Project Quercus at Woodstock, Illinois - Big Check Gets Highjacked!!

On Friday, The National Public Lands Day Tour headed to the town of Woodstock, Illinois to check out the work that the fine folks at McHenry County Land Conservancy have been doing. I met up with Linda Balek of The Land Conservancy at Emercin Park in Woodstock. Emercin Park is a large rural park offering the community recreational opportunities ranging from playing tennis or basketball to walking in the woods, finding isolation from the modern world.

One of the projects Linda is most proud about is Project Quercus, a program set up to protect the oak trees of McHenry County. According the The Land Conservancy's website "The Land Conservancy set up Project Quercus to explore our options to protect, preserve and regenerate the oak woods. Project Quercus is a diverse coalition that brings together public and private, government, corporate and non-profit interests, working collaboratively to create solutions to the problem of oak-hickory loss."

National Public Lands Day is happy to help out Project Quercus with a $1,000 grant to ensure that there will be enough trees and tools to plant several oaks on National Public Lands Day. Linda commented that the money will go to good use purchasing materials that can be used again and again for future tree plantings.

Our ceremony did have one hiccup when a passerby tried to steal the giant ceremonial check.

I was relieved when I discovered that this was simply an overzealous Land Conservancy employee who really likes oaks and was excited to receive additional funding. She later invited others to accept the check with her when she realized that the check wasn't real.

In addition to Project Quercus, The Land Conservancy is looking for people with CCC connections to contact them so they can pay tribute to the CCC leading up and on National Public Lands Day. The Land Conservancy would like to hear from anyone who participated in the CCC or knows someone who did. Anyone who can help should call 815-337-9502.

Also, a very nice article was written by The Northwest Herald. Check it out at: www.nwherald.com/articles/2008/07/18/news/local/doc4881635a00418297721038.txt