Production Funding for state of change is provided by the Backlund Charitable Trust.

From rivers to forests and farmlands, the ecosystem in Illinois is evolving.

The European Union's climate monitor says that summer 2024 has been the hottest on record in the northern hemisphere, I just didn't expect this to happen like living over here.

It wasn't something that came like across my mind.

This is so crazy, spurred by climate change and human activity, non native animals and plants are now calling our home, their home.

An invasive species.

Is something that can grow, can reproduce.

It's not native, and it's having an effect on ecosystems, economically, ecologically.

From a sustainability standpoint, it's having an effect.

But scientists are hard at work catching birds near Peoria to see which are native and which are non native, walking in woodlands near Carbondale to track a mysterious mammal the warmer winters that then suddenly become shorter and shorter, and then we believe that that may have presented these animals with an opportunity to survive.

So I'm going to show you how we collect some of our zebra mussels.

Biologists are wading into waterways to remove a mollusk as the food industry tries to keep up with an exploding population of carp back on land, a nature walk reveals which plants are overwhelming our prairies.

On this edition of state of change, we're learning about invasive species in Illinois and how you can help stop the spread.

Hello, I'm Tinisha Spain with Illinois public media, invasive species are changing the Illinois ecosystem, and scientists say the evidence is right above us.

It's part of living in Illinois, robins or Cardinals singing with the sunrise and flying high above the crops grown for livestock feed and ethanol production.

But there's growing concerns invasive birds cost the US farming industry billions of dollars every year.

But to find out which species is the biggest culprit, you have to get up way before dawn.

It's four o'clock on a Saturday morning at Bradley University in Peoria on this spring day, Professor Anant Deshwal and his students are up early in the name of science.

Anant is a conservation biologist, community ecologist and an ethno ornithologist.

Basically, he has birds on the brain at all times the the team loads up ice, instruments, Poles and nets before driving off at a local park.

They race to set up the equipment before dawn.

The team set up three nets to catch song birds, and before the last net was up, the first bird is a native of Illinois, a Robin.

It goes safely into a bag for studying.

Minutes later, oh, we got a sign link, yeah, I was gonna say I was not a Red Wing, black bird.

Man, we got a starling.

Yay, our first invasive species.

Each bird is carefully untangled from the nets so they're not injured.

The birds are bagged for at least a half hour so the scientists can collect a fecal sample to study their diet and overall health, 31.52 1.5 the beak, wing and leg of this European Starling is being measured and recorded.

Starlings are one of the most invasive species in our state.

Professor Anant says, a fan of William Shakespeare, released dozens of birds into New York Central Park before the Civil War, about 60 starlings were released.

And if I'm not wrong, we would have at least a few million starlings in central Illinois right now, from 60 in New England area to a few million in central Illinois, the starlings reproduce quickly and don't have any natural predators in Illinois, and they aren't the only encroaching birds.

He's researching.

It's a house Sparrow.

We can tell it's a male because it's got the black on.

A chest.

It's an invasive species.

Sparrows were introduced to eat caterpillars that were destroying elm trees in the Northeast, and now there are hundreds of millions of them.

They're known for destroying crops.

It would go over in agriculture fields and eat a lot of seeds over there, corn, it will eat it, any seeds that that we are growing, it will eat those.

They will drive blue birds, the native birds, out of their nests, or sometimes even kill them or kill their offsprings, clean up the nest and build their own nest over there another factor making the non native birds feel welcome here is climate change fueled by our dependence on fossil fuels.

According to the Illinois state climatologist, Illinois is one to two degrees warmer than it was 100 years ago, meaning birds that were normally only found in the south, can now survive a Midwest winter.

Anant says, doing things like hanging bird boxes built for native birds like blue birds, will help the native bird population rise.

Another way gardening plant more native wild flowers, etc, that will attract more native insects and that will attract more native bird species.

Before their release, a leg band with a unique number is put on each bird so if they catch it in the future, they won't count it more than once.

Then these winged wonders were free, headed off to their next destination.

Illinois has 87,000 miles of rivers and streams inside and along its borders, and most of them are full of kopi or Asian carp.

You may remember we covered them back in 2020 and this year we checked in on the efforts to eliminate them.

These fish have really exploded onto the landscape in the last, say, 20 plus years, we've been in sort of reaction mode for quite some time trying to catch up.

There's a whole host of programs just on the Illinois River.

We have, you know, these efforts, we've got detection and monitoring efforts are all different scientific sort of efforts to get a better understanding of where these fish are, where they're moving, and how we can effectively control their populations.

Today, we worked with our contract fishing crews.

They'll drive those fish into the net.

So what you see is a lot of banging, a lot of motor revving.

The objective is to try and drive the fish into the nets.

You can see that they are prone to jump.

They're prone to be herded.

So what we do is our contract fishers will come in and they're circle a school with a gill net, and then they've got to actually chase those fish into the gill net, and that way we can, you know, get them caught, tangled up in there, and then we can remove them.

These fish are primarily filter feeders, and they're feeding on phytoplankton, zooplankton, and we've got a few native species that also utilize that resource, like gizzard shed and Buffalo and things like that.

Paddlefish, which are all important species to us.

Their jumping behavior is a threat to boaters.

If you're boating or fishing or, you know, recreational water skiing, whatever you've got to deal with this new threat that didn't historically exist.

To the extent that climate change is causing these increased rain events within the basin, we're going to see significant impacts of these fish moving into new areas, taking advantage of those open water conditions and increased opportunities for spawning and reproduction.

So today was a day of contracted commercial removal.

We also call it the harvest program.

So we went out with five of our contracted commercial fishers in a place called she hand Island.

Our guys got loaded down and probably caught 5000 pounds, 10,000 pounds, that's pretty decent death.

So usually a really good day is like 15, 20,000 pounds.

The harvest program usually starts in about February or March and goes until December.

So we're usually out with a commercial fisherman.

So a biologist will be on the boat to make sure we're recording data and recording fish counts, and then at the end of the day, we do total weights within our different harvest programs up here in this upper portion of the river, we're removing in excess of 1 million pounds of fish in any given year.

I think last year, we did about 1.7 million pounds further down river, where we have commercial fishing that's incentivized.

We.

Started out at about two or 3 million pounds.

The last couple of years were almost up to 10 million pounds.

We're here four days a week.

We're here start as soon as the ice goes off in the conditions the colder weather is more productive.

The fish are slower, because they're very fast and they're they're in schools a lot tighter, and we catch a lot more in the colder months as the summer months.

We have people come and hit it on a fairly regular basis, but not making a living selling Asian carp.

Kopi is a new name.

It's a new name for an old fish.

So it's actually Asian carp.

So these guys come as a whole fish.

You skin them, you bone them, but they have so many bones we have to grind in the grinder.

And in the grinder it ends up looking like this.

And so this is basically just like a ground burger meat, ground chicken, whatever you can take and make all kinds of things.

So kopi is the new name for Asian carp.

What delicious.

It's better than most people, delicious.

No, these are Asian carp birds, also known as kopi I've been giving them a crash course in Illinois history.

So, so it's an invasive species here in Illinois, and we've been trying for years to get people to try it and eat it, and we come up with different ways to cook it.

This is a salsa burger here.

Essentially, it's a resource.

We look at it as an obstacle or a problem, but it also is an opportunity, and capitalizing on an opportunity, I think, is critical.

We'll head back to the water in just a bit to talk about how Boaters are unknowingly spreading another invasive species throughout the state, but first, when you think about armadillo, you probably think of Texas, but scientists say they have found a home right here in Illinois on farmland near Carbondale.

Augustine Jimenez walks past acres of soybeans in a wooded area, basically logs that have fallen, and then we look for signs of digging.

Jimenez is a zoology professor at Southern Illinois University.

He's hoping to catch images of an elusive animal coming in and out of a burrow.

This camera trap here, and we're going to set up another camera trap on that side to document what is going in and out from both ends of this entrance.

During the day, a woodchuck appears in the den, but Jimenez is scanning for a nighttime appearance.

Hi, around two in the morning, a nine banded Armadillo shows up heading out for an overnight meal, or kind of like armor raccoons.

These organisms basically have a compact body.

Their nose is very elongated, so there's now, this is very pointy, and then they have ears that, to some people, kind of like, resemble those of rabbits weighing up to 17 pounds, with short legs, long claws and a big tail.

The armadillo is mostly a nocturnal animal.

It spends the night digging for insects to eat.

On YouTube, plenty of southern Illinoisans have shared video of the animals foraging during the day that one weighs about probably 10 or 12 pounds.

Armadillos are keeping wildlife controllers like David Easton busy.

He caught this one year old in his yard the morning of our interview on the SIU campus.

It's number 16 that I've caught since the spring on my place alone because they're doing a lot of damage to my grass and my trees.

The creatures are not protected by the Illinois wildlife code and can be removed without a permit.

Sadly, you're more likely to pass by armadillos as road kill.

That's partly because of poor vision and how they react to noises like vehicles.

When they cross the road, when they're spooked, they jump straight up.

Well, if you straddle them in a car and they come straight up and damage themselves in your undercarriage, it they're they're many times not salvageable anyway.

Beverly Shoftstal is the founder of free again Wildlife Rehab in Carterville.

She cares for hundreds of injured wild animals.

In recent years, she's seen an increase in armadillos, which are a challenge to re home.

We tried to take them back to an area they came from.

They are pretty nomadic.

It's not like they've got territory that they.

And the armadillos roots are South and Central America.

For centuries, they've expanded territory north, and they're the state mammal in Texas, according to the Department of Natural Resources, the animals were first spotted in Southern Illinois in 1970 as of 2024 they're found in nearly half the state and as far north as Sangamon County, SIU.

Professor Augustine Jiminez says that part of the reason is our rechanneling of the Mississippi River and its lower water levels, which makes it easier for armadillos to cross into Illinois.

Armadillos have little hair and can't survive on ground that is frozen for more than a few days.

But climate change means winter in much of Illinois is becoming more bearable the warmer winters that then suddenly become shorter and shorter, and then we believe that that may have presented these animals with an opportunity to survive.

This is a working hypothesis that we have.

They're also the only mammals besides humans, that carry leprosy, a disease that causes nerve damage.

But scientists say it's extremely rare for the animals to pass it on to humans, and the armadillos in Illinois have not been exposed to leprosy, so the animals that are making it.

Here are those that were like free of infection.

So since nobody is infected in probably 300 miles around then the animals are like in a clean environment.

Still, scientists warn you not to touch the armadillos, which are challenging to document, because they also have differences.

They have different behaviors, different habits, and then they kind of like are unpredictable and in a way that is not consistent with their small brain.

Illinois is called the Prairie State because a couple 100 years ago it was mostly prairie land filled with 1000s of different types of plants.

Now those native plants are locked into a competition with invasives.

I would say, if we had to look at the biggest the plant that is the biggest threat to Illinois native plant diversity in forests, it's this one honeysuckle.

Ryan pankau is the Horticulture Educator for Illinois, extension.

He's also a forester who knows his history.

If you go back to the history of honeysuckle, it was introduced in the 1800s as kind of an ornamental species in general.

But there's a big push after the Dust Bowl, when we start to look at ways to control erosion, and what are some good wildlife species to actually plant, honeysuckle and autumn olive as well.

Today, those same plants are choking out native plants across the state by developing leaves earlier in the spring and blocking the sunlight that native seedlings need to grow.

That means plants like honeysuckle have a longer growing season that could be helping them to not just survive, but thrive.

This is a pretty mature autum all of shrub so you know, you can see they can get up to 1520, feet tall.

Birds eat the berries and pass the seeds.

Planting even more.

This is really a threat in Prairie restorations, in unmowed areas like ditches and other things, where one of these little berries can land from a bird and start to grow so it out competes our native plants.

Is really the biggest problem with this.

Here's how to spot autumn olive in your own backyard.

In the summer, look for the shimmery red berries.

In spring, it'll be one of the first plants to green up outside.

You can really see all these kind of undersides of the leaves showing and creating a silvery appearance.

Honeysuckle has striped bark and a distinct leaf pattern.

You can see these leaves come out opposite of each other, right across from each other in the branch.

It has really arching stems.

And you can kind of see that on some of these, some of these stems coming out of here, they really arch.

Got it.

There you go.

Got that.

So you got the whole root, not the whole root in smaller areas or backyards.

Hand pulling is a great way to maintain control.

Probably want to get close to the ground so I don't snap this upper stem and just kind of try and pull, pull as close to the ground as I can, and you can just take up the whole thing.

But in larger places like parks and national areas, heavy machinery or a large control burn are the only ways to take back the forest floor.

If we do nothing, eventually this plant will take over the understory.

And again, it can get much taller, so it could be up to 20 feet tall, and you'll wind up there's lots of woodlands around Illinois that this is the only thing you see in the understory.

And even after clearing a large site like this, Ryan says, expect new sprouts to grow from old tree roots or newly planted berries.

That's just.

It's another thing that I've talked to a lot of folks about with invasive control, is once you start to enter this if you don't continue to keep the pressure on, to keep the control going, you lose everything you've gained, sometimes in a season or two.

But stay the course, and you'll start to see an increase in plant diversity.

Couple maple trees coming up.

Of course, honeysuckle.

I see a May Apple, so that's coming up right here.

So some native some native growth response.

But I mean, what we really see following this removal is a lot of those ephemeral spring wildflowers come back in.

Insects play a vital role in the ever changing Illinois ecosystem in 2024 mosquitos and cicadas dominated both the research and the headlines.

Insects tell us a lot about the local ecosystem, and 2024 was the year of the cicada after feeding underground for 13 to 17 years, two different broods emerged at the same time in parts of Illinois, depending on where you were in the state, this spring, you heard the mating call of the male cicada for weeks.

I brought my own earplugs today, just in case I wasn't going to like the level of noise in Chicagoland neighborhoods were swarmed.

Some people we talked to at Thatcher woods in Maywood didn't seem to mind too much and accepted the loud, winged visitors for what they were.

A once in a lifetime experience.

The next time Illinois will see a dual emergence like this will be in more than 200 years, one time it hit my neck really fast, and I got really, like scared.

So so far, I'm not liking it.

I really like nature, so they don't bother me.

And if you look at them closely, they're really lovely.

Chris Dietrich is the Illinois State entomologist.

He says climate change could affect future broods by cueing them to emerge too early, which disrupts the emergence schedule of other broods.

There is some concern about these cicadas because they are pretty restricted to particular kinds of habitat, and the effects of climate on those habitats are still kind of unknown.

Here's what we do know, invasive insects are growing in both numbers and species in Illinois.

One of the big ones is the Asian tiger mosquito, that one has been here for a while now, but it's, of course, a vector of West Nile virus and potential vector for some other rather serious diseases of humans and livestock and wildlife, other mosquitos that could eventually show up or Aedes aegypti, which is the malarial mosquito, which already occurs on the Gulf Coast of the US.

Another concern is the spotted lanternfly.

This invasive insect is wreaking havoc on vineyards on the East Coast.

The first Illinois sighting was in Chicago in 2023 Illinois is home to more than 100,000 different insects, and that is a good thing.

Each tiny insect has a role in maintaining our local ecosystem, an ecosystem that is changing due to the hot, dry summers and mild winters.

And while invasive insects are increasing, native species are decreasing.

When the Prairie State was mostly prairie, native insects thrived in that diverse habitat today due to intensive agriculture and other land use changes.

Illinois is only about 1% prairie land, which means less habitat and food for native insects specifically suited for the grasslands.

We're setting ourselves up to fail, in some cases, by eliminating all the natural habitats that have all these natural enemies and complex community interactions between different species and these artificial human produced environments that just have a couple or even a single species, and if the insect population takes a hit, other plants, crops And animals in Illinois will also be at risk.

Less than 40 years ago, a European ship contaminated a North American waterway with Zebra mussels.

Since then, their population has exploded, but you can help stop the spread.

So I'm going to show you how we collect some of our zebra mussels.

So we often just go here where the water is still pretty shallow, so less than a meter deep or so, wear waders and just go slowly in.

We always carry this cooler that we fill with water from this collection site.

So while we're collecting them, they can go back into the water, and it just kind of floats along there with us.

And then we always wear these pretty heavy duty like rubbery gloves to hold.

Um, the shells of a zebra mussel are very sharp and can cut your skin if you're not careful.

Zebra mussels initially were native to Asia, and then they actually invaded Europe a very long time ago and became widespread as an invasive species in Europe.

And then in the late 80s, early 90s, they were introduced to the US, actually to North America.

First they came in through the Gulf of St Lawrence, and data suggest and most invasive species that are aquatic move by this mechanism that they were in the water that is stored in the bottom of boats.

When the boat gets to a new area, it has to discharge the water, and larvae of the species are then discharged into that new site.

Zebra mussels are considered invasive for a few different reasons.

So they don't have any natural predators.

They don't really have, like a natural control that's really, like slowing their population.

They do have that really high reproductive rate, female muscles releasing upwards of a million eggs with no natural predators, really sets them up for being able to kind of spread and take over an area.

They attach in these pretty great densities.

And these are younger muscles.

You can tell by just signing their size.

The larger the muscle, the older the muscle is.

And these are all closed right now.

So if we leave them alone, they kind of gap a little bit, and then they'll close if you get close, or if they feel threatened.

Zebra mussels in the United States are actually pretty widespread at this point, they are widespread throughout all of the Great Lakes region, the Illinois River, the Mississippi River and a lot of the adjoining tributaries.

I know for a fact they've also become quite widespread south of here in places like Arkansas and Texas.

Biggest way that zebra mussels impact our local ecosystem is one just competition for similar food resources to our native mussels.

They can become so dense as just like a sheet of mussels, where you're pulling whole sheets off at a time.

This one isn't a hugely infested rock, so I can pull off a few at a timer.

Sometimes you'll crush the shell.

And they can also use this Bissell thread to attach to native mussel shells.

So some research shows that they attach in such great densities that it can actually inhibit our native muscles from some important processes, like their own feeding, or even burrowing and locomotion, and just can overall harm our native muscles so they directly compete with them for food, but they can also directly harm them just by existing on their shells.

Most of what is being done is targeting the adults to prevent their survival, so that they don't continue to reproduce.

And so a lot of the most common methods are things like hot water sprays.

So let's say a boat comes out of the water and it has deeper muscles on it, it would be a common practice to hose and spray that boat down with almost steaming hot water to try to remove any of the encrusted mussels.

A lot of the current control methods on zebra mussels are trying to eradicate whole populations.

A lot of our current research is looking at how to stop that over land travel from like boaters moving to an isolated or uninfested body of water.

I think the best thing for boat owners to do is one just learn out how to identify it.

Also just informing other boaters and just letting them know about it, I think just word of mouth and just spreading the word about them will help a lot.

And then if you do see them just learning how to properly, like dispose of them and not bringing them with you, remember it took a long time for these invasive plants and animals to get to Illinois and get established, and it's likely going to take just as long or even longer, to get them under control, or better yet, eradicated.

For state of change.

I'm Tinisha Spain, and for all of us at Illinois public media, thank you for joining us.

You production.

Funding for state of change is provided by the backlund Charitable Trust.

The.