Tall transmission towers and high-voltage power lines span the sky over the Eggers Grove Cook County Forest Preserve on Chicago’s Southeast Side, near 118th Street and the Illinois/Indiana border. On the ground, bike riders and hikers pass prairie plants and native grasses laden with early fall seed — little blue stem, yellow prairie grass, goldenrod, whorled milkweed, purple cone flower, common milkweed, coreopsis and others.
And through it all, monarch butterflies flit about, landing on flowers as they make their way through the area on their annual migration south.
The more-natural-than-mowed landscape is just one of 53 sites in northern Illinois where ComEd has adopted land management practices designed to help the monarchs.
Many of the butterflies have already left for central Mexico, but ComEd’s effort signals a broader trend to transform right-of-way areas into supportive habitats.
“Whether you’re talking about a pocket garden in someone’s backyard or ROW, any space with a supportive pollinator habitat is important for species survival,” said Catherine O’Reilly, partner coordinator for the Sustainable Landscapes at the Energy Resources Center at University of Illinois Chicago’s College of Engineering.
Six years ago, around 40 energy and transportation organizations came together to develop the Nationwide Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances for Monarch Butterfly on Energy and Transportation Lands, or “Monarch CCAA.”
Valid through 2045, the agreement encourages right-of-way landowners and land managers to implement conservation efforts that support the monarch.
“This effort has gotten a lot of buy-in,” said O’Reilly, who also facilitates efforts of the Rights-of-Way as Habitat Working Group which developed the Monarch CCAA. “Total enrolled lands include 9.3 million acres. Of those, more than 1.3 million acres are adopted as habitat.”
In Illinois, which claims the Monarch as the state insect, right-of-way commitments from Illinois energy utilities and transportation agencies have brought about a resurgence of milkweed, the monarch’s host plant.
From 2014 through 2024, stem counts for milkweed increased by 108 million, according to a UIC Sustainable Landscapes report submitted in April to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. And half of those gains occurred in right-of-way areas.
“Utility and transportation rights-of-way tend to support pollinator and prairie habitats anyway because they require management of tree growth,” O’Reilly said.
The Monarch CCAA builds on that advantage and requires specific practices, such as reducing mowing, planting native plant species, controlling invasive plants with targeted herbicides, removing brush and trees, and controlled burning and grazing.
A CCAA agreement supporting native bumble bee habitats also includes nest avoidance, O’Reilly said.
In pledged areas, ComEd does all of these things, including controlled burning, which involves hiring trained professionals and obtaining special permitting. “CCAAs are legally binding and suggest measures that go beyond compliance (for maintaining right-of-way areas),” said Sara Race, ComEd’s senior manager of Environmental Management.
Besides helping pollinators, the agreements can help utilities carry out their work. “When we sign an agreement, it helps us to help the monarchs, but it also allows us to continue with our operations if a species becomes endangered,” Race said.
ComEd’s commitment to carry out the Monarch CCAA also seems to encourage goodwill and community engagement.
Eggers Grove volunteer site steward Marianne Kozłowski regularly leads teams of volunteers clearing away invasive plants and gathering seeds for replanting throughout the Forest Preserve. With ComEd’s OK, she said, this year volunteers were able to clear trash from ComEd’s right-of-way in a show of solidarity with a Friends of the Chicago River cleanup effort going on elsewhere.
Over the years, Kozlowski has also observed ComEd’s efforts to manage woody invasives. “They cut a lot of buckthorn and honeysuckle,” she said. “They’re a good partner.”
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In LaSalle and DuPage counties, through a stewardship-based environment education program called Mighty Acorns, ComEd also encourages third and fourth graders to plant milkweed and remove invasive plants in designated ComEd right-of-way areas.
In 2020, the Illinois Department of Transportation pledged 401,000 acres of rights-of-way throughout the state to help support the monarch. In those areas, IDOT mows less often, applies targeted herbicides to invasive plants, and in some instances sows milkweed seed and other native plants.
Just south of Champaign along I-57, IDOT removed invasive autumn olive shrubs and planted purple coneflower, bee balm and milkweed. Besides benefitting the monarchs, the patches of pink are easy on the eyes of northbound motorists.
“Our number one priority is safe travel for motorists, so we have to maintain visual lines of sight,” said James Schackmann, IDOT’s roadside maintenance resource specialist. “Because of that, we can’t give up mowing and cutting entirely.”
Even so, IDOT leaves some species-sensitive areas undisturbed and claims 5,300 acres of native roadside prairie, both remnant and restored, Schackmann said.
But IDOT’s effort to encourage native plant species and discourage non-native plants does not just help the monarchs. It also helps Illinois roadways and motorists.
“Non-native plants can be very destructive,” Schackmann said. “Phragmites can clog drains and cause other problems.”
Though Schackmann didn’t provide cost savings figures on gas or labor, there are less quantifiable benefits, he said.
“Mowing less reduces safety risks and associated costs,” Schackmann said. Those risks can include operating heavy mowing equipment and having to navigate roadside ditches.
“We’re not going to get things back to what many of us would like, but we’re still helping maintain a modern prairie that carries out important functions,” Schackmann said.
Working for IDOT and the monarchs, those modern prairie spaces absorb roadside run-off, sequester carbon and please the human eye, he said.
Susan DeGrane is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.