Voters OK’d property tax hike. Now here’s how the Forest Preserve is going to spend your money.

Tucked among the factories and plants dotting south suburban Ford Heights is Sauk Trail Woods, a forest preserve where Cook County taxpayers are bankrolling an effort to beat back a pernicious invader.

On a crisp, sunny Wednesday in late November, Troy Showerman, resource project manager for the Cook County Forest Preserve District, points to one of the few short trees that still holding its leaves.

It’s buckthorn, one of the invasive woody species, or “woodies,” choking out growth of Sauk Trail’s native trees, grasses and wildflowers. Buckthorn (which grows here in the “common” and “glossy” varieties) has no natural predators. It grows before other plants in the spring and its leaves hang on late into the fall, cutting off sunlight and energy native plants and trees like oak and maple need to grow.

“It just eliminates the whole native understory,” Showerman said.

But thanks in part to Cook County voters, the district is embarking on an ambitious restoration program that is unparalleled in the Midwest, Showerman said, including efforts to fight back on invasives and restore native plants to woods and grasslands scattered mostly across the suburbs.

A year ago, voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum to raise their own property taxes, yielding more than $40 million in additional funding each year to forest preserve coffers.

Long-maligned for damaging headlines about mismanagement, neglect, and politically motivated hiring, the district’s turnaround agenda in recent years convinced even some of its harshest critics it was deserving of more money. Even the tax-averse Civic Federation supported the hike, arguing the district had right-sized its workforce, cut expenditures and improved planning.

The district was also upfront about what they wanted to use the additional $40 million for: about a quarter would go to ailing district pensions. a little over $6 million would be spent on deferred capital needs of the Brookfield Zoo and Chicago Botanic Garden, which stand on forest preserve land. The rest would be spent on buying more land, restoration efforts, facility maintenance, and expanding existing programming.

Those restoration efforts can be costly: Showerman says a group of four contractors can clear a single acre of woodies in two days. Other invasives can be taken out with more fast and affordable prescribed burns: setting grasslands aflame annually suppresses invasives, allowing native grasses to flourish, the district says. The scorched earth also heats up more quickly under the spring sunlight, giving those native seeds a jump-start in growth.

That “yes” vote marked the “start of a new era,” Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said last month when introducing the district’s $189 million budget for 2024. “For the first time in a long time, it is not the budget of an agency in a holding pattern, keeping long-term, pressing needs at bay.”

That new era will be carried forward by a new leader. After 13 years, Forest Preserves of Cook County General Superintendent Arnold Randall announced in early December that he would step down from the position at the start of 2024. Preckwinkle, who will choose his permanent replacement, credited Randall with leading the preserves’ conservation, recreation, and habitat restoration plans; creating an independent advisory Conservation and Policy Council; and opening five new campgrounds that re-established the preserves’ camping legacy.

Though the trees are bare and snow threatens to fall in the coming weeks, it’s an ideal time to start clearing buckthorn: the ground is too hard for crews to harm soil “developed over millennia” with forestry mowers, Showerman says. The district already upgraded pickup trucks, wood chippers and mowers this year using referendum dollars. Crews can use mounted chippers to cut buckthorn off at the stump, then treat it with herbicide. Young trees can also be yanked out of the ground or cut with handsaws (eco-enthusiasts can take part in the district’s “Buckthorn Buster” events and attack woodies themselves).

Invasives are persistent, so eliminating them can take years. But it pays off: Showerman points to a paved trail just off the northern parking lot: one side is a wall of brush. The other side has already been restored: clear forest floor that’s not only easy to tromp through, but also allows native seeds stored for years in the soil to start growing and for animals — birds, deer, or coyotes — to better spot their food.

The district is also ramping up a seed banking program with the Chicago Botanic Garden to increase plant diversity across the preserves and reintroduce varieties that might have disappeared from different portions of the county. The increased biodiversity can also help the preserves withstand the impacts of climate change, Showerman said.

District plans this winter include a 1000-acre clearing project, hopefully connecting more and more spaces for visitors to enjoy, and giving the most ecologically sensitive places hikers and birders already frequent some breathing room.

“This is why I work here, to be able to talk about managing properties at this scale and at this longevity,” Showerman said, “trying to make decisions that are best not for next year but for 10 years, 50 years, 100 years from now. Starting the ball rolling on that now is pretty awesome.”

In the past, major restoration projects or large-scale studies could proceed with fits and starts, helped along at times with grant funding. But “eventually it falls back on us to manage. And if you don’t have that steady source of income, things would revert,” Showerman said.

In 2021, the district’s restoration maintenance to-do list was beginning to get too long to keep up with. His team wouldn’t be able to be this aggressive unless it knew “we’ll have a continual funding source down the road.”

Other projects funded with referendum dollars might be barely perceptible. John Watson, the district’s senior civil engineer of water resources, charts a course over a small creek in Jurgensen Woods, toward an unpaved trail. The preserves are embarking on $3.5 million in trail improvements, including to the Thorn Creek trail that cuts through those woods. It and five others will have potholes filled up with gravel, smoothing the path for hikers, runners, and bicyclists.

The tour ends at the bottom of a hill leading to a dark and muddy underpass beneath IL-394. That trail portion is in line to get a better drainage system, while the underpass will have newly poured concrete to accommodate the occasional horseback rider (horses, apparently, don’t like walking on the existing asphalt, Watson says).

The district hired 10 resource management crew aides for projects like these, plus a wildlife field laboratory technician and assistant resource project manager to help “address storm damage and invasive pests, increase capacity for trail management, and expand Conservation Corps programs,” preserves spokesman Carl Vogel said in an email. The corps employ high school youth in the summer and trains adults on restoration projects.

Other referendum-funded changes will be more obvious: dozens of shaded picnic shelters with peeling paint and leaks will have cement ceiling tiles replaced and roofs repaired. FPDCC awarded a $1.6 million contract to improve 30 picnic shelters in preserves in north, northwest, and central Cook County earlier this fall. That’s a bigger contract and more sites than the county normally fixes up, Vogel said. The next 11 picnic shelters on the to-do list — including in the Dan Ryan Woods, Eggers Grove and other south suburban locations like Jurgensen — are happening faster because of the extra money, too.

Restroom renovations are coming up at Busse Woods and Dan Ryan Woods, and old metal garbage cans are being replaced with new, larger carts “that won’t rust, have a lid to keep animals out and garbage in, and can be emptied more efficiently. Most locations will have additional recycling containers, as well,” Vogel said.

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Taken together, the improvements mean a lot more room and improved amenities for people to enjoy the outdoors. “I think if you’re someone who is interested in wildlife, like birding, or just being out in nature, you’re going to see a lot more acreage available to you,” Showerman said. When restoration efforts began in several years ago, “We had some really high quality areas that the county system that we tried to sort of keep secret because people loved them to death.”

That included trampling plants in ecologically sensitive areas or removing wildflowers, ramps, mushrooms and wild ginger from the preserves (a no-no) — officials suspect they’re sometimes being sold to restaurants.

Restoration efforts help connect smaller pockets that were loved to death to make bigger areas, Showerman said, “which makes it harder to find some of the good stuff and also gives the ability for the plants and animals that are here to sort of spread out” and rebound. Showerman is hoping to see the return of long-absent critters like more otters, fishers (a type of weasel) and badgers. “We haven’t seen (those) in 100 years.”

aquig@chicagotribune.com