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The Rockford Airport tears through the Bell Bowl Prairie

Bulldozer tears through the former site of the Bell Bowl Prairie.
Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco
Bulldozer tears through the former site of the Bell Bowl Prairie.

Environmentalists staked outside of Bell Bowl Prairie watched as the lights of a bulldozer came on this morning just after 6am and began tearing through some of the last remaining remnant prairie in Illinois.

Jessie Crow-Mermel, alongside a handful of other environmentalists, stayed overnight at the Chicago Rockford International Airport to witness the last morning of the ancient, remnant prairie before it was turned into a roadway.

“There's a single bulldozer on the prairie, the highest quality part of the prairie, that's just completely stripping the whole highest-quality part of the prairie right now,” she said.

The sighting of a pair of the federally endangered Rusty Patched Bumble Bee back in the fall of 2021 triggered a multi-agency review of the project that stalled construction of the roadway until now. Environmentalists and advocates have hosted rallies, demonstrations, and spoken at airport board meetings to voice opposition against the project for nearly 18 months.

The Bell Bowl Prairie was once a 5-acre high quality Dry Gravel Prairie on the property of the Rockford airport. As Crow-Mermel watched the bulldozer work, what remains now is a growing plot of exposed dirt.

“It's been taking several sweeps,” she said, “just widening and widening the area here over the course of the last hour or so.”

Jessie Crow-Mermel drums along while watching the Rockford airport's bulldozers strip the prairie.
Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco
Jessie Crow-Mermel drums along while watching the Rockford airport's bulldozers strip the prairie.

How it happened

On March 3, The Federal Aviation Administration issued its written revaluation authorizing the Rockford airport to begin construction on the Bell Bowl Prairie.

On Saturday, March 4, the Natural Land Institute filed a petition for review with the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the FAA’s reevaluation. According to the NLI, counsel for the airport informed the conservation organization that the earliest construction would occur on March 9.

The 7th circuit court voted 2-1 on March 8 against letting the Natural Land Institute’s petition to halt construction proceed. The NLI had asked for all 11 judges from the 7th circuit court to weigh in on the decision this morning, but the airport began work before that could happen.

Bulldozing a prairie


Many of the environmentalists that spent the night keeping an eye on the prairie began to leave by 8 a.m. On the way back to his car, David Stocker, a longtime advocate of the prairie, remarked that if losing the prairie is the price of reaching the breakneck speed required to move goods and service across the globe, then it's not worth it.

“And in order to do that, you have to deny something, of the consequences at the far end,” said Stocker. “Here, we see the consequences writ large right in front of us.”

After remaining vigilant of the prairie through the night David Stocker leaves the former site of the Bell Bowl Prairie
Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco
After remaining vigilant of the prairie through the night David Stocker leaves the former site of the Bell Bowl Prairie

Stocker has joined every rally for the prairie with instruments and prepared sing-alongs. Over the past 18-months, he’s brought out crates with shakers to share and make noise and worn his signature bee-shaped hat carved from a recycled milk jug container.

Stocker says that while he wasn’t optimistic about the fate of the prairie, he hopes that the loss of it may lead to a kind of realization about the damage continuously wrought on the natural world.

“But here it is, it's right in front of us,” said Stocker. “If we can't drink the water, if we don't care for the creatures that live here, then we've separated ourselves. We've damaged our soul. And we're desperately in need of repair.”

And with that, he and the others left, as the bulldozer continued its work on the new road through Bell Bowl Prairie.

Juanpablo covers environmental, substandard housing and police-community relations. He’s been a bilingual facilitator at the StoryCorps office in Chicago. As a civic reporting fellow at City Bureau, a non-profit news organization that focuses on Chicago’s South Side, Ramirez-Franco produced print and audio stories about the Pilsen neighborhood. Before that, he was a production intern at the Third Coast International Audio Festival and the rural America editorial intern at In These Times magazine. Ramirez-Franco grew up in northern Illinois. He is a graduate of Knox College.