Oak Forest HS Ecology Club Officers Present at Conference

Oak Forest High School Ecology Club Officers Emily Papiez, John Rosales, and Casey Wolff pose with Cook County Forest Preserve Resource Management Administrator Alice Brandon after presenting their ongoing habitat restoration project at the 6th Biennial Wild Things Conference held January 31 at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

The Oak Forest High School Ecology Club has been restoring the Bartel Grasslands over the past several years, along with mentors from the Cook Country Forest Preserve District, and were asked to present about their work at the Wild Things Conference to professional and volunteers in the field of habitat restoration and management.

Oak Forest High School Ecology Club Sponsor Dawn Sasek was very enthusiastic about their participation in the project because she said, “The kids were the ones who did the presenting!” She was excited because many individuals and volunteers that work in the ecology field came to their session and supported them in their guided discussion.

Oak Forest High School Ecology Club President John Rosales said that their session was designed to be a guided discussion. One question that audience members jumped over themselves to answer, he said, was “How do you get younger kids involved in ecology?” Rosales said, “People had a lot of answers to that question. They said that kids should get involved in similar things, involved in ecology competitions, and people could provide incentives for students to participate in ecology club.”

Ecology Club Vice-President Emily Papiez was enthusiastic about the other sessions that the students saw. “I thought it was interesting because we found out things we didn’t know about. One of the things I learned is that someone has to say something seven times in order for another person to learn it.”

Rosales agreed with Papiez in that the conference was interesting. He said, “It’s nice to see that people actually care about these things!”

The Oak Forest High School Ecology Club made national waves last year in a video about their restoration project in the Bartel Grasslands at the National Audubon Society Annual Bird Conference in Washington, D.C.

One way the students are helping to restore the Bartel Grasslands, Rosales explained, is by removing the buckthorn from the Bartel Grasslands. “This is an invasive species and has to be removed,” he explained. One of the conference sessions the students went to was about the buckthorn plant. The students were fascinated to find that there is a website where students can go and log in where they have found the buckthorn plant and what they have done about it.