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Health & Fitness

Prescribed Burn Planned for Oak Lawn's Wolfe Wildlife Refuge

Prescribe Burn Scheduled for Oak Lawn

Pizzo & Associates, Ltd. have been retained by the Oak Lawn Park District to conduct a prescribed burn for ecological management at the Wolfe Wildlife and Chicago Ridge Prairie located east and west of Central Avenue (respectively) between 105th & 107th South. The prescribed burning is going to take place over the course of five to seven hours at the most, at some point between Thursday, March 22, 2012 and Saturday, March 30, 2012.

The effectiveness of prescribed fire as an ecological management tool is unmatched, and we have safely conducted hundreds of prescribed burns throughout the greater metropolitan region for an extensive range of both public-sector and private-sector clients. Healthy native plant communities remove atmospheric carbon and other pollutants from the air and have tremendous storage capacity in their root systems. Prescribed burning promotes this health by suppressing the invasive plant species that are not adapted to fire, and lengthening the growing season by exposing the underlying soil to sunlight and darkening it, which maximizes heat absorption and allows the soil to warm much faster during the spring.

The prescribed burn has been approved and permitted by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency Air Pollution Control Division and the Cook County Department of Environmental Control, and will be fully authorized by the Oak Lawn and the Chicago Ridge Fire Departments beforehand. Every step will be intensively supervised by a Certified Prescribed Burn Manager qualified by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

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The prescribed burning is going to take place generally between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 4:45 p.m., and only on date that features weather conditions that minimize the amount of resulting smoke and encourage that smoke to quickly rise and disperse, with little inconvenience to neighboring property owners. Plus, no burning will occur unless the local Air Quality Index (AQI) is predicted to remain at acceptable values of 100 or below (good to moderate) throughout the duration of the workday.

Due to the highly variable nature of springtime weather, specific dates for this work cannot be set very far in advance. If you would like to receive a notification by phone 12 to 24 hours before the prescribed burn is scheduled to begin, or if you have any questions that you would like answered beforehand, please call Pizzo & Associates, Ltd. at (815) 495-2300, and leave a message for Doug Willford with your contact information, community name and street address at extension 122.

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