Restoration Technician Crew 2019

​​By Riley Nylin
​Nachusa Grasslands Restoration Technician

2019 Restoration Crew

​Spring showers have brought the May flowers, as well as very cold and damp conditions this year. With the invasive species and the native plants beginning to appear all at the same time, the 2019 crew has been quite busy. Because many plants have appeared later this year as a result of the weather conditions, the crew has had to work extra hard to ensure that each seed gets picked and each weed continues to get sprayed.

Weed sweep preparation

​As the summer continues, the crew is hopeful for drier conditions, so that they can continue with typical restoration activities. For the remainder of June and July the crew will focus heavily on controlling invasive species through spading and spraying, so that they do not force out the beautiful native plants. The crew has already begun to tackle the sweet clover, king devil, and bird’s foot trefoil. While this is going on, seed collection has also slowly begun. Although it will not be in full swing until August, collection of plants such as pussytoes and prairie phlox is already in progress.

Seed collection

​Once the crew has hand-picked almost 275 species of seed and placed them in barrels to dry, there will be well over two tons of seed that will need to be dried, milled, and mixed. The crew will then get the honor of producing their very own planting for the year. This year the planting is a 63-acre lot that was previously used as agricultural land. At the end of this process the 2019 crew will have covered a lot of ground in weed sweeps, seed collection, and new prairie!

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Meet the Crew

​Nathaniel Weickert hails from Rockford, Illinois. He received his B.S. in biological sciences from Northern Illinois University. He has been a member of the crew here at Nachusa since 2017 and is currently Nachusa’s first McComick fellow. Nathaniel will be pursuing a Graduate degree beginning in the fall, but until then is excited to be continuing working and learning at Nachusa Grasslands.

​Amanda Contreras is the assistant crew leader for the 2019 summer season. She is from Aurora, Illinois and graduated with a B.S. in biology from Aurora University. She enjoys the hard work that she gets to put into restoration and hopes to continue in a career within this field. In Amanda’s free time, you will usually find her behind a Neil Gaiman book.

Tyler Pellegrini lives in Dekalb, Illinois and graduated from Northern Illinois University with a B.S. in ecological studies. Tyler enjoys working with prescribed burns and would enjoy a career in this field following his work at Nachusa. He recently finished EMT basic training and became a dad to a baby girl. In his free time, he enjoys canoeing and watching wildland fire videos.

​Anna Scheidel is from Westmont, Illinois and earned her B.S. in biology from Benedictine University in 2017. She is currently working on her MS in Conservation Biology at Illinois State University, studying root hemiparasitic plants in prairies.  She is using her spare time to work on her field research at Nachusa. Anna hopes to build on her plant identification skills and further her knowledge of prairie restoration.

​Riley Nylin is from Long Grove, Iowa and graduated from Iowa State University in May 2019 with a B.S. in agricultural & biological systems management and technology, as well as agronomy. While attending ISU she worked for the Monarch Working Group performing telemetry with monarchs, and she also worked for the Iowa Limnology Lab performing water sampling of over 130 of Iowa’s public lakes. Through these internships she found a passion for conservation work, which is what brought her to Nachusa.

Jenny Chlipala is from Lyons, Illinois and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a B.S. in natural resources and environmental sciences. It was at her local prairie, Wolf Road Prairie, that Jenny found her passion for prairie restoration, wildlife management, and invasive species work. She hopes to share the passion and enthusiasm she has seen from her peers and professors with others and continue her work in restoration ecology. In her free time, she enjoys reading, watching movies, and traveling.