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PROPOSED RESOLUTION
RESOLUTION RECOGNIZING THE FRIENDS OF NORTHBROOK FOREST PRESERVE
WHEREAS, Somme Woods, Somme Prairie Nature Preserve, and Somme Prairie Grove Nature Preserve are located in the Village of Northbrook in northeast Cook County and include natural ecosystems from shaded woodland to sun-dappled savanna and finally to wide open prairie; and
WHEREAS, the Forest Preserves of Cook County acknowledges that the forest preserves in Cook County are located on the ancestral homelands of the Council of Three Fires, a long-standing Anishinaabe alliance of the Ojibwe (or Chippewa), Ottawa (or Odawa), and Potawatomi North American Native tribes. These lands have also been home and a place of trade for many other tribes, including the Fox, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Meskwaki, Miami, and Sauk people; and
WHEREAS, the Forest Preserves pioneering habitat restoration efforts were originally focused mostly on sites where volunteer groups had offered to do large parts of the work given that in 1989 the Forest Preserve had only a handful of staff for the ecological management of 55,000 acres; and
WHEREAS, the Friends of the Northbrook Forest Preserves was organized in 1998 under the guidance of concerned community members Jay Risk, Linda Masters, Shari Leyshan, Stephen Packard, Mike Beeftink and others to provide additional stewardship and educational resources for the Forest Preserves that border the Village of Northbrook on the west, north, and east; and
WHEREAS, the Forest Preserve and the Village of Northbrook have long worked together to promote public benefit of these preserves; and
WHEREAS, the Cook County Forest Preserve Board through its Next Century Plan has ratified plans for expanded resources for ecological restoration and simultaneously approved the Somme preserves as high priorities on the basis of their quality and importance; and
WHEREAS, for decades the Friends of Northbrook Forest Preserves have contributed thousands of hours of work every yea...
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