Friends of the Kankakee 501c3

01/02/2026

The journey of a thousand steps begins with one.
2025 saw Friends make steady progress separating the ruins of the home on our 22 acre tract connecting Willow Estates and Hooper Branch Savanna with help on volunteer workdays and with the assistance of the Illinois based YES crew and Indiana based SCI crew (both HS intern/ conservation job programs) and after the work that TJ and Gus put in yesterday, we are inching forward to completing the goal of a cleaned up house site and being able to pivot to rejuvenation of the plant community in this portion of the savanna.
The area is looking so much better.
Thanks for the support and hope to see you on the land in 2026.

12/21/2025

Friends of the Kankakee's goal is to restore the lands that we protect into thriving savanna, prairie and wetlands.
One of our 2-acre tracts adjacent to Hooper Branch Savanna had white pines planted many decades ago, and that is not the state that we are hoping this tract will stay.
Its a lot of work, but if you are interested in putting in the work to build a log cabin, reach out to us as we have the raw materials that you need.
Once the pines have been rehomed, we will be able begin the restoration of the land.

12/20/2025

Friends of the Kankakee volunteers have been working to rejuvenate the natural area at our 407 Pike location for the past year and half. We removed an abandoned house that had attracted trash including some drug paraphernalia and have initiated invasive control and begun restoring savanna structure. We have been happy with the progress and support from volunteers in initiating this important work.
Sooooo, it is more than frustrating to see that the site has attracted fly by night dumpers over the past few days.
We will get the site cleaned up soon and take measures to try and make the area a little less attractive for dumpers and get back to the hard but more gratifying work of caring for the natural world.
Our work to protect land that is open and available for people to connect to the natural world is an important one, but sometimes bad apples can make you question people.
Thank you for your sweat and financial support of the work that we have been engaged in 2025 and hope to see you on the land in 2026.

11/15/2025

Friends of the Kankakee had a great workday in our Willow Estates holdings today, cutting autumn olive and bush honeysuckle with the help of a fabulous group of volunteers.
If you are able, we would love to have benefit from your helping hand/ legs/ back with your help next 3rd Saturday of the month to close out 2025 or visit our website and make an end of the year contribution to help prepare us for an impactful 2026.

11/14/2025

Friends of the Kankakee has been steadily working to acquire lots in the northern portion of Willow Estates, but as we get closer to more contiguous map of the organization's land holdings, the pace of acquisition has slowed.
Earlier this year, an opportunity to trade lands presented itself, and today we closed on 2 lots that are completely surrounded by Friends of the Kankakee, thereby eliminating an inholding and were able to trade a lot with better road access and less biodiversity, creating a win-win for both them and us.

10/20/2025

https://www.interlochenpublicradio.org/podcast/points-north/2025-08-15/the-pink-prairie-mascot
Heard a story about efforts to find and rejuvenate the Kankakee Mallow at Langham Island over the weekend. Nice to hear a positive conservation story make it to the airways.

In 2014, a group of botanists discovered that a very rare plant native to the Kankakee River in Illinois, had vanished from its only known native habitat in the world. That set off a quest to bring back the missing Midwestern flower.

10/14/2025

This weekends workday has been postponed. The operator that we are working with for stone to create the parking lot is busy bring their harvest in. We will announce a pop-up workday hopefully in the next couple of weeks.

10/13/2025

Friends of the Kankakee was a supporter of Northwest Indiana Paddling Association's Sandhill Crane Paddle yesterday. Beautiful day to be out on the water with 75 great people, even if I forgot to get pictures of more of the people or the scrumptious food truck.
We paddled 8.5 miles from the Yellow River access to the Dunn's Bridge access.
The trip has me thinking about 2026 and being on the water more and if there is a group of people that would be interested in section paddling the Kankakee River?

09/20/2025

Our 3rd Saturday workday crew was a little smaller with 3 of us in total but we continued to improve the future fire lines for the 407 Pike property.
Speaking of controlled burning. Friends of the Kankakee is aiming to complete a few burns in the upcoming fall/ spring burn season. If you are interested and able to lend a hand, please reach out to us and let us know. We could always use a few more hands with fire.

08/16/2025

Thanks to the crew of volunteers that came out in the heat and pushed the clean up of the former house site forward on the 22 acre parcel. While there is still work to be done on the tract, the house cleanup is pretty much complete. Very happy with the progress that we have made over this summer.
Lots more to do, please plan for future 3rd Saturday workdays on Friends of the Kankakee land.

07/24/2025

Friends of the Kankakee completed our 3rd workday with the YES (Youth Environmental Stewardship) crew in the field. We have been working on the cleaning up of an old house with the YES crew and 2 of the workdays also benefitted from the Newton County Student Conservation Interns (SCI).
We have really enjoyed getting to know the YES and SCI crews, most of which are heading into their senior year of high school and have the world of opportunity in front of them. They pushed through two 100 F plus days separating wood from shingles and picking or shoveling up dumping and clearing a property line to rejuvenate the black oak savanna habitat that we protect.
Thanks to the YES and SCI crews and supervisors for allowing them to assist our efforts.

07/19/2025

Thank you for the help on todays workday cleaning up an old house site and older dumping. We are making steady progress towards cleaning up the site, and making a better home for nice native plants that I forgot to take pictures of, such as day flower, ground nut, bush clovers of various sorts and puccoon.