BRIEFLY

Professor Marian Smith stands alongside a decurvent false aster, a threatened wetland plant.

Photographs courtesy of Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville

SAVE THE BOLTONIAS
Rare native wildflowers love wet feet

A delicate, aster-like wetland flower has a tenuous toehold in the Illinois River Valley. And one colony may soon have state protection.

Boltonia decurrens, more commonly known as the decurrent false aster, is on the Illinois and federal threatened species lists, but it's thriving in East Peoria's Cooper Park.

The Illinois Nature Preserves Commission, part of the Department of Natural Resources, has offered the Fondulac Park Board state resources to try to save this rare plant and its soggy wetland habitat.

The flower is especially threatened because it's an endemic species, meaning it only exists in a narrow range of habitat, explains Marian Smith, a Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville botony professor who monitors the Boltonia population in Cooper Park, as well as 20 other colonies found along the Illinois River. "It doesn't grow anywhere else in the world. It is only found in the Illinois River Valley, which makes it especially endangered when its habitat is destroyed."

Tom Lerczak, a Nature Preserves Commission biologist, says the area could be protected from development if the park board decides it should become part of the Illinois Land and Water Reserve. State funds then could be used to control the spread of nonnative plants, which also threaten Boltonia decurrens. "It likes lots of light and open spaces and doesn't compete well against other species," says Lerczak.

He would also like to see a study on the positive ecological interaction of the flower population and a colony of beaver, which appear to be suppressing Boltonia's, competition by cutting down willows. "This is a system that seems to be working, and that's our ultimate goal," he says.

AUDIT
Peoria cemetery fund in arrears

The state-mandated maintenance fund for Peoria's historic Springdale Cemetery is running a deficit of well over half a million dollars, according to an audit ordered by Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes.

At 145 years, Springdale is the oldest continually operating cemetery in the state, and the second-largest. It's the final home of 170,000 people, including several Peoria mayors, state Rep. Prescott Bloom, Octave Chanute of Chanute Air Force base fame and Illinois Gov. Thomas Ford. But it has wallowed in financial troubles for nearly two decades. (See Illinois Issues, October 1995, page 21; November 1999, page 8; and April 2000, page 36.)

Hynes revoked Springdale owner Larry Leach's license last year because he didn't maintain the grounds at the sprawling 226-acre cemetery. It was the state's first license revocation because of a failure in upkeep.

The comptroller then hired Chicago-based American Express Tax & Business Services Inc. to review Springdale's books. The firm reports the cemetery kept inadequate accounting records but that the "calculated deficiency is likely to be considerably more than $647,844."

The state comptroller issues cemetery licenses and oversees management of trust funds paid by consumers to ensure proper burial arrangements and care of grave sites.

Last month, Leach signed over the cemetery's deeds to a court-appointed receiver and paid $35,000 in fines and restitution. He had entered a negotiated guilty plea in Peoria County Circuit Court to a felony charge after being accused of selling three Civil War cannons from the cemetery.

Leach was ordered to serve 30 months probation in Florida, where he lives.

8 November 2000 Illinois Issues www.uis.edu/~ilissues

MIGRATORY PIONEERS

Hand-reared sandhill cranes guided along Illinois flyway

The white whooping crane with its distinctive red crown is the tallest bird in North America, standing more than five feet with a 10-foot wingspan. Its behavior is similar to that of the sandhill crane.

The endangered whooping crane is getting a little help from its friends, some of them feathered.

With only 400 in existence and just 187 in one migratory flock in the wild, the whooping crane is the world's most endangered crane. However, in an experiment to establish another migratory flock, scientists trained 13 sandhill cranes, the whooping crane's more abundant and nonendangered cousins, to follow an ultralight plane on a 1,250-mile journey from Wisconsin to a national wildlife refuge in Florida. The journey included three stops in Illinois — in Stephenson, LaSalle and Kankakee counties.

If the experiment with sandhill cranes is successful and the birds reach Florida and return on their own to Wisconsin next spring, scientists will repeat the process with whooping crane chicks.

The training starts even before the chicks are hatched, with recordings of the ultralight engine sounds mixed with bird calls. When the chicks are small, their keepers don't speak around them but instead play recordings of crane brood calls while feeding them with a hand puppet that resembles an adult bird. Later, they see the ultralight as their leader on the migratory trek.

The birds can cover 50 to 75 miles a day. Illinois was host to the experimental migration for three days in early October.

SURVEY Old farmers just fade away Farmers are twice as likely to continue working past age 65 as people in other professions, according to a survey released by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Andrew Sofranko, a professor in the Department of Human and Community Development, and Mohamed Samy, a postdoctoral fellow, found that retirement is typically the last thing on a farmer's mind. The average age among 1,700 farmers surveyed in 13 Illinois counties was 52. Twenty-five percent of those farmers were 65 or older and a third of that group were 75 or older and have been farming for an average of 46 years. Though the survey provided no reasons why farmers don't retire, it did conclude that traditional ways of farming no longer apply to the agricultural industry. Sofranko and Samy found that younger people are not taking up farming at a rate comparable to the past and that the decline is likely the result of the farm crises of the 1980s and 1990s. "Farming is one of the few occupations in the country where the main avenue of entrance is family and inheritance," Sofranko said. "The traditional 'farming ladder' — starting small and expanding over time — doesn't work very well in this day and age." Ryan Reeves

WEBSOURCE Need a final rundown on turnout in this year's election? There will be plenty of places to look. Voter participation in presidential elections has been spiraling downward since 1960, and fell below 50 percent in the 1996 general election, according to the Washington, D.C. based think tank. Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. That group's Web site at www.gspm. org/csae/index.html expects to have the lowdown on this year's turnout posted just days after the November 7 voting. The site includes research on past voting and registration patterns and numbers for the 1998 elections. Other sites will have post-election analysis, including The Vanishing Voter Project. Much of the project's research focuses on the structure of the presidential election process, including such topics as whether debate formats affect involvement. The project is based in the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University's John R Kennedy School of Government. Find that site at www.vanishingvoter.org. Meanwhile, the Brookings Institution will offer analyses from several viewpoints, linked from its home page at www.bmokings.edu. And because pre-election polls pointed to the importance of women in this election, there is analysis available on women candidates and how they fared. Go to the Center for American Women and Politics in the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, www.cawp.rutgers.edu. Beverley Scobell

www.uis.edu/~ilissues Illinois Issues November 2000 9

See all about it

Advocates of a proposed television channel that would cover state government believe they are finding strong support in communities throughout Illinois. The channel would operate much like C-SPAN, which covers Congress, campaigns and conferences. And the panel that backs the idea is holding a series of town hall meetings throughout the state.

About 100 people, including some legislators and mayors, showed up at the first four meetings in Bloomington, Decatur, Urbana and Peoria, says Terrence J. Martin, who is directing a two-year planning study for the University of Illinois at Springfield. He says participants expressed interest in getting television coverage of the state legislature into their communities. More meetings are planned for this month.

Two grants — $396,000 from The Joyce Foundation and $50,000 from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation — are funding the study by UIS' Institute for Public Affairs. UIS Chancellor Naomi Lynn is chairing the advisory committee, and former Gov. Jim Edgar and former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon are serving as co-vice chairmen.

Martin was part of the congresssional coverage team for C-SPAN and most recently worked as State-house bureau chief for WAND-TV, the ABC affiliate in Decatur. He told the committee last month that a January interim report will spell out how the channel might operate and how much it would cost. One assumption is that funding would come from the state, but a formal proposal about the cost and structure has not been presented to the governor or the legislature.

Eighteen other states have television channels that cover state government activities, and 15 of the 18 are taxpayer-funded, Martin says.

10 November 2000 Illinois Issues www.uis.edu/~ilissues

UPDATES
Year-round schools, gun sentences and repeat tests for drivers

• Central Illinois parents are protesting the Riverton School Board's decision to move to year-round schooling, a districtwide move to a so-called "balanced" calendar (see Illinois Issues, September, page 27).

• The secretary of state has begun retesting automobile drivers who may have received their licenses fraudulently, a move that follows efforts to retest commercial drivers in the ongoing bribes-for-licenses scandal (see most recently Illinois Issues, July/August, page 36).

• A Cook County judge ruled unconstitutional the so-called "15-20-Life" law, a sentencing statute promoted by Gov. George Ryan that increases penalties for committing crimes with guns (see Illinois Issues, May 1999, page 10).

12 November 2000 Illinois Issues www.uis.edu/~ilissues