They are disarmingly plaintive about their roles.<\/p>\n
When she\u2019s asked why the 53-year-old list of endangered species is important, Hoffman simply says: \u201cBecause, all of these animals, plants \u2014 because they\u2019re there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are just making a list,\u201d Willink says.<\/p>\n
Towards the end of the five-year revision process, Hoffman took pains to remind the board that things change, and five years is a long time for an endangered species to be formally declared endangered, so yes, they can make alterations more often than every five years. Bats and bees and snails and sunfish will rise and fall without regard to them.<\/p>\n
Yet after five years of deliberation, they must produce a new list.<\/p>\n
Just as, five years from now, they will produce another list.<\/p>\n
\u201cOK, take a deep breath,\u201d she said after they voted last winter. They removed southern water snakes from \u201cendangered\u201d status. They added eight bee species as endangered. They added the Little Wabash crayfish. The bluebreast darter went from \u201cendangered\u201d to \u201cthreatened.\u201d<\/p>\n
When they were done, they sat in silence, five years of meetings behind them, 10 months of approvals and public notices and legislative reviews before the list was released. Five years of board members being agnostic toward a species, even if it\u2019s their specialty. Five years of speaking in measured tones, only laughing when someone lapsed into a blunt assessment. Five years of concerns that whatever goes on a new list is backed by data and, as Willink says, \u201clegally defensible.\u201d And five more years of worldwide ecological decline.<\/p>\n
Hoffman broke the silence.<\/p>\n
To think, she said, not so long ago, none of this would have gone this smoothly.<\/p>\n
The headquarters of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources is long and large and tucked lightly into the forest surrounding it. It\u2019s muscular without looking imposing. It\u2019s elegant, modern, modest. It\u2019s like the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Act itself, created in 1972, several months before the Federal Endangered Species Act.<\/p>\n
On days when the endangered species board meets, its membership \u2014 which is staffed by volunteers given three-year terms, and must include at least two zoologists and a botanist \u2014 files through silent IDNR offices to the third floor, past mounted game heads and a taxidermy of a mountain lion that wandered into the state years ago, driven east by habitat loss or hunting. Several board members are retired scientists, several teach at universities. Most are still out there, actively surveying species in the wild.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/CTC-L-ENT-ENDANGERED-SPECIES02_247419816.jpg\")
The banded water snake (Nerodia fasciata), which has been placed on the Illinois Endangered Species Protection list, is at the Field Museum in Chicago on Nov. 12, 2025. (Terrence Antonio James\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n
They bring the latest news about osprey and fireflies and ground junipers and crayfish. There\u2019s a request before them to consider the smooth greensnake, a perfectly-named creature. They\u2019re long, they\u2019re bright green; flip a hubcap in the Chicago area and you may run into one. The conversation is skeptical and pragmatic. Where are the numbers in this petition from? It\u2019s hard to believe people aren\u2019t seeing smooth greensnakes, offers a forest preserve biologist. Do they have enough information to pull the trigger on this one? They don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Yet, sand reed leafhoppers. Hadn\u2019t seen those in a decade, until one morning \u2026<\/p>\n
Should the Federal Endangered Species Act itself become a victim of the current White House \u2014 which has openly called for its gutting \u2014 the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Act remains. Whatever is on the federal list automatically is on the Illinois list. Nevada was the first to assemble its own list. Today, 46 states update their own lists, each a little different than the next, each with a history of wins and losses. The Illinois list is often seen as a catalyst for helping to restore osprey, barn owls and river otters in Illinois.<\/p>\n
But like the federal list, the majority of what goes on the Illinois list tends to stay there. That is often the argument of opponents \u2014 that the act inserts buffers around a species and its habitat without doing enough to restore those species. Todd Atkins, of the Ohio-based Sportsmen\u2019s Alliance, a hunter\u2019s advocacy group, said he agrees with the need to protect and preserve troubled species, but \u201cI think where people tend to lose confidence in endangered species acts is when folks would rather give the species on these lists a sort of permanent protection \u2014 recovery is no longer the goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
But many others \u2014 especially the scientists who have direct experience with shaping endangered species lists \u2014 see a chicken-and-egg situation built into protecting species. Take the greater prairie chickens, which went on the list in the 1990s, and show no signs of leaving. \u201cSome species will never come off,\u201d said Michael Patrick Ward, a professor of sustainability at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who sits on the committee that advises on birds. \u201cWe put resources into them, and sometimes there is no way back \u2014 and yet they remain at risk of extinction.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ctc-181694685.jpg\")
A male Illinois greater prairie chicken displays during a mating dance to try and establish dominance over other males and hopefully lure a hen at the Prairie Ridge State Natural Area near Newton, Illinois, on April 2, 2013. (E. Jason Wambsgans\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n
One of the key problems with the list, he said, is that the state \u201chas done a poor job of highlighting its successes, so what we hear about it tends to be all negative.\u201d The IDNR often hears the assumption that once an animal or plant is designated endangered, the state can swoop in and acquire any land it\u2019s found on. \u201cWe work with a lot of farmers, and a lot of the time they have an impression that their property can be seized.\u201d<\/p>\n
It can\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Federal endangered species law is more aggressive about land. At the state level, there are fines for harming endangered species, and sometimes restrictions on how land is used if a species is present, and occasionally, the IDNR might acquire land to protect a species headed for extinction. That said, explained Joe Kath, IDNR\u2019s longtime director of the endangered species program, endangered and threatened species are largely found on land the state owns, and when endangered species are found on private land, \u201cit generally works out, people are receptive, it\u2019s a happy experience. Especially with companies, let\u2019s face it, the situation can be good PR.\u201d<\/p>\n
But therein lies the rub.<\/p>\n
After the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Board releases its latest list, it\u2019s tasked to the IDNR to carry out protection plans. The board and the IDNR itself are technically independent of each other. The board, however, has no paid staff. So the IDNR \u2014 here\u2019s another big criticism \u2014 might make suggestions, but it can not force those changes.<\/p>\n
A high-profile example played out recently in Rockford<\/a>, where the Chicago-Rockford International Airport expanded into some of the last remaining habitat of the rusty patched bumblebee. Environmental groups sued the IDNR, claiming that it wasn\u2019t doing enough. But there are other examples. Box turtles that halt wind energy projects. Dragonflies that stall state public works. Sometimes a species wins, and sometimes it\u2019s steamrolled. Alan Branhagen, executive director of the Natural Land Institute, which sued over the rusty patched bee, said, \u201cI\u2019m glad the list exists, but sometimes it\u2019s too little too late.\u201d<\/p>\n At the root of endangered species lists are years, sometimes decades, of surveys that shape it, the field studies carried out by biologists and graduate students and amateur scientists. Birds, reptiles, mammals, plants \u2014 each gets a committee.<\/p>\n The problem is, of course, there will never be enough surveys. Can you ever be completely sure a Shawnee snail doesn\u2019t exist?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a problem unique to Illinois,\u201d Kath said. \u201cIt\u2019s true at the federal level, university, state \u2014 there\u2019s never enough time or money to be more extensive, to know something 100%.\u201d<\/p>\n Consider the northern long-eared bat, which, on the latest list, was changed from threatened to endangered. Tara Hohoff, project leader for the Illinois Bat Conservation Program, and a mammalogist who advises the endangered species board, said knowing exactly what\u2019s still flying or walking or slithering is always \u201ca best educated decision.\u201d The northern long-eared bat is among many bat species in steep decline, primarily because of a fungus that\u2019s caused white-nose syndrome. They were common in northern Illinois. Since her program started in 2016, she\u2019s netted only one.<\/p>\n Until recently, for the first decades of the Illinois endangered species list, \u201cyou basically had a bunch of people meeting, pitching species, trying to make the best decisions they could with what they knew, and those decisions might not necessarily hold up to scrutiny,\u201d Willink said. So Hoffman helped institute a new system to formalize the inclusion of a species, requiring data and proof of studies.<\/p>\n Take the latest list, which classified eight new bee species as endangered in Illinois; an additional four bee species were listed as threatened. Biologists who petitioned for those 12 species of bees noted they could have petitioned for even more.<\/p>\n But we\u2019re in triage territory these days.<\/p>\n Chris Dietrich, an entomologist with the Natural History Survey who petitioned for leafhoppers \u2014 two new species made the list this cycle \u2014 said: \u201cYou\u2019re faced with narrowing down the number of species to save because you don\u2019t want to overwhelm the system. Plus, there are political considerations. There are those politicians who want to know why we\u2019re not just supporting the next bald eagle, and if you throw a bunch of bugs onto every updated list, you could undermine support for the list in general.\u201d<\/p>\n The first endangered species board in Illinois required that at least half of its members represent the fur industry. Indeed, its initial list of protected species included polar bears and snow leopards, not because polar bears and snow leopards were traipsing around the Midwest, but because early versions of the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Act focused on the trafficking of hides, shells and furs. It had been one of a series of ecologically-minded bills pushed by Gov. Richard Ogilvy, a Republican.<\/p>\n The Federal Endangered Species Act, enacted months after the Illinois act, had been supported by Richard Nixon. As for the Illinois version, the chief sponsor was State Rep. George Burditt, a Republican from La Grange.<\/p>\n Burditt signed the legislation while petting a tiger cub in the Lincoln Park Zoo.<\/p>\n Within months, there was already a court case pitting the habitat of a bald eagle against the private grounds of a small ski resort in southern Illinois. They saw some successes (bald eagles, mussels, turkeys, darters), and an occasional prosecution: Fran Harty, a longtime conservationist who worked for IDNR and the Nature Conservancy of Illinois, remembered being a witness against a Chicago pet store that sold endangered box turtles.<\/p>\n But for much of its existence, the board hasn\u2019t had the funding or staff to be thorough. That\u2019s never changed. Deanna Glosser, who led the endangered species program for IDNR in the \u201890s (and is now executive director of the Land Conservation Foundation), remembers \u201cfeeling personally responsible for ensuring a listed species continued, and when we failed, I would get depressed and stay like that for days.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2012, the last time the board and the list had a comprehensive state review, findings were mixed: More than 600 species had been on the Illinois list since 1972, yet the criteria for making the list were vague. Of those 600 species, 160 species had been removed from the list, yet almost 50% were taken off because their species was now considered extinct. Only about 50 species were removed because their population had actually recovered.<\/p>\n \u201cI think of this list like those old thermometer graphics for blood drives,\u201d said Harty. \u201cYou may see movement, and the red goes up. But at a scale that will matter? You\u2019re never sure.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDoes anyone at the IDNR actually read these reports?\u201d Chris Dietrich asked at a meeting of the board last winter, when they voted. He said later he\u2019d been in a bad mood that day, maybe harboring the perpetual gripe of entomologists, that all of the attention on endangered species lists goes to \u201ccharismatic\u201d animals \u2014 wolves<\/a>, turtles, butterflies, birds with airplane-esque wingspans.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also just an anxious moment to be making lists of species.<\/p>\n Even as scientists warn we are losing species at a faster rate than usual, even as science writer Elizabeth Kolbert has famously said we may be entering \u201cThe Sixth Extinction,\u201d members of the Illinois Endangered Species board are hearing more often from politicians and developers concerned about the financial costs of any protection of any species.<\/p>\n![\"Cargo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ctc-l-rockford-7303.jpg\")
Cargo planes are visible behind the Bell Bowl Prairie adjacent to Chicago-Rockford International Airport on Oct. 20, 2021, in Winnebago County. Airport construction cut through the five-acre virgin gravel prairie. (Brian Cassella\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/CTC-L-ENT-ENDANGERED-SPECIES21_247420342.jpg\")
The northern long-eared bat, which has been placed on the Illinois Endangered Species Protection list, is at the Field Museum in Chicago on Nov. 12, 2025. (Terrence Antonio James\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/CTC-L-ENT-ENDANGERED-SPECIES08_247420346.jpg\")
The bluebreast darter, which has been placed on the Illinois Endangered Species Protection list, is at the Field Museum in Chicago on Nov. 12, 2025. (Terrence Antonio James\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/CTC-L-ENT-ENDANGERED-SPECIES15_247420124.jpg\")
The Virginia miner bee, which has been placed on the Illinois Endangered Species Protection list, at the Field Museum in Chicago on Nov. 12, 2025. (Terrence Antonio James\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/CTC-L-ENT-ENDANGERED-SPECIES04_247419830.jpg\")
The brassy minnow, which has been placed on the Illinois Endangered Species Protection list, at the Field Museum in Chicago on Nov. 12, 2025. (Terrence Antonio James\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n