Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie
| Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie | |
|---|---|
|
IUCN category VI (protected area with sustainable use of natural resources)
|
|
Tallgrass prairie and woodlands.
|
|
 |
|
| Location | Will County, Illinois, United States |
| Nearest city | Elwood |
| Coordinates | 41°22′44″N 88°06′41″W / 41.378845°N 88.111335°WCoordinates: 41°22′44″N 88°06′41″W / 41.378845°N 88.111335°W |
| Area | 18,226 acres (73.76 km2) |
| Established | 1996 |
| Governing body | U.S. Forest Service |
| Website | Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie |
The Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie (MNTP) is a tallgrass prairie reserve and United States National Grassland operated by the United States Forest Service. The first national tallgrass prairie ever designated in the U.S. and the largest conservation site in the Chicago Wilderness region, it is located on the site of the former Joliet Army Ammunition Plant between the towns of Elwood, Manhattan and Wilmington in northeastern Illinois.
The tallgrass prairie reserve is in the central forest-grasslands transition ecoregion of the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome.
Midewin remains the only federal tallgrass prairie preserve east of the Mississippi River, where surviving areas of that habitat are extremely rare. With the adjacent Des Plaines Fish and Wildlife Area and a number of other state and county protected areas in the immediate area, Midewin forms the heart of a conservation macrosite totaling more than 40,000 acres of protected land.
The pre-European settlement vegetation map of Midewin shows most of the site was prairie prior to the arrival of European settlers. The northwestern corner of the site along Jackson Creek was forest. Another small, forested area existed in the extreme southwest corner of Midewin along the Kankakee River and Prairie Creek.
Several not-for-profit conservation organizations have played active roles in the restoration of high-quality tallgrass prairie, dolomite prairie, sedge meadows, swales and related communities at Midewin. These include the Wetlands Initiative, Openlands. and the Illinois chapter of The Nature Conservancy and several other members of the Chicago Wilderness collaborative.
...
Wikipedia