Over 120 species of prairie plants native to Vermilion County are found in this site, and most have been introduced through repeated seeding. A large prairie restoration project is at Fermilab in Bativia, Illinois. A very excting development in prairie restoration is the conversion of the former U.S. Joliet Army Ammunition Plant into the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie . The legislation designated the transfer of a 19,165 acre parcel of land in Illinois from the U.S. Army to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. Much of the land will be the subject to a massive prairie restoration project, which is far beyond the scale of previous prairie projects.
Several factors are responsible.
Because of cost and labor limitations, most prairie restorations are planted with a one-time seeding. For a spring planting, soil can be turned over in the fall to kill the roots of perennial weeds by exposing them to winter temperatures. Annual weeds are controlled by working the ground at a shallow depth at least twice during early spring. Seed Selection and Storage - Prairie seed should be of high quality and should originate within 200 miles of the planting site. This fact is useful in counteracting the problem of prairie grass outcompeting forbs.