Illinois Natural History Survey - University of Illinois

INHS Reports September-October 1999

Looking Before We Leap: All in a Day's Work at INHS

Ever since we were all babes in the woods (figuratively and literally), we have been taught to look before we leap. Our authority figures tried to instill the notion that a little planning and careful attention to where we were going next, whether on a long odyssey or a simple jaunt in the forests near our homes, were a prudent investment in the future. There was no telling what was on the other side of those logs we were ready to hop, so it made good sense to look before we leapt and trod on something hiding there.

Even governmental agencies have learned this lesson and in many cases have institutionalized the looking-before-leaping process. For instance, the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), which is responsible for upgrading and maintaining the state's highway system, is required to make biological assessments of areas where it plans to make or replace roads. Before it leaps into construction activities, IDOT must look to determine how such construction will impact the plants and animals in the surrounding environment. Actually, IDOT contracts the Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS) to do the looking.

INHS field biologist Bill Handel, who specializes in endangered species and grading natural communities, has served as the eyes for IDOT and its construction of Illinois Route 20 that traverses the state from Chicago in the east to Dubuque, Iowa, in the west. As co-principal investigator in the biological assessment of Route 20, Handel and his colleagues in the Statewide Biological Assessment Program and the INHS Wetlands Group have studied some 70,000 acres (109 square miles) along this highway since 1993. These researchers have discovered a number of unrecorded threatened and endangered plants and animals as well as high-quality natural communities. Some of these rare species reside in Tapley Woods Natural Area, a holding of INHS' parent organization, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

The new knowledge uncovered by INHS scientists will be very useful to IDOT as it proceeds with construction along Route 20. IDOT can now take measures to minimize the potential negative influences of construction upon the plants and animals along this highway

A four-foot timber rattler exiting a food cooler.

Occasionally Handel and the staff of the Statewide Biological Assessment Program, in their role of being the eyes for IDOT, get unsolicited help from concerned citizens throughout the state. Recently Handel received a phone call from a landowner in northwest Illinois near Route 20 who discovered a large timber rattlesnake sunbathing on his patio. The landowner knew the snake is an Illinois threatened species and that the Survey is interested in occurrences of rare species around Route 20. So he phoned Bill who, fortuitously, was preparing for a trip to that area of the state the very next day.

When Handel arrived he was escorted to a Coleman food cooler (the kind you take on picnics) into which the landowner and his son somehow had been able to coax the rattler. Remembering to look before he leapt, Handel gingerly lifted the lid of the cooler only to be confronted by the stare of a none-too-happy, four-and-a-half-foot poisonous reptile that was not shy about displaying its displeasure with a loud agitated buzz of its tail.

Handel decided to relocate the snake a mile or so into the woods away from the house and its human inhabitants. For added security he applied a generous amount of duct tape in place of the broken latch on the cooler lid. Handel found a prairie opening in the forest that he reasoned would be suitable habitat for the snake because it had a number of fallen logs that would attract rodents (lunch for the snake). Carefully he removed the duct tape from the cooler lid, stepped back the length of his hiking stick, and used the stick to flip open the cooler lid from a safe distance. The rattler had no problem figuring out what to do as illustrated by the photo accompanying this article.

Handel explained that the rattlesnake episode culminated in a win-win-win situation--for the landowner who got rid of an unwanted intruder, for the snake that was saved by the alert timely action of the landowner, and for INHS, which was able to document the location of another threatened species and help ensure its continued survival by making sure government policymakers know the locations of rare species to help agencies avoid harming the state's biological resources. This kind of collaboration among concerned citizens, INHS, and state agencies proves to be an effective force for the preservation of nature in Illinois.

Charlie Warwick, editor