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A push by the federal government to create more wildlife refuges near urban areas has prompted plans for a massive new one straddling the Wisconsin and Illinois border. Proponents say the refuge would draw visitors from Milwaukee and Chicago while preserving wetlands in a region where they’ve been severely depleted.

The U.S Fish and Wildlife Service has begun a study of establishing a refuge in an area that spans Walworth, Racine and Kenosha counties in Wisconsin and McHenry and Lake counties in northern Illinois. Within the zone being studied, the refuge could ultimately encompass as many as 30,000 acres of wetlands, including drained basins that would be restored, grasslands and forests.

a map of the hackmatack wildlife refuge study area. click to enlarge. (illustration by adrian palomo)

The Wildlife Service estimates that acquiring the land would cost between $15 and $45 million in federal funds, all requiring Congressional approval. That would pay for only about half of the land, however. The rest, according to the proposal, would come from existing conservations areas, donations or agreements with state and local government. With its own management, the refuge would cost $400,000 a year in federal funds to operate. If the refuge was overseen by the existing management at the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge northwest of however, it would cost about $200,000 a year.

“The focus of the proposed refuge would be to connect existing conservation areas through limited and strategic acquisitions,” the proposal says. Much development has already occurred within the area being studied for the refuge. The study area even includes portions of the City of Lake Geneva. By creating the refuge, its champions hope to guard against further development in the area.

“This region faces steady development pressure,” the Wildlife Service says. “While this area has a strong conservation heritage and an excellent base of conserved lands, these conserved habitats are at risk of becoming islands in a rising sea of development. As these wild lands become increasingly fragmented and degraded, the wildlife and plants that depend on this habitat (will) decline.”

The Wildlife Service estimates the project could take 20 years to piece together, though it would begin with a small refuge and then grow larger while offering access to the public. By way of comparison, the Horicon refuge, which bills itself as “the largest freshwater cattail marsh in the United States,” is used for hiking, biking, fishing, bird watching and hunting.

One big supporter of the proposed wildlife refuge is an organization spanning Southeastern Wisconsin and Northeastern Illinois called the Friends of Hackmatack. They propose to name the refuge “Hackmatack,” which is the Algonquin Indian term for a type of conifer tree (also known as the American Tamarack tree) found in Wisconsin that sheds its needles in the fall.

Tom Hauge, wildlife management bureau director for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, says the project “started on the Illinois side of the border with a group of citizens who were interested in doing some wildlife protection efforts.” That group later became the Friends of Hackmatack, who passed their idea onto Openlands of Chicago and The Trust for Public Land of San Francisco, two land conservation nonprofits.

Lenore Beyer-Clow, policy director at Openlands and also a member of the Friends group, says these organizations helped present the project to the Wildlife Service, which became interested, in part, she says, because of a new initiative to found wildlife refuges near urban centers. She anticipates that because the area is already somewhat developed, the refuge would take shape as a patchwork of protected areas. Founding new refuges is relatively rare, she says. This would be the first new one in the Midwest since 2004.

The study area lies primarily in McHenry County, Ill., and in Walworth County, Wis, which border each other at the state line. She says the McHenry County Board has passed a resolution supporting the refuge and throughout the area, local leaders appear open to considering the project.

The northern boundary of the study area is only 20 miles from Downtown Milwaukee and parts of the zone lie within the Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area (as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau). The Wildlife Service estimates that 12 million people live within two hours of the area.

The region is hurting for wetlands. Illinois’s wetlands, according to the Wildlife Service, are down 90 percent from their original levels, while Wisconsin has lost 47 percent of its wetlands, but more than 75 percent of its wetlands in the southern part of this state. Wetlands have been destroyed due to both agricultural and urban development. Besides providing natural habitats, wetlands improve water quality and lessen flooding by slowing the flow of storm water into rivers and streams.

The study area is home to 49 birds, 47 plants, five fishes, five mussels, two reptiles and one amphibian that are considered “species of concern,” meaning they’re on federal or state lists of threatened, endangered or otherwise at-risk species.

Wisconsin senators Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl signed a February letter supporting the refuge. “Local residents would benefit from the vast recreational opportunities provided by the refuge as well as stable economic revenues from refuge visitors,” their letter declared.

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