As a red-tailed hawk swoops from the scraggly burr oaks above us, the smell of burning brush cuts through the crisp air at the entrance of Northbrook’s Somme Preserves. The fires, set by “burn bosses,” crackle while volunteers and staff of Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves greet each other for a day of restoration, using […] The post How fire is reviving Illinois’s vanishing prairie appeared first on Chicago Reader. ...read more read less