The Park District of Franklin Park hosted its annual Earth Day event at North Park on April 22.
“We got vendors to come out and market their groups and organizations to promote anything that helps the earth,” said Carlos Correa, an intern with the park district. To this end, the park district was giving away free oak tree saplings to event attendees. “We started planning this back in February, reaching out to vendors who wanted to participate.”
Attendees were able to listen to music playing over speakers, explore the nature garden at North Park, and take time to learn how to keep the environment clean. A total of 19 vendors were on hand at the breezy afternoon event. Among the participants were those from Pietrini Elementary School.
“The students are here in order for them to think about why it’s important to protect our Earth and why it’s important to recycle and reuse things every single day,” said Kimberly Vitale, a teacher at Pietrini.
Toward the end of the event, students from Pietrini gathered around a sapling that was placed into a hole in the ground and took turns shoveling soil over its roots. While this was happening, Norbert Pozen, a science and biology teacher at Leyden High School, was with members of the school’s Ecology Club, passing out free milkweed perennials.
“There are a group of students at the school who are part of the club who meet every Monday. About once a month, we go out to forest preserves and do habitat restoration,” said Pozen.
Students who are part of the club also attend ecology conferences, guest lectures, and visit exhibits focused on environmental science at places like the Shedd Aquarium and Brookfield Zoo.
“Generally, we cut down and remove invasive species that are growing in the forest preserves during the fall,” Pozen said. “We also go and collect seeds from native plants, and then in the spring we plant those seeds in the areas that we’ve cleaned up.”
During the event, Pozen and his students were passing out free milkweed perennials.
“Today, we’re doing something to help save the monarch butterfly. We bought about a thousand seeds of these milkweed plants and are handing them out,” said Pozen.
Monarch butterfly populations pass through the Midwest during their migration from Mexico to Canada, he said.
“They only lay their eggs on milkweed plants, and each caterpillar can eat about five or six milkweed leaves,” he said. “And because of industrialization, construction, and stuff like that, there’s less milkweed growing. So we’re encouraging people to take these milkweed plants or seedlings and plant them areas where monarch butterflies can come lay their eggs.”
Alex V. Hernandez is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.