WETLANDS PRESERVATION ALSO PRESERVES ARCHEOLOGY (Short Version)

Archeologists are benefiting from a wetland restoration project in the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:

Transcript

Archeologists are benefiting from a wetland restoration project in the Midwest. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:


A conservation group is planning to convert a seven thousand-acre farm in Central Illinois into a
prairie wetland. But before the Nature Conservancy brings back native plants and animals, it’s
allowing archeologists to survey the land. So far the search has turned up fifty-five Native
American campsites dating back as far as 900 A.D. Larry Conrad is an archeology professor at
Western Illinois University.


“Perhaps the most important thing about surveying that bottom area is that if it hadn’t been
surveyed, then there would be this tract of several thousand acres that we’ll never have another
chance in our lifetime to looks at, and we wouldn’t know what was there. Now we do know.”


The Nature Conservancy is planning to start its prairie wetland restoration at the end of next year.
The archeologists say they will continue to survey the site until then.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.

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