An active local nature preservation group hopes a stunning monarch butterfly sculpture will soon welcome travelers to Montgomery County and a prairie restoration area nestled between Interstate 55 and Route 66 north of Litchfield.
Natural Area Guardians (NAGs), a volunteer preservation branch of the Montgomery County Soil and Water Conservation District, has been busy raising funds to install a seven-foot-wide by ten-foot-tall steel monarch butterfly sculpture and a 25-foot pole, angled toward the interstate, but pandemic-related economic problems mean the group still has about $6,000 to raise to complete the project.
Donors who give $1,000 or more will have their names or memorials displayed at the entrance to the Route 66 Prairie, just north of the I-55 weigh station, on a sign if they so choose. Donations of any amount are welcome. Although NAGs is not a charity, it is tax exempt and donations are likely tax deductible; consult with an accountant.
NAGs has contracted with Foppe Visual Communication, a consultant out of Highland, to design the project.
Why a monarch?
“Monarch populations have declined dramatically in recent years as has biodiversity in general, here and elsewhere,” according to Henry Eilers of Litchfield, a founder and life member of NAGs who has been the site steward for the Route 66 Prairie since 2009. “We only understand in part. That makes this severe loss and its potential implication for us doubly worrisome. This sculpture can call our attention to that loss and great danger.”
Eilers, however, sees the sculpture not as a reminder of the problem, but as a beacon toward the solution.
“It can also be an emblem for hope, hope of recovery, of a more sustainable way of living with our fellow travelers on spaceship Earth,” Eilers said. “After all, we are never apart from nature, rather a part of nature. In the end we depend on the full complement of the natural world no doubt far more than we realize.”
And what better place for that “emblem of hope” than the Route 66 Prairie, an incredibly naturally diverse area just north of the weigh station off the interstate near Litchfield.
“Protecting the complexity and completeness of this natural world is certainly what Route 66 Prairie, where this emblem will reside, is about,” Eilers explained. “It is a ‘Noah’s Ark’ of organisms, with some 298 species of plants alone officially recognized here. We have already an infrastructure in place to help educate a much wider public. A monumental sculpture like this monarch can be a link–an opportunity to connect with nature–with our precious natural heritage. It will be widely visible every day to the thousands of travelers on the adjacent I-55 interstate. Many more, including tourists from many lands will hopefully soon be travelling the Historic Old Route 66 again and learn about our tallgrass prairie heritage.”
Just two years ago, the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), along with NAGs, Pheasants Forever, and several others, planned and built a concrete parking lot with room for vehicles and busses at the Route 66 Prairie, along with a 200-foot long concrete walkway to a terminus in the middle.
Donation checks may be addressed to the Montgomery County Soil and Water Conservation District, attention Melissa Cauble, 1621 Vandalia Rd., Hillsboro, IL 62049. Designate on the check if you wish the donation to remain anonymous.
