Words of the Woods

Feb 05 2025 26 ep. 34 mins 13
Words of the Woods Podcast artwork

Words of the Woods is a show about nature and history. Written and hosted by Brett Peto, environmental communications specialist at the Lake County Forest Preserves, it tells local stories about big topics. Season 3 focuses on climate change. While it's a global issue, many of its effects—along with opportunities to help mitigate and prevent them—are local. This season, Brett explores how climate change affects your forest preserves. How wildlife and plants may be adapting. And what the Forest Preserves is doing to make Lake County more climate-resilient.

  Science
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Resilience | Season 3, Episode 9

Feb 05 2025 49 mins  
If you struggle with climate anxiety, volunteering for the Lake County Forest Preserves is a practical thing you can do to help address the future as well as feelings of worry and fear. Individuals, couples, families and friend groups can all volunteer. So can corporate groups, civic groups, scout troops, religious institutions, book clubs and just about any other organization. O

Charged Up for Change | Season 3, Episode 8

Jan 29 2025 46 mins  
The building looks as if it’s always been there. As though the floodplain forests of Ryerson Conservation Area in Riverwoods, Illinois summoned the smoky green walls, floor-to-ceiling windows and sleek roof. But the new Ryerson Education Center (REC), opened spring 2024, is the culmination of three years of planning and an ambitious goal. Create a net-zero energy building that

Grow Your Garden | Season 3, Episode 7

Jan 22 2025 45 mins  
In the U.S., more than 40 million acres of land are covered by lawn. To be sure, turfgrass produces oxygen and absorbs carbon dioxide just like other plants. It prevents soil erosion by wind and water. It creates curb appeal—a neutral, nearly universal surface. But lawns crowd out the many gorgeous, hardy, unique native plants that call Illinois and other parts of the country h

Made in the Shade | Season 3, Episode 6

Jan 15 2025 42 mins  
Chicagoland’s trees are some of the most hardworking plants around. The 172 million trees that make up the regional forest help regulate air temperature, create oxygen, soak up stormwater, store carbon and reduce energy bills with the shade they cast. They also clean the air, removing 18,600 tons of pollutants from car exhaust and industrial emissions every year. Increasingly,

Beating the Heat: Part 2 | Season 3, Episode 5

Jan 08 2025 49 mins  
Mammals dominate our hearts and homes. Pets such as dogs, cats, hamsters, hedgehogs and others offer companionship and cuteness, of course. But mammals are also recognizable as close kin, not too far away on the tree of life. About 70 mammal species are native to Illinois. Eastern chipmunks, red and gray foxes, eastern cottontail rabbits, American beavers, raccoons, white-tailed d

Beating the Heat: Part 1 | Season 3, Episode 4

Jan 01 2025 42 mins  
“Animals can react to climate change in only three ways: they can move, adapt or die.” That statement comes from a 2018 article by Renée Cho, a contributor to the Columbia Climate School at Columbia University in New York City. How much an animal will need to react depends on its species and individual traits. Lake County’s wildlife are particularly vulnerable to climate

Growing Through Change | Season 3, Episode 3

Dec 18 2024 43 mins  
Think of a seed as “a self-contained baby with a lunchbox.” Each seed contains unique DNA, unique genes, slightly different from other members of the same species. Genes give an individual plant its traits, no different than how human genes code for height, hair color, eye color and so on. Habitat restoration projects, which the Lake County Forest Preserves specializes in,

Current Events | Season 3, Episode 2

Dec 11 2024 44 mins  
By all appearances, Lake Michigan is a steady, benevolent presence. An anchor for the northeastern corner of Illinois. The invincible resource that Chicago and its suburbs, not to mention other communities in Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan, are built around. Yet Lake Michigan is not invincible. And Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve in Lake Forest, Illinois has a front-row view. Gu

Past, Present and Future | Season 3, Episode 1

Dec 04 2024 43 mins  
On the banks of the Fox River in the southwestern corner of Lake County, Illinois, you can almost see back through time. Not so long ago, at least on the 4.5-billion-year arc of Earth’s history, a wall of ice between 700–2,000 feet tall covered everything in view today. Today, 691 acres near the Fox River’s eastern shore make up Grassy Lake Forest Preserve in the town of Lak

Special Edition: 17 Years, 64 Degrees, 100 Decibels

Mar 19 2024 20 mins  
The alarm clock is ready to ring for the periodical cicadas of Lake County. The previous mass emergence of these true bugs in 2007 set the alarm for 2024. During spring and summer 17 years ago, millions of cicadas tunneled out of the soil, crawled up trees, sang, mated and completed their life cycle. This will be a magical year for their offspring. In this special-edition episode,