a result of these favorable circumstances and the commitment of area institutions and individuals, the consortium has grown from 34 founding organizations to more than 170 participating members, and has become a unique force on the conservation landscape. In other urban areas where similar favorable circumstances exist, Chicago Wilderness can serve as a powerful model for the collaborative approach to conservation endeavors.

Information about the biodiversity of the Chicago region and about the Chicago Wilderness consortium is posted on the Chicago Wilderness Web site, http://www.chicagowilderness.org.

5. REFERENCES

Ross, Laurel. 1997. The Chicago Wilderness: A coalition for urban conservation. Restoration & Management Notes 15 (1):17-24.

Moskovits, Debra K., Carol Fialkowski, Gregory M. Mueller, and Timothy A. Sullivan. 2002. A new force in urban conservation. Annals of the Missouri Botanic Garden 89:153-163.

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Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

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