More Than a Prairie

Military Axis is an odd name for a prairie restoration site. Once a marching ground for the University’s ROTC programs, the area between BIF, Krannert Art Museum, Huff Hall, and the South Quad bell tower has most recently been downgraded to an overflow parking and BIF construction staging. The Axis was uniquely reclassified as “natural landscaping” in the 2007 revisions to the campus master plan.

If this site is to succeed in its goal of educating the campus community on landscape sustainability and the diverse values of our native prairies, the military axis has to be more than another ecological restoration. The project is lead by Dr. Anton

Endress and a national team of graduate students, and overseen by a committee of staff, administrators, faculty, and students, including myself.

First, and most importantly, this project needs to happen. There is no current project that compares to the impact of a 6-acre site devoted to sustainability in the heart of campus. The only comparable initiative in recent history is the late wind turbine.

It needs funding. I encourage every environmentally concerned student to write a letter to the members of committee, thanking them for their hard work toward sustainable landscaping, and asking that the various segments of the University represented think hard about how to fund this project. Letters can be directed to the Office of Public Engagement, Military Axis Committee.

My fear is moving forward with an ecologically-driven project. The benefits of a prairie as habitat, services, and processes increase with size and hospitability of the ‘matrix’ that surrounds it. The fairly small, cement bordered Military Axis site is an ecologist’s worst nightmare. Any plan for the site should make no illusion: ecological processes here will never approach a natural state.

The nuances of ecological theory will be lost on the average orange-clad freshman, for whom “Keystone” is a beer and not a species (or a pipeline). Where an ecologist sees biodiversity, he’ll see weeds. The goal of education should have him in mind; maybe one day will take a trip to Meadowbrook, Midewin, Barnhart, or other ecologically significant prairie sites. But the heart of campus is not a good place for hard ecology.

What the military axis lacks in ecological integrity, it could make up for in a rich and textured interface with its surrounding human systems.

I believe the site should fuse the values of its neighbors in a simple, meaningful reflection on sustainability. The site will have to be neat. People need a reason to enter: public artwork, sparse tables to enjoy lunch, and winding paths could make this site an oasis within yards of a hundred offices and classrooms.

The planning process should be opened to the public, potential stakeholders identified and included in what would admittedly be a long and probably frustrating process.

Future Illini in the colleges of Business, Education, Law, Planning and Architecture, Fine Arts, and all kinds of coffee drinkers are the audience. Our natural heritage is the subject. And a chunk of rocky, compacted earth is the canvas. The process itself could change how our campus views planning.

The result will be worth the effort. And the wait.

Matt Rundquist