CALEDONIA, Ill. (WIFR) – Community members rolled up their sleeves on Saturday to help save the oak woodlands at Kinnikinnick Creek.
From 9 a.m. to noon, Feb. 28, stateline-area residents came together at the Kinnikinnick Creek Nature Preserve to help with restoration and learn more about the bluff oak woodland and savanna ecosystem.
Natural Areas Technician Ben Davies says much of the restoration work has focused on removing invasive honeysuckle, buckthorn and other non-native species that crowd out native plants.
“So, what would happen is this invasive honeysuckle, buckthorn, it would continue to encroach and overtake the understory of these areas,” Davies said. “Our biodiversity here, as we know it, would just disappear, and it would become just endless thickets of invasive brush.”…