On the Environment
Here you will find coverage of biodiverse areas and nature reserves, the environmental challenges facing the midwest region, and the people who are making a difference.
Something Wild:
Shawnee National Forest
Shawnee National Forest sweeps like a green sea across 289,000 acres of southern Illinois, reaching from the Ohio River in the east to the Mississippi River in the west. The primarily oak-hickory forest protects an astounding 500 wildlife species, including 237 birds, 109 fish, 57 reptiles, 48 mammals, and 57 amphibians. The forest also boasts Heron Pond, with cypress trees that are hundreds of years old. It is the northernmost cypress swamp on the North American continent.
BY CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON
Shawnee is fortunate enough to have seven protected wilderness areas: Bald Knob, Bay Creek, Burden Falls, Clear Springs, Garden of the Gods, Lusk Creek, and Panther Den. An eighth wilderness area lies in nearby Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge, north of Carbondale. The wilderness areas were formed when Congress passed and President George H.W. Bush signed the Illinois Wilderness Act of 1990.
Since these Illinois wildernesses were protected in 1990, they have proven to be extraordinarily popular places for outdoor recreation—and important in protecting the ecological integrity of the forest. Tyler Barron, a Policy Advocate for the Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC), a major environmental organization headquartered in Chicago, says, “People from around the Midwest circle these types of areas on their road trip maps, on their family vacations, and make sure to visit them.” People seek out wilderness areas for their seclusion, pristine beauty, and the chance to escape temporarily from the pressures of modern life.
Because of these benefits, the ELPC and other conservation organizations in Illinois are working to add three more protected wildernesses within Shawnee National Forest. Barron explains, “The first one is Camp Hutchins, which is located in the upper left corner. That is located right next to Clear Springs and Bald Knob Wilderness Areas. The second is Ripple Hollow, which is the second largest area that we’re proposing. It’s in the bottom left side of the Shawnee National Forest. And then Burke Branch, which is the largest of the three proposals, is in the far southeast corner of the forest.”
Barron explains further, “When we’re talking about wilderness, the idea is that you have a wild place—a place that contains unique and special characteristics that should be left the way that they are. The benefit of that permanency of management means that regardless of how the US Forest Service thinks a national forest should be treated, which can change from year to year, the wilderness areas do not change. You are dealing with certain flora and fauna that really deserve a place that has permanence.”
Almost 60 years ago, Congress passed and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Wilderness Act of 1964. The primary author of the act was Howard Zahniser, the Executive Director of The Wilderness Society, which leading conservationists had formed in 1937. The law created the National Wilderness Preservation System and immediately designated 54 wilderness areas, comprising 9.1 million acres in 13 states.
The act stipulated that adding to the system took an act of Congress, which required conservationist groups to win the support of US Representatives and Senators. Today, the system protects almost 112 million acres of wilderness in the United States, located in national forests, national parks, national wildlife refuges, and Bureau of Land Management lands.
The purpose of the Wilderness Act is to preserve natural areas in as wild and pristine a state as possible. Banned from wilderness areas are the use of motor vehicles and other motorized equipment, roads, aircraft landing strips, commercial logging, and mining. Wilderness areas provide habitat for wildlife and threatened species, protect watersheds, help to cleanse water for drinking and other uses, and provide outstanding opportunities for outdoor recreation. They also support local economies by attracting tourists interested in primitive camping, hiking, canoeing, backpacking, and other activities.
For decades, Illinois remained without any protected wilderness areas. That changed in the late 1980s, when conservationists in southern Illinois heavily criticized the US Forest Service for permitting too much logging on the forest, particularly clearcutting, or the cutting of every tree in a forest stand—a technique that can severely damage a forest.
The situation reached a crisis when the Forest Service proposed the Fairview timber sale in 1990. For 79 days, environmentalists protested the timber sale, even going so far as chaining themselves to logging equipment. Conservationists also filed a lawsuit, and in 1996, a judge issued an injunction against most kinds of logging in the Shawnee forest. In 2013, the injunction was lifted, and logging resumed, with the Forest Service employing what it says are sustainable methods.
In the midst of the controversy, environmental groups pressed for the creation of protected wilderness areas in the Shawnee forest. They had an ally in US Representative Glenn Poshard, a Democrat who represented what was then the 22nd Congressional District in southern Illinois. Poshard, who was highly critical of the Forest Service’s logging policies, sponsored legislation, which Congress passed and President Bush signed in 1990, to create the seven wilderness areas in the forest and the one at Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge.
It’s been more than 30 years since the eight wilderness areas were created. So why add more wilderness? Tyler Barron explains, “We’re advocating for three additional wilderness areas in Shawnee National Forest because we have some truly unique and incredible places in the country, and the
Garden of the Gods is one of the wildernesses in Shawnee National Forest and the most popular natural attraction in the forest.
The unique rock formations in Garden of the Gods were formed over millions of years as ancient mountains eroded and seas receded, leaving behind deposits that formed horizontal layers of sandstone.
Some rocks in Garden of the Gods display unique bands of rust, formed when sandstone was saturated with groundwater mixed with iron.
(All photographs by the author.)
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Evergreen Climate Innovations:
Investing in Our Green-Energy Future
On August 16, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which commits the United States to far-reaching actions to combat climate change and promote clean energy. The law provides $370 billion in investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and clean transportation. The Department of Energy estimates that the IRA, in combination with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2030. Without question, these two laws are going to catalyze a paradigm shift in the U.S. economy toward clean energy and sustainability.
BY CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON
At the center of this exciting and innovative future is Evergreen Climate Innovations, a Chicago-based investment fund that awards seed money to start-up companies and entrepreneurs who are at the cutting edge of solutions to the climate crisis and other environmental challenges. Erik Birkerts, Evergreen’s CEO, says, “Our ultimate mission is to address the climate and environmental challenges that we all face. We’re participating in the global fight by concentrating on innovation and entrepreneurship. Our belief is that a lot of the solutions and transitions that are going to take place will be driven by new, innovative ways of producing energy, consuming food, and conserving water.”
How Evergreen operates—and even how it originated—highlights how this new economy is going to develop and what the rewards and risks are going to be. In the early 2010s, Nick Pritzker and Michael Polsky, two prominent business and civic leaders with Chicago connections, were frustrated that Chicago and the Midwest were lagging behind the East and West coasts in attracting investments for clean energy and other sustainability ventures.
In 2010, Pritzker and Polsky recruited Amy Francetic, who had extensive experience in the energy sector, to be the CEO of a new organization that would invest in energy and climate entrepreneurs. The new organization was called the Clean Energy Trust. Birkerts, who joined the fund in 2013 and took over as CEO in 2015, explains, “Early on, a lot of the work was focused on ecosystem development, bringing together stakeholders in the city and region to build connective tissue so that the universities were talking to interested corporations and potential investors.” The fund rebranded itself as Evergreen Climate Innovations in 2021.
The founders formulated their new enterprise as a nonprofit—a federal 501(c)(3). Birkerts explains, “We actually call our mod-el a 501vc® platform to riff on the fact that we’re structured as a 501(c)(3), but we act in many respects as a venture-capital firm. We even trademarked it for fun.” The nonprofit status gives Evergreen flexibility. According to Birkerts, “By creating our model, we are able to take philanthropic support. We’re able to invest that money into these various companies. So we’re able to take more risk. We can be much more patient for much longer time horizons than can traditional venture-capital firms.”
Evergreen has developed a unique open process for identifying potential entrepreneurs and startups to invest in. Evergreen’s website, evergreeninno.org, even has a button labeled “Apply for Investment.” Because of this open process, Evergreen has been able to fund a diversity of companies and entrepreneurs. Birkerts says, “Nearly 60 percent of 42 companies have either a female or a person of color in leadership positions. That open door allows us to see a wider array of great entrepreneurs.”
In addition, because the fund has been around for twelve years, they have developed connections with local universities, Argonne National Laboratory, and Fermilab, which will refer potential entrepreneurs to Evergreen.
Once a startup applies for funding, the fund’s managers evaluate the company’s technology, business model, and leadership. Another important aspect is the status of the firm’s intellectual property. Do they already have patents, or do they need to apply for patents? Once Evergreen’s management has approved of a company, it provides initial funding of $250,000. Additional funding may follow, up to $1 million.
Evergreen also provides follow-up management and technical expertise. The founders of most of the young companies are scientists or engineers without a great deal of business experience. Birkerts says, “That’s really where we can lean in and be helpful. We’ll coach and mentor these companies ourselves. We’ll sit side by side with the management team and help them work through issues and strategies. We will connect them with subject-matter experts. We have what we call Evergreen Experts— a network of 65 people we’ve identified who have volunteered to lend their particular expertise to help our entrepreneurs.” Experts with a manufacturing background will provide input on how to design a product so that it can be manufactured effectively and efficiently. Other specialists have backgrounds in patent law.
What’s more, Evergreen has a program called Structured Fund-Raising, in which they act almost like an investment bank on behalf of their portfolio companies. They will introduce the company to investors in their network and explain the type of innovation a company has. Through this process, Evergreen has helped their portfolio companies to win more than $400 million in additional capital to facilitate growth.
Birkerts explains why the fund changed its name from Clean Energy Trust to Evergreen Climate Innovations. “When we started,” he says, “the state of play was in wind, solar, and energy efficiency. We changed the name because we were seeing so many different types of innovations taking place that have an impact on the climate imperative—everything from agriculture to alternative proteins to water. So our mission is much broader than energy.”
Evergreen is also seeing innovations in water technologies, whether it’s water filtration, reuse, or reduction. “We are seeing innovations in alternative proteins,” Birkerts adds. “The beef industry is a huge carbon emitter. So, we have a broader aperture. We’re still seeing energy storage and batteries; that’s the linchpin. But we’re also seeing innovations around anodes, cathodes, and battery-management software. We’re seeing people working on long-duration storage. We’re seeing activity in the sectors that are tough to decarbonize.”
As of now, Evergreen has funded 42 companies. A closer look at a few of them shows dramatically the direction in which the clean-energy economy is going. NanoGraf Technologies, based in Chicago, has developed faster charging and longer lasting lithium-ion batteries—key to increasing the range of electric vehicles. The federal government has even given the company a $10 million contract to develop a manufacturing facility, which they are currently building on the West Side of the city.
NuMat Technologies, which grew out of research at Northwestern University, has been innovating chemical, industrial, and electronics solutions. For example, they have developed safer ways to store methane, which is a greenhouse gas and contributes to global warming when it leaks into the atmosphere. According to Birkerts, NuMat is currently building a manufacturing facility in Humboldt Park, bringing investments and jobs to a part of the city that desperately needs them.
Evergreen has also invested in startups that have been acquired by larger companies. Birkerts says, “One was a Chicago-based company call Agentis Energy. They were acquired by a company called Uplight in 2021. Another company is called Go Elec-tric. They’re out of Indianapolis. They were acquired by Saft, which is a division of the French company Total. The proceeds from those investments we were able to reinvest.”
Because Evergreen is a nonprofit, they use their returns differently from the typical venture-capital firm. Because the capital has come to them philanthropically, they recycle the investment proceeds. That is, they take those profits and reinvest them in more entrepreneurs and startups. “It’s revolving,” Birkerts says. “That’s why we have ‘evergreen’.”
In the battle against climate change and the transition to clean energy and other sustainable initiatives, different types of organizations play different roles. Some organizations like the Sierra Club work on policy advocacy. Others work to educate and change consumer behavior and build aware-ness around the climate issue.
But in the critical battle to forge a green economy, investment funds like Evergreen are critical. As Birkerts explains, “Our lane is driven by our belief in entrepreneurship. Every sector of our economy is going to have to re-imagine itself if we hope to achieve our climate objectives. We will need to deploy more of the technologies we already have, but there are a whole range of technologies that are going to have to be created. That’s where we play.”
For further reading about the role of private industry in the fight against climate change, check out the new book Climatenomics: Washington, Wall Street, and the Economic Battle to Save Our Planet, by Bob Keefe, executive director of E2 (Environmental Entrepreneurs).
Erik Birkerts, CEO of Evergreen Climate Innovations since 2015. Photo courtesy of Evergreen Climate Innovations
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Forest Bathing and the
Nature-Health Connection
A group of eight people walks very slowly through the natural area. It could be a Cook County Forest Preserve or Moraine Hills State Park or any of the other beautiful green spaces that surround Chicago. Leading the group is a guide who asks the participants to gather in a circle. She picks up a stick and begins to pass it around. As the stick makes it way around the group, each person shares with the group what he or she notices about it.
The group walks on with its deliberate pace for about two hours, participating in a series of activities—or invitations—designed to connect them with the surrounding forest by using all of their senses. At the end of the two hours, the participants join in a tea ceremony and quietly share their experiences and observations.
BY CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON
These fortunate eight people have just experienced forest therapy, also known as forest bathing, a practice for reengaging fully with nature. The practice originated in Japan in the early 1980s and has spread throughout the United States and, indeed, the world. In Japan, the practice is known as shinrin-yoku, which translates as “forest bathing.” Amos Clifford, an experienced counselor and student of Buddhism who lives in California, founded the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT) and wrote the excellent book, Your Guide to Forest Bathing. He writes, “In the practice of forest bathing, we immerse our senses in the special qualities of the fluid, oceanic ambience of the woodlands. We walk slowly so we can focus our senses on the myriad ways the living forest surrounds and touches us.”
Linda Karlen, a Chicagoland-based Certified Forest Therapy Guide who was trained in the practice by the ANFT, adds, “Forest therapy attempts to reconnect people with nature. It assumes that we have a connection with nature and that it’s very important to have that connection. In practical terms, it’s taking people into natural environments.” She points out that the terms forest therapy and forest bathing are used interchangeably.
According to Karlen, forest bathing has enormous benefits for both physical health and mental health. She explains, “This fall I did a walk at Moraine Hills State Park. On the walk there were a father and a daughter. We did a two-hour walk, and at the end of the walk, we often do a tea. It allows people to come together and ask questions and make comments. As we were sitting around at the end of the walk, this man said, ‘You know, this has been really great. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know I needed this.’ That is one of the themes—when people do the walk, they say they didn’t even know that they needed this.”The ANFT trains guides like Karlen to lead participants through a series of what practitioners call “invitations” designed to open up people’s senses to all that a forest or other natural area has to offer—offerings that most of us miss because we are so immersed in our everyday worries, concerns, and goals. Forest bathing is not hiking. The entire experience involves not a goal but a complete immersion in the now—in sense experiences of the forest. As Amos Clifford writes, “The forest is the healer; the practice opens the doors.”
Karlen elaborates, “One of our goals in the walk is to slow people down and to get them out of that thinking brain and rely on their senses. Not, this is a maple tree, but this is a tree and what are its characteristics or what does this tree look like? You’re introducing yourself to a tree. It is a way of bringing everyone out of the busy mind and into the here and now. I find that if people can do that, they do feel that connection and that it is something essential.”
The guide starts a forest-bathing walk by gathering participants in a circle and asking them to introduce themselves, both to make people comfortable and to begin building a sense of community. According to Karlen, “We have what we call invitations that refocus, that get us out of think-ing of this list of all the things I have to do today. What do you hear? Let’s close our eyes. What’s the farthest sound that you hear? What do you smell? Really try to activate those senses. The second invitation is often what’s in motion. Then we begin moving, but we move very slowly. In fact, I had one person one time who said, ‘I can’t continue this walk. This is too slow for me.’ She just couldn’t slow down. In that second invitation—what’s in motion—we set a pace and just say, hey, we’re slowing down here intentionally.”
In his book, Clifford describes several specific invitations. In one, people remove their shoes and walk barefoot on a smooth surface to truly feel the soil beneath their feet.
In another, the guide picks up a handful of soil and passes it from one person to another, allowing each individual to inhale the aroma, feel the texture, and observe the fine grains that comprise the handful of precious soil. Clifford writes, “For me, the smell of dirt recalls my grandfather’s hands, working the soil of his abundant garden. This is a memory of considerable emotional power, connecting me across the years with the sensuality of child-hood wonder.” Such memories and emotions associated with nature lie at the core of forest bathing.
In yet another invitation, participants pick up a stone and hold it in their hands. With their eyes closed, they feel every corner of the stone and reflect on the places where the stone has traveled through its long history; they imagine the story of the stone. The experience activates people’s imaginations and stimulates their creativity.
Karlen observes that the slow pace and quiet practice of forest bathing can be challenging to people immersed in today’s technology-driven world. She recalls an incident in which a young woman showed up a little bit late for a walk. She was on her phone and was a little agitated. “At the end of the walk,” Karlen says, “when we were all talking, the young woman said, ‘I had to turn off my Apple watch about fifteen minutes into the walk because it kept going off, and I couldn’t focus. Once I did that, I was able to listen more to the invitations. I heard birds, and it’s been so long since I actually listened to birds. I really enjoyed just listening to birds and to just being here.’”
A growing body of scientific research demonstrates the benefits of nature experiences in general and forest bathing in particular. In one classic study, researchers compared people convalescing in a hospital. One group looked out on a park or some natural landscape, and the other group did not. The view of nature helped people recover more quickly. Researchers have also found that when people have plants around to care for, they have more healthful and positive attitudes and even changes in temperament.
Miyazaki Yoshifumi, a professor at Chiba University in Japan, has been conducting experiments on the benefits of shinrin-yokuon on the island of Yakushima since 1990. In one experiment, he measures levels of cortisol, a stress-related hormone that shows up in saliva. In a typical experiment, subjects take a short walk through a natural area or simply view a natural scene. The experience leads to lower levels of cortisol—i.e., lower levels of stress. In 2018, the National Library of Medicine published a review of studies of levels of cortisol. In 20 of 22 studies, forest therapy led to significantly lower levels of cortisol. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31001682/)
In an interview in 2018, Dr. Yoshifumi said, “ We conducted experiments with high school students, having them observe roses and other leafy plants. It is clear that adolescents experience a physiological re-laxation effect just by looking at the flora.” Dr. Yoshifumi observes that mindful experiences of nature are needed in today’s world for two reasons. First, the human species has spent 99 percent of its history living in close proximity with nature and its rhythms. He observes, “Because we have bodies that are adapted to nature, living in modern society places us in a condition of stress.” Secondly, the dramatic shift to a media- and technology-driven society has removed us even further from natural experiences. We obey the signals of the computer and the smartphone rather than the rhythms of the sun’s rising and setting and the progress of the seasons. According to Dr. Yoshifumi, “We have entered a secondary stage of stress.” But, as the young woman said on Linda Karlen’s forest-bathing walk, once she turned off her phone, she was able to hear the birds. Her observation captures the promise of forest bathing.
If people in the Chicago area are interested in this experience, Linda Karlen suggests that they check their local park districts and libraries. The Morton Arboretum has offered forest therapy walks in the past. The Cook County Forest Preserves, the McHenry County Conservation District, Volo Bog, and Moraine Hills State Park have also offered forest-bathing walks. A great resource is the ANFT website, which lists certified forest therapists at natureandforesttherapy.earth/guides. The list includes guides based in Chicagoland whom interested people can contact directly.
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