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Features
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Animals
for Adoption
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These animals and
more are available to good homes from the Logan County Animal
Control at 1515 N. Kickapoo, phone 735-3232.
Fees for animal
adoption: dogs, $60/male, $65/female; cats, $35/male, $44/female.
The fees include neutering and spaying.
Logan County Animal
Control's hours of operation:
Sunday
– closed
Monday –
8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Tuesday –
8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Wednesday –
8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Thursday –
8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Friday –
8 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Saturday –
closed
Warden: Sheila Farmer
Assistant: Polly Farmer
In-house veterinarian: Dr. Lester Thomson
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DOGS
Big to
little, most these dogs will make wonderful lifelong companions when
you take them home and provide solid, steady training, grooming and
general care. Get educated about what you choose. If you give them
the time and care they need, you will be rewarded with much more
than you gave them. They are entertaining, fun, comforting, and will
lift you up for days on end.
Be prepared to take the necessary time when you bring home a
puppy, kitten, dog, cat or any other pet, and you will be blessed.
[Logan
County Animal Control is thankful for pet supplies donated by
individuals and Wal-Mart.]
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Ten reasons to adopt a
shelter dog
1.
I'll bring out your
playful side!
2.
I'll lend an ear to
your troubles.
3.
I'll keep you
fit and trim.
4.
We'll look out for each other.
5.
We'll sniff
out fun together!
6.
I'll keep you
right on schedule.
7.
I'll love you
with all my heart.
8.
We'll have a
tail-waggin' good time!
9.
We'll snuggle
on a quiet evening.
10.
We'll be
best friends always.
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CATS
[Logan
County Animal Control is thankful for pet supplies donated by
individuals and Wal-Mart.]
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Warden
Sheila Farmer and her assistant, Polly Farmer, look forward
to assisting you. |
In
the cat section there are a number of wonderful cats to
choose from. There are a variety of colors and sizes.
Farm
cats available for free!
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[This
domestic shorthair cat is looking for
a farm to play on. He is 8 weeks old.]
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[This
2-year-old domestic shorthair cat is itching to track down
some mice. She wants to come live on your farm and help
you with the farm chores.]
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Part
2
Spunky
Bottoms — a wetland
returning to its natural rhythm
[OCT.
13, 2001]
"I
never drive along the river but I remember how it used to be,"
says Dora Dawson of Meridosia. "I remember when it was wetland —
black with ducks. I remember the bottomland
hardwoods —
oak, pecan and walnut trees."
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[Click here for
Part 1]
In the
last hundred years, people have made great changes in the nation’s
rivers, pouring human and industrial waste into them, building locks
and dams, separating the rivers from their flood plains by levees.
In the
early 1990s, the National Research Council identified the Illinois
as one of only three large flood-plains river ecosystems in the
United States that have a chance of recovering from man-made damage,
and the Nature Conservancy began thinking about a campaign to
restore some of its wetlands.
Last
year, the conservancy made an ambitious purchase, when it bought the
7,527-acre Wilder Farm near Havana, where the Spoon River joins the
Illinois. The huge property, now called by its ancient name Emiquon,
is still being farmed, but plans are already under way for its
restoration. The Nature Conservancy is meeting with advisory groups,
both scientists and local citizens, to decide how to manage the
land, which will be a mix of forest, prairie and marsh. The work
being done at Spunky Bottoms will be a guideline as well.
"This
is a laboratory setting for what is going to happen at Emiquon,
which is so much more extensive," Blodgett says.
He
also says the conservancy wants to be a good neighbor. Although
there are plans to open the levees and reconnect the bottoms to the
river, care will be taken not to flood adjoining farmland. Local
people will be given the opportunity to hunt and fish again in the
restored wetlands, though on a limited basis so as to keep the
wildlife abundant. On non-hunting days, bird-watchers will be
allowed into the blinds for waterfowl viewing.
"We
want people to see that having the Nature Conservancy as a neighbor
is a good thing," Blodgett says.
[to top of second column in
this section]
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The
Spunky Bottoms tour was on a perfect early fall afternoon, a day not
too warm or too cool, with an almost cloudless blue sky. An
occasional grain truck rumbled along a distant road, but otherwise
civilization seemed remote. More immediate were the waving prairie
grasses, the northern harrier that flew low across the marshy
bottom, hunting for mice or frogs, the grasshoppers and the
occasional butterfly, and the pair of deer that splashed through a
pond in their effort to get out of sight of the visitors.
The
peaceful atmosphere itself seems reason enough to preserve these
"Last Great Places," but there are others just as
convincing.
"One
of the greatest reasons to preserve biodiversity is that it holds
the answers to many of the questions that we haven’t been smart
enough to ask yet," Blodgett says. "Medical information,
for example. We may find cures for diseases in some of the plants we
save. Some of them might have great commercial value.
"But
also, we can better understand our relationship with the environment
by understanding the relationships of other organisms to it. If an
animal goes extinct and we don’t understand why, we may run the
risk of going extinct for the same reason."
And Dora Dawson and others
who grew up along the Illinois will be able to see wetland black
with ducks again.
[Joan
Crabb]
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Part
1
Spunky
Bottoms — a wetland
returning to its natural rhythm
[OCT.
12, 2001]
"I
never drive along the river but I remember how it used to be,"
says Dora Dawson of Meridosia. "I remember when it was wetland —
black with ducks. I remember the bottomland
hardwoods —
oak, pecan and walnut trees."
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The
river Dora remembers with such nostalgia is the Illinois. The
wetlands she remembers along that river are mostly farmland today,
producing the ubiquitous corn and soybeans. The river landscape she
remembers from when she was a girl growing up in the small river
town about halfway between Springfield, Ill., and Hannibal, Mo.,
disappeared many years ago.
Beginning
in the 1920s, all along the Illinois, and along most other
Midwestern rivers as well, the rich bottomland was drained by
building earth levees and installing pumps so row crops could be
planted.
"The
sad part of it was, often they didn’t get a good crop off it.
Still, they went ahead and farmed it," Dora remembers.
But
Dora and others can now see time turning backward in a few places
along the Illinois. Spunky Bottoms, 1,157 acres not far from
Meridosia, is already beginning to find its old rhythm as a wetland,
thanks to the Nature Conservancy. This organization is dedicated to
restoring natural communities by protecting the lands and waters
they need to survive. Funded almost entirely by private
contributions, its motto is "Saving the Last Great
Places."
The
conservancy bought the 1,157 acres of farmland on the west bank of
the river back in 1997, spent several years researching what the
land was like a century ago and then began restoring it. They called
it Spunky Bottoms because it was just below a place historically
known as Spunky Ridge. "Spunky" in this context means an
area that has a lot of springs and other natural water.
Volunteers
from neighboring high schools and colleges, 350 strong, helped the
conservancy plant about 6,000 trees, including burr oak, linden,
black walnut, sycamore, pecan, chinquapin, river birch and Kentucky
coffee trees, all species that had once grown in the wetlands along
the river.
The
volunteers also helped plant hundreds of pounds of prairie seeds,
all gathered within 150 miles of Spunky Bottoms so the plants would
be the local species that once grew here.
But
many of the plants that are returning are doing so without the help
of humans. The seeds of natural vegetation that were lying dormant
in these soils for as long as 75 years, like big bluestem, Indian
grass and wild ryes, are coming back on their own.
[to top of second column in
this section]
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On a
recent tour of Spunky Bottoms, sponsored by the Illinois Chapter of
the Nature Conservancy, about 50 members and visitors saw some of
the changes already underway.
The
essential element to bring it all back is water. Because the water
table is so high, the conservancy didn’t need to take down the
levees to begin wetlands restoration, explains Douglas Blodgett,
Great Rivers Area director. Just turning off the pumps was enough to
produce shallow lakes and waterways, which this year provided a
stopping place for an estimated 16,000 migrating ducks. Water lilies
are growing where corn used to be.
An
upland prairie, where Indian grass and rudbeckia (black-eyed Susans)
grow instead of soybeans, attracted at least six rare Henslow’s
sparrows, which require this very specific environment to survive.
Bald eagles, white pelicans, and the shy and secretive black rail
have returned to the area.
Not
only birds, but fish and amphibians are also returning. John Tucker
of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources showed visitors a
collection of turtles that can live in the area —
painted turtles, red-eared sliders, common and the
false map turtles, both smooth and spiny soft-shells (the spiny one
always bites, he notes), the stinkpot and the endangered Blandings
turtle, which the conservancy hopes to re-establish at Spunky
Bottoms.
Black
bass, white crappies, green sunfish, brown bullheads, carp and
bigmouth buffalo are among the fish that will make their homes at
Spunky Bottoms. At some point, the levees will be opened in places
so fish can come into the bottoms to spawn.
"The
Illinois River has been historically very productive," Blodgett
told the visitors. "It has a large flood plain, as much as 7
miles wide some places, because at one time what is now the
Mississippi flowed through here."
The
last glaciers pushed the Mississippi over into its present location,
and a smaller river, which became known as the Illinois, began
draining the old Mississippi river bed.
"For 500 generations
Native Americans lived along the Illinois river and its large
backwaters," Blodgett said. "It was a very productive
habitat, a good place for people to live."
(To be continued)
[Joan
Crabb]
[Click
here for Part 2]
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