   Restoring Adams Wildlife Sanctuary
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ing the Lincoln era, should be saved. The society consented and incorporated the home into its plans, raising the project cost from $350,000 to more than $750,000.
Clay’s main tasks became fundraising and overseeing construction. The Illinois Audubon Society dedicated its new headquarters last September. The organization added nearly 4,000 square feet of office and classroom space to Margery Adams’ original four-room home. A geothermal heating system and other green features were integrated into the building, qualifying it for the U.S. Green Building Council’s silver Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design status.
Clay succeeded in housing his organization. Now he wants to address its mission: preserving Illinois’ native plants and animals and their habitats.
“We always got hung up on the structure instead of looking out into the property,” Clay says. “Now that we’ve taken care of this, we can focus on out there.” Vern Kleen, a Springfield native, the president of the Illinois Audubon Society and a retired avian ecologist with Illinois Department of Natural Resources, plays a very important role at the sanctuary.
Last fall he conducted the site’s first bird banding in 19 years. During this process, he uses thin mist nets to catch migratory birds.
He then measures and weighs them, checks if they’re male or female, affixes a band to their leg and releases them. In just a three-month period, he identified 69 different species and 1,291 total birds in Margery Adams’ woods.
The Illinois Audubon Society included |
