Bill amendments filed last month in Springfield aim to authorize a land swap of 2,000 acres in the middle of Pyramid State Park for a parcel of land the same size several miles to the east owned by the Toney Watkins Company. A coalition of environmental groups including IEC has come together to oppose the plan, which will split the natural areas of the park and impact the area’s natural habitat.

The plan is designed to allow the Toney Watkins Co. to open an extensive recreation and entertainment facility in southern Illinois that has been likened to Branson, Missouri. IEC spotted the amendments and began engaging other groups to review and respond to the issue. After a meeting between state legislators, members of the state’s environmental community and representatives of the company, IEC and its partners asked the state to not pass the legislation that would allow the swap.

The land the company wants is in the middle of the park. What is now one contiguous parcel (Illinois' largest park area) would be split in half, and, with the addition of the new land, would actually wind up as three separate parcels. The desired parcel in the park, part of the land that the state purchased in 2001 as part of the Open Land Trust program, has been restored to tall-grass prairie. The land being offered in return is former strip mine land that has never been reclaimed or restored. The company claims they will pay DNR the cost of restoring the land.

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Pyramid State Park for wildlife. In the heart of the range of our nation’s two fastest declining bird groups, grassland and shrubland birds, the site was designated as an Important Bird Area last year by National Audubon Society. Endangered species like northern harrier and Henslow’s sparrow and other rapidly declining ones like the bobwhite, meadowlark, dickcissel, and grasshopper sparrow need thousands of acres of uninterrupted habitat to develop thriving population centers.

The swap also sets a bad precedent for considering state parks as a fungible resource to be carved up and reconstituted on the desires of development interests. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources chooses which parcels of land to add to the state holdings of open land based on their value as habitat and representatives of the state’s natural history. Allowing the land to be disassembled goes against the very idea of protecting our natural areas for future generations.

For information about the value of Pyramid State Park from IDNR, click here.

To read AP coverage of the proposed land swap in the Peoria Star Journal, click here.