New Name, Same Great Programs and Services

Openlands Project is now Openlands—just Openlands—and CorLands is Openlands Land Preservation.

Openlands
Openlands Project was founded in 1963, just one year after Rachel Carson published Silent Spring. In little more than a year’s time, we helped create the 27-mile Illinois Prairie Path, the first rails-to-trails conversion in the United States, and thus began a long and distinguished legacy as a regional conservation leader.

In the subsequent four and a half decades, we’ve spearheaded a wide range of conservation projects, including:

• The 100-mile Illinois & Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor, the country’s first national heritage area (1984);
• The 19,000-acre Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, the first federally designated tallgrass prairie, near Joliet, Illinois (1996);
• The Betty Swan Community Arboretum, a living laboratory on five restored vacant lots in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood (2007); and
• The Openlands Lakeshore Preserve, seventy-seven acres of bluffs, ravines, and Lake Michigan shoreline in Lake County (fall 2009).

To better communicate the enduring nature of our work, Openlands Project rebranded in 2008 and is now known simply as Openlands. 

Through four interrelated programs—Community Greening, Greenways, Land Preservation, and Policy—Openlands adopts and implements long-term solutions that balance the inevitable growth of our region with the responsibility we share to protect our open spaces and natural resources for generations to come.

CorLands
In 1978, Openlands recognized that public agencies often could not work fast enough to protect open space and created CorLands, the Corporation for Open Lands, a non-profit land-acquisition affiliate designed to help communities increase the quantity and quality of open space for public enjoyment.

Using a variety of conservation tools, including land acquisition and planning, conservation easements, and wetlands protection, CorLands helped local governments and private landowners save more than 15,000 acres of open space, valued at more than $500 million. These include:

• The Kishwaukee River Meander, a forty-acre parcel located halfway between Belvidere, Illinois, and the Village of Garden Prairie, which secures a strategic public access point and further implements the Vision of the Kishwaukee River Water Trail plan;
• Raceway Woods, featuring woodlands, savannas, restored prairie, several fens, and a nine-acre stream corridor, is now listed with the Illinois Nature Preserves Commissions; and
• Peterson Farm, in McHenry, Illinois.

Although projects like these have been central to the mission of Openlands since its inception, the creation of a separate entity to engage in this work proved confusing. To more clearly articulate our full range of natural and open space preservation initiatives, we decided to bring this work back under the umbrella of the Openlands organization and brand—CorLands is now known as Openlands Land Preservation, and we're providing the same high-quality services we've delivered for over thirty years:

• Land Acquisition and Planning
• Conservation Easements
• Wetland Restoration

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