(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Environmentalists in Illinois say only a tiny fraction of prairie is left in the Prairie State -- and Monday evening, they’ll be trying to hold on to 14 acres of it.
The acreage in question is the Bell Bowl Prairie near Rockford.
It’s a remnant prairie. Not created. Original.
“A remnant still holds the biodiversity, the fungus, the bacteria that has been evolving together for 8,000 years,” says Amy Doll, director of Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves.
She is a leader against the Greater Rockford Airport Authority’s plans to build a road through part of the Bell Bowl Prairie.
“The question we are asking is simply, ‘Could you tell us why you can’t move the road around the prairie?’
“And the airport can’t give us an answer, except it seems the answer they are giving through the grapevine is, because we made these plans four years ago and we’re not changing them.”
Doll and her group are demonstrating at a Rockford municipal meeting Monday.
WBBM Newsradio has asked the Greater Rockford Airport Authority for comment.
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