Nature Preserve Area:
3
County:
Will
Location and Access:
Hickory Creek Barrens Nature Preserve is located on Schoolhouse Road, north of Route 30/Lincoln Highway in New Lenox.
Description:
Hickory Creek Barrens is a large mosaic complex of prairie-forest transition that includes prairie and savanna, and a silt-loam barrens community, remnants of which were formerly not known to occur in northern Illinois. This complex affords an unprecedented management and restoration opportunity to reconstruct a dynamic, large-scale prairie-forest continuum. The site provides habitat for the largest Illinois population of a state threatened plant, and an experimental re-introduction of the federally threatenedplant.
The nature preserve provides habitat for area-sensitive avifauna that includes numerous neotropical migrant, summer resident and winter resident bird species. The preserve includes nearly two and one-half miles of a medium gradient perennial creek associated with a large complex of upland and floodplain forest, with inclusions of unique aquatic features such as relict meander or channel cut-off pool wetlands, or forested floodplain spring/fen wetlands.
Ownership:
Forest Preserve District of Will County
Dedicated:
February 10, 1998 (Legal Description Amended October 2013)
Size:
575.10 acres of nature preserve and nature preserve buffer
Topographic Quad:
Mokena
Topo Map:
Directions:
For further information:
