Here we have the chance to not only bring back the plants but to bring back the major missing component, the large grazing animals like bison and elk. It's the enormous size of the Midewin that excites the imagination of conservationists. Right now, over half the land is planted in corn and soybean fields. The existing agricultural leases will help finance the restoration, but it will still take 20 to 50 years to re-create the tallgrass prairie. After the stop along the bridge, the group visits one of the 396 sod-covered bunkers that dot the landscape.
Visitors file into the bunker one by one.
With a crop of lush grass growing thickly on the curved roofs, the bunkers were intended to be difficult to spot in air raids. Today, cows graze on top of them as though they were just any ordinary hill. Inside, the air is dank and the walls cool to the touch, insulated from the hot sun by 5 feet of concrete and sod. A tour member asks what the Forest Service intends to do with the structures. She explains they won't be removed in the foreseeable future.