SHAWNEE NATIONAL FOREST: IT'S HOME TO ENDANGERED SPECIES AND CONTROVERSY

The wind shapes the plants and rocks on the western face of the limestone bluffs.

Hikers taking the Little Grand Canyon Trail, on the northwest side of the Shawnee, can scale a shallow waterfall as a part of the trail.

The Shawnee is made up of rolling forested hills that give way to the limestone bluffs on the west end of the park and open up to a vast swamp.

Has there ever been as much diversity and controversy packed into 275,000 acres as are in the 63-year-old Shawnee National Forest?

The Southern Illinois landmark that stretches from Murphysboro south to the tip of the state, bordered by the Ohio River on the east and the Mississippi River on the west, is a jigsaw puzzle of terrain, wildlife, outdoor activities and environmental issues. The Shawnee is also home to 154 species of plants and animals listed as endangered or threatened.

The forest permits camping anywhere in the park, even the seven designated wilderness areas that are kept as pristine as possible.

"There are no motorized equipment or mechanized transportation allowed," Pat Welch, Shawnee recreation planner, said. "We like to stress the leave no trace ethics, where you carry out what you carry in."

The more than 1 million visitors to the Shawnee National Forest were there primarily to take advantage of the hiking trails including the Little Grand Canyon trail. The Shawnee does see a lot of visitors during deer and turkey hunting season.

The Shawnee's landscape ranges from sharp limestone bluffs that soar 100 feet or more over extensive swamp lands. Rolling hills dominate the range and make hunting in the forest a challenge.

Raymond Smith, park wildlife biologist and botanist, said, "There's the possibility that you could shoot a deer and it would keep going down to the bottom of one of these hills and you'd have to follow it down. I like to say that each 50 yards that you have to drag a deer up adds about 100 pounds to the carcass."

Smith said the park was established during the Great Depression and drought that wracked the Midwest during the mid-1930s. When the federal government bought the land, much of it had been eroded away due to farming and clearing. Pines were planted to replenish the forest and are now occasionally harvested to make way for the more indigenous hickory and oak trees.

The Shawnee has also been plagued by constant fighting over its logging practices, which environmentalists have called abusive.

The debate has raged since the late 1980s over what trees should be cut, how many and where on federal land. Protesters have even chained themselves to trees that have been marked for cutting. Hickory, oak and maple are logged from the forest to provide fuel and construction material.

"The difference between a national park and a national forest is the goals they have," Smith said. "National forests were established back after the Northwest was logged over back in Teddy Roosevelt's day. National forests are an attempt to say this will never happen again."

A certain area of the forest is harvested yearly and replanted.

Some species of wildlife are also making their way back to the forest after being wiped out when Illinois was settled. The area once teemed with elk, deer, bison, bear, wolves, cougar and bobcat. Of those, the Whitetail deer population has been replenished and bobcat are slowly returning. Coyotes have taken the place of wolves and there is a study underway to see if elk can be reintroduced into the area. Smith said there are no plans to bring bears, cougars or wolves back, though.

"Ownership patterns in the park are like a giant checkerboard," he said, referring to the mix of private farmlands and national forest. "Unfortunately this makes it difficult to reintroduce animals like wolves and bear. There's not enough of a land base to support these animals."

The Shawnee even has a bi-annual snake migration from the swamps on the west side of the park up into the limestone bluffs.