PRAIRIE FLYER The newsletter of the Sierra ClubPrairie Group, East Central Illinois

December, 2014.

This newsletter only appears three times a year – in April, August, and December. In additionto our newsletter, we use Facebook and our Alerts Listserv to communicate with members aboutenvironmental events and action items. If you use Facebook, please join the Sierra Club PrairieGroup https://www.facebook.com/groups/SierraClubILPrairieGroup/. To sign up for our AlertsList, click here: http://lists.sierraclub.org/SCRIPTS/WA.EXE?SUBED1=il-prairie-alerts, whereyou can subscribe or unsubscribe. Don’t worry, we won’t inundate you!

1 Chair’s Corner

2014 was a good year for the Prairie Group ofthe Sierra Club. We are pleased to welcomeBob Illyes as a new Executive Committee mem-ber, appointed to fill a vacancy. Bob works atthe Illinois Natural History Survey and has beenan active participant in activities sponsored byour group. We look forward to having him onthe team! As Bob is joining us, Excom mem-ber Katie Mimnaugh is leaving us to focus onher graduate studies and job. Katie did a greatjob of serving as our liaison with University ofIllinois students and represented us at IllinoisChapter Sierra Club meetings!

We are just about sold out of Sierra Club cal-endars, which means we are in good financialshape for 2015. If you still want to buy one,we will be selling calendars at our annual na-ture slideshow gathering December 9 (see articlebelow). Thanks to those of you who bought cal-endars, and special thanks to Trent Shepard forcoordinating the endeavor and selling most ofthe calendars! We make a few thousand dollarseach year from this fundraiser.

In 2014, we used calendar sale revenue to funda number of activities, including: sponsorship ofa Kickapoo Rail Trail Fundraiser at Sleepy CreekVineyard, scholarships for students to attend ac-tivism training and the New York City ClimateMarch, dedication of a tree in Victory Park tohonor retiring Rep. Naomi Jakobsson, and do-nations to Grand Prairie Friends and Stand Upto Coal.

I am also pleased to report that efforts tostop the storage of harmful chemicals at Clin-ton Landfill have proven fruitful. Hundreds ofpeople signed our postcards to Senator Durbinand U.S. EPA, urging them to action. Then the

landfill experienced a setback when the IllinoisEnvironmental Protection Agency modified thelandfill’s permit to prohibit storage of high con-centrations of PCBs and manufactured coal gasplant waste. We did some flyering in FarmerCity before the elections to educate the publicabout a referendum on the landfill, and votersoverwhelmingly came out against the storage oftoxins. We are still waiting to hear from U.S.EPA on the sole source aquifer designation, butI am hopeful it will come through soon.

Stay warm!Stacy James, Chair

2 Vacation Slideshow

We are planning our annual vacation/nature pic-ture slideshow for Tuesday, Dec 9th at 6:30 inRobeson Room C of the Champaign Public Li-brary. You can bring a flash drive with picturesof your vacation or any nice nature shots yougot this year. It is a great way to be an arm-chair tourist. We will provide drinks and somesnacks but if you also had some festive snacks toshare that would be great too.

We still have a few calendars which will beavailable at this event.

Thanks!,Rachel Vellenga

3 Prairie Group Excom election

As usual, this month the Prairie Group will holdan election for Excom members. There are 4 po-sitions to be filled. The terms of will be over inJanuary, and we are fortunate to have 5 nomi-nees for those positions. Details below.

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4 Kickapoo Rail Trail Fundraisera Success!

Last August 28, approximately 60 people gath-ered at Sleepy Creek Vineyards for our Kick-apoo Rail Trail fundraiser. We were able toraise over $3,500 for the 24.5-mile trail that willrun from east Urbana to the Vermilion CountyFairgrounds. Thanks to everyone who came out!Special thanks to our host for donating the spacefor free, and thanks to Excom members DonDavis and Rachel Vellenga for making the tastyappetizers.

Construction is expected to start in 2015, butit will be several years before the trail is us-able. It will be a multi-sport, crushed limestonetrail bordered by prairie plantings. A pedestrianbridge will take trail users over the VermilionRiver.

During the fundraiser, we heard from Ken Kon-sis and Dan Olson, the executive directors of theVermilion County Conservation District and Cham-paign County Forest Preserve District, respectively.They are co-owners and co-administrators of thetrail. Both were excited by the amount of pub-lic support for the project, which has been yearsin the making. Now that they have successfullybought the old rail line and obtained public grantsfor the trail construction, they need to raise almost$2 million in private matching funds.

Sierra Club is proud to have sponsored thefundraiser, and associated expenses were paidfor with funds from our calendar sales. Thetrail clearly needs more private donations, soplease consider making a donation if you haven’talready. Donations can be made online atwww.kickapoorailtrail.org, where additional infor-mation is available about the project.

Stacy James, Chair

Fundraiser at Sleepy Creek Vineyards

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5 University of Illinois StudentsJoin Historic Climate March

On September 21st, four hundred thousand peo-ple joined together in the streets of New YorkCity to participate in the People’s ClimateMarch, the largest climate march in history. Itwas organized by 350.org, a nongovernmental or-ganization that focuses on organizing global ef-forts for climate policy change. The march wastactfully planned the weekend before the UnitedNations Climate Summit, where more than 120world leaders were meeting with the intent offorming new greenhouse gas emission standards,which would limit the rise in global temperaturesto less than 2 degrees Celsius by 2015.

Twenty University of Illinois students wereable to join the throngs of concerned citizensweighing in on climate policy, thanks to a grantfrom the Sierra Club Prairie Group and fundrais-ing efforts by the Students for EnvironmentalConcerns student organization, the oldest andlargest environmental student organization atIllinois.

A fourteen hour journey may seem a long wayto go for just one march, but students said thistrip was certainly worth the time. In additionto Sunday’s march, several students attended350.org’s Youth Convergence the day before. At-tendees were trained in environmental advocacystrategies and ways to create smart change andheard a panel of speakers featuring notewor-thy environmentalist and author (and founderof 350.org), Bill McKibben.

Allison Steffens and Jolanta Szkodon

After the long drive back to Urbana, studentswere eager to share what they experienced at thePeoples Climate March. They got their chancein a panel discussion, from which we have a fewexcerpts.

Meet the panelists:Jamie Zouras

Senior in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences

Kelsey GreenSophomore in Social Work

Q: What is the most important thingyou’ve learned from the march?

A: I went to a projection on the UnitedNations building the night before themarch and it had so many interestingfacts. That night I learned that live-stock emit more CO2 than the entirepublic transport system. This is some-thing I had never thought about or re-alized before. It’s made me rethink myeating habits and I’m starting the pro-cess of learning more about vegan andvegetarian lifestyles so I can eventuallymake that change. Kelsey Greene

A: Fighting for climate justice canbecome tiresome when policy makersrefuse to take action. The People’sClimate March helped me rememberthat there are millions of people fight-ing with me all around the world. Nowis the time to fight stronger than ever,in solidarity. Jamie Zouras

Q: What aspect of the Peoples’ ClimateMarch benefited you the most?

A: Seeing so many people deeply in-volved in tackling the root causes ofclimate change was a truly comfortingexperience. It is a lonely world outthere when you’re pushing the enve-lope of change. The display of passionfrom so many diverse sectors of themovement was a truly strengtheningexperience to see. We are together; weare not isolated from each other. Weare becoming stronger. I enjoyed mostof all the coming together part of it all– from grassroots group to grassrootsgroup; this cross-pollination is some-thing the movement will benefit fromfor years to come. Anonymous

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Students for Environmental Concerns members at the People’s Climate March on September21st, 2014 from left to right: Jay Brooks, David Gardner-Dale, Nate Lawrence, Tyler Rotche,Harry Mickalide, Jamie Zouras, Jolanta Szkodon, and Erika Weir

6 Finding A PlaceUnder the Stars

If environmentalism for you includes communingwith the natural world, is time under a darknight sky a part of that? On the cool clear au-tumn evening of October 25th, perhaps a dozenpeople came to watch stars at Homer Lake Park,thanks to the Champaign County Forest Pre-serve District (ccfpd.org) and several amateurastronomers from the Champaign-Urbana As-tronomical Society (cuas.org). Dave Leake, fromStaerkel Planetarium, gave a talk to the pub-lic in the park’s interpretive center. The sum-mer Milky Way arched overhead, Mars set inthe west, the Pleiades rose in the east. Withtelescopes, binoculars, and our unaided eyes, welooked at planets (Mars and Uranus), the RingNebula around a dying star, star clusters

in the spiral arms of our galaxy (one, the WildDuck Cluster, is a pretty triangular group richin faint stars), at how fine dust formed in theatmospheres of old stars shapes the filigree ofdark lanes we see in the band of the Milky Waystretched across the sky. We saw the glowingstreak of the Andromeda Galaxy, our galaxy’snearest large neighbor. We stood around andchatted.

This was one of a series of astronomical publicevents – Chelsey Walsh of the Forest Preserveschedules three per year in conjunction with theCUAS astronomers, on moonless nights at Mid-dle Fork in April and September, and HomerLake in October. Sierra Club has invited ourmembers to join them at the last two. Usu-ally cloudy weather has meant they’ve been can-celled, but this time we got lucky. Let’s do thisagain next year!

Stuart Levy

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7 Fall Hikes

This has been a great fall for getting out into the woods. On Sunday, October 19, 14 of us gatheredat the Forest Glen Nature Preserve for a hike along the Vermilion River. The plan was to do a 5-mileloop lasting about 2 hours, but somehow that got extended to more like 7 miles and 3 hours. Thetrail is difficult due to the many ravines to cross and most of us were bushed at the end. Anywaythe scenery was gorgeous! It was well-recorded by Stuart Levy in the following pictures.

Brett, Bob and Sarah, Jim and Asher A stream cuts through the forest

After the ForestGlen Forced March,on a lovely fall day

On Black Friday, November 28, five of us also shunned the shopping madness and took a mucheasier 4-mile late-morning hike on the West Lake trail at the Homer Lake Forest Preserve. Stuartagain took some pictures, but we shall forego those. This is a nice easy trail, half forested, halfprairie, with no hills. Really great for a pleasant quick hike and simple to get to!

Dick Bishop, Editor and Formatter

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8 Candidates’ Statements

There will be at least one newcomer – George Hardebeck and Eva Jehle have been nominated along with incumbentsDon Davis, Stuart Levy, and Rachel Vellenga. We’ll also post instructions for voting in the elections on Alerts andon our homepage later this month, with statements and pictures, and on our Facebook Page. The election will belater this month.

Don Davis first went on a solo hike in the mountains when he was11 years old and has never wanted to leave the wilderness since. Hehas been active in outdoor and environmental work-both volunteerand paid-since college days. He has also taught mountaineering andoutdoor skills to children, teenagers and adults, including downhillskiing, rock climbing, and backpacking. Don belongs to a numberof environmental organizations, but chooses to work with the SierraClub because of the impact this Club can have on world’s environ-ment with its focus on local issues through its chapters. Don iscurrently a member of the Prairie Group Executive Committee.

Rachel Vellenga has been an environmentalist from a youngage thanks to her love of nature. Her favorite spot in her back-yard as a child was high up in a tree with a bucket on a ropefor books and treats to haul up. It allowed her to combineher love of reading and nature. She planned, planted and har-vested a large organic garden at the age of 12 and subscribedto Organic Gardening magazine which got her name added toall kinds of geriatric mailing lists. She was in Peace Corpsin Namibia, Southern Africa where she taught English to jr.high students and participated in her villages first observanceof UN World Environment Day where her students picked uplitter from around the school and village and then made theenvironmentally questionable decision to set fire to the hugepile they’d collected which included plastics and a couple oftires, despite Rachel’s protests.

She is a children’s librarian at Urbana Free Library. She enjoys hiking and kayaking at Kickapoo and Homer Lakeon a regular basis and weather permitting always chooses her beautiful cruiser bicycle over her car. Her backyardchickens will attest to her lawn being entirely organic, the use of rain barrels, a large and tasty compost pile andnative plantings.

Rachel first became involved in Sierra Club through the national and international trips that Sierra Club offers.She then became involved in the Prairie Group and has enjoyed her terms as a board member where she has servedas Outings Chair. She is also serving her second term on the city of Urbana’s Sustainability Advisory Committee.

Stuart Levy has been with the Sierra Club since 2005, and withthe lively and welcoming members of the Prairie Group ExecutiveCommittee for almost as long (please join us!). He’s interestedin water use, opposing sprawl, environmental justice, and energyconservation and supply. (How different would our cities and ourlives be if we used energy at a quarter of our current rate?) Hefears that Derrick Jensen’s bleak view of our industrial civilizationis correct. He’s also a computer graphics programmer, anti-waractivist, and amateur astronomer.

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Eva Jehle was born and raised in Munich, Germany, Champaignresident since 1979. She has always enjoyed out-door activities,especially hiking. While living in Vermilion County, IL, she wasinvolved, albeit in a small role, in the effort led by Jim Yoho topreserve the Middle Fork River Since she retired, she has been ac-tive in several local environmental issues, such as “Save our trees”,the effort to stop dredging of the Salt Fork River, in the on-goingeffort to stop the proposed coal mine near Homer, IL, as well asworking with David Monk on Prairie protection and expansion.The harvesting of seeds at the Seymour Prairie is an annual fallactivity she enjoys tremendously.

She is active in the Democratic Party, as a Central Committeemember and as a member of the Executive Board. As office man-ager, she has banned bottled water in the office, switched to actualsilver ware instead of disposables and did the same with coffee cups,glasses and plates. She also started to expand re-use/recycling ofyard signs. One of her pet peeves is the emphasis on recycling,while forgetting about the first 2 “Rs”, reduce and re-use.

George Hardebeck worked as a naturalist in Cincinnati ParkBoard for a dozen years, as a gardener focused for ecological ben-efits, and as an illustrator, and illustrator’s representative, afterbeginning his art career in advertising, where he saw how suchintentional arts were used to form consumer culture. This aware-ness led him to promote community-based ecological restorationin Cincinnati, under the umbrella of The (Ohio) Society for Eco-logical Restoration through collaborative events and projects; andto develop other intentional cultural work and events, with oth-ers since the 1980’s in arts, culture, interfaith, and ecology. AsARCHE - Arts Restoring Culture for Healing Earth in the recentdecade, he has taken on restoring regional native identity, pro-motes ecocultural arts, developed transdisciplinery conversationsfor reconciliation with First Peoples, Culture and Life, ecologically- all Native; and has taught such reharmonizing and restorativeperspective in Permaculture coursework. George hosts a talk ra-dio program, WannaBe Cafe, from Champaign-Urbana’s Indepen-dent Media Center, where he collaborates to form related events; iscurrently exploring the formation of a 12 Step effort called EarthAnonymous / ACDC - Adult Children of Dysfunctional Culturethrough Facebook; and seeks to form a watershed based eco-artsconsortium - following like work in Cincinnati, along with furtherprojects for healing our long integral life of place to planet.

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