Our Purpose
STPS seeks to preserve a piece of Chicagoland with more life in an acre than most people may ever bother to notice in their lives. We want to spread the understanding that our land will benefit us best when it it most benefits the rest of life. Saving natural areas as “living museums” not only provides people with recreation and time alone, but connects people with their natural heritage and their local culture - through preservation and restoration of both the native prairie and the settlers whose house we maintain as a nature center and museum.
Today, less than 1/100th of 1% of high quality original prairie remains in Illinois. However the prairie-savanna mosaic that once covered the state supported phenomenal biodiversity. If all the preserved nature within 50 miles of Chicago was made a national park, it would be the most biodiverse in the country by a very far margin. Because of this diversity, the prairie-savanna complex functioned and thrived amidst harsh storms, floods, fires, blizzards, and more, given millennia of adaptation. But if you want to understand this rarity for yourself, the only thing to do is come and see, hear, smell, touch, and feel what the prairie has had in store for all these ages that so few will ever experience in our own.
In 1993, Save the Prairie Society launched the Natural Areas Rescue Fund (NARF), a land acquisition project to save imperiled “orphan” natural areas and threatened and endangered species and to offer new choices and solutions to halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity in Illinois. NARF has been involved in saving four natural areas — Macoupin Woods, Mineral Marsh, Hancock Savanna and Tomlin Timber Nature Preserve.
