Preserving Preserves: People Passionately Protecting Public Prairies

As a student at Lake Forest Academy, service is an important aspect of the curriculum and community. This year multitudes of students from Lake Forest Academy have participated in environment oriented service in order to give back to the local community. For our personal service project we went to participate in a service day on April 3rd at Lake Forest Open Lands, a local organization dedicated to conserving our natural environment through land acquisition, habitat restoration, environmental education and conservation advocacy. We believe that conservation of the area surrounding the community is extremely important as a member of any community. Today many invasive species are infesting nature preserves throughout the country. Here in Lake Forest, leafy spurge, buckthorn, and plain trash are just some of the numerous species that the individuals at Lake Forest Open Lands work to control in their preserves. On our service day, April 3rd we spent time picking up trash around a main road that had been carelessly thrown from car windows as they drove by. In the second half of our 3 hours of volunteer work we also transplanted baby oaks that were growing too densely in certain areas and not at all in other parts of the preserve. We also moved certain clumps of nannyberries, a native Illinois shrub closer to the water source to encourage their continued prosperity. Throughout the day our group worked as hard as possible to help out the parent organization in any way possible.

This project is in no way the only environmental conservation project undertaken by Lake Forest Academy students this year. Every year students from Lake Forest Academy participate in service events restoring our local environment for partner organizations: Lake Forest Open Lands, Lake Bluff Open Lands and Lake County Forest Preserves. Throughout the year, students participate in service for these organizations through independent projects, the AP environmental Science curriculum as well as all day on April 15th every year. This past year, we have student internship volunteers over the summer, a seminar group, as well as students who went as part of AP Environmental Science course. In total in the past year hundreds of students have put forth thousands of hours for environmental conservation in our local community. We believe at Lake Forest Academy that conservation of the local environment is extremely important as a service oriented scholastic community.