Restoration and Preservation: Wau-Ke-Na Preserve

Reader Contribution by Cindy Murphy
Published on August 4, 2008
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Imagine 365 acres of land along Lake Michigan’s shoreline, and 1,300 feet of pristine beach frontage.  It’s a developer’s dream!!!  Lakeshore property such as this is being devoured all too quickly; houses and condos are rapidly replacing forest and dune.  Not this property though.  William Erby Smith saw to it that hungry bulldozers would never sink their teeth into this land.  Referred to as an environmental jewel along the lakeshore, this is Wau-Ke-Na Preserve, a name Smith created which means “forest by the water.”

Mr. Smith spent a large amount of his time and resources, and worked with Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy (SWMLC) for ten years in an effort to improve wildlife habitats by restoring hardwood forests from pine plantations, and creating wetlands and grasslands.  When he died, at the ripe old age of ninety, he bequeathed the land to the conservancy.  

We arrived a few minutes late.  It was just one of those days.  An argument between my daughters in the morning, resulted in a lecture from me, after which I received “The Look” from my oldest.  Anyone who’s lived with a teenager is familiar with “The Look”:  the eyes roll; the mouth is slightly open in an exaggerated sign of disbelief, and arms are defiantly crossed in front of the chest.  “The Look” this particular morning meant, “I can’t believe you’re taking her side over mine.”  It set the tone between us for the remainder of the morning, and carried over until I got home from work with only minutes to spare to grab a bite to eat before leaving for Wau-Ke-Na.     

When we entered the community building, Nate Fuller, SWMLC’s Conservation and Stewardship Director, and our guide for the evening, was already explaining to this evening’s guests the diversity of eco-systems on the preserve.  Tonight, twenty or so of us would be exploring a small bit of the twenty miles of trails that wind through the maple-beech forest, wetlands, remnants of the lake plains prairie, clay bluffs, duneland, and another forest made up of yellow birch, hemlock, tulip tree, and red oak. 

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