The Jim Edgar Panther Creek State Fish and Wildlife Area (JEPC) is a conservation area located within Cass County in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

. It is in size. A mix of plowed upland prairie and Panther Creek woodlands, the site is managed by the

Illinois Department of Natural Resources The Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) is the code department of the Illinois state government that operates the state parks and state recreation areas, enforces the fishing and game laws of Illinois, regulates Illinois coal mines, ...

. It is drained by the

Sangamon River The Sangamon River is a principal tributary of the Illinois River, approximately long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed May 13, 2011 in central Illinois in the United Stat ...

. It is named for former

Governor of Illinois The governor of Illinois is the head of government of Illinois, and the various agencies and departments over which the officer has jurisdiction, as prescribed in the state constitution. It is a directly elected position, votes being cast by p ...

Jim Edgar James Edgar (born July 22, 1946) is an American politician who was the 38th governor of Illinois from 1991 to 1999. Previously he served as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives from 1976 to 1979 and as Illinois Secretary of State ...

History

Originally part of the territory controlled by the Illinois Confederacy of Native Americans, the Panther Creek basin was largely settled by the 1850s. As the basin is adjacent to the historic road between Springfield, Illinois and

Beardstown, Illinois Beardstown is a city in Cass County, Illinois, United States. The population was 5,951 at the 2020 census. The public schools are in Beardstown Community Unit School District 15. Geography Beardstown is located at (40.012189, -90.428711) on ...

, now

Illinois Route 125 Illinois Route 125 (IL-125) is a major highway in the central portion of the U.S. state of Illinois. Illinois 125 runs east from the concurrent U.S. Route 67 and Illinois Route 100 near Beardstown to Illinois Route 97 in Farmingdale, west of S ...

, it was relatively attractive as

farm A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used ...

land. Acting on the basis of rapidly increasing forecasts in Illinois demand for

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as describ ...

, the

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

-based electric utility,

Commonwealth Edison Commonwealth Edison, commonly known by syllabic abbreviation as ComEd, is the largest electric utility in Illinois, and the in Chicago and much of Northern Illinois. Its service territory stretches roughly from Iroquois County on the south to ...

, purchased farmland making up the future Jim Edgar site in 1968-74 for potential use as a coal-fired generating plant and adjacent cooling pond. For this purpose the parcel was renamed "Site M." The "Site M" power plant would have burned high- sulfur Illinois

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

. Due to the passage of the federal Clean Air Act, the use of Illinois coal for electrical power purposes became less economically attractive to Commonwealth Edison in the 1980s and 1990s. After holding the land in 1974-1993, the utility agreed to sell it to the state of Illinois.

JEPC today

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources acquired "Site M" in June 1993, and the acquisition became the largest portion of what was renamed the Jim Edgar Panther Creek State Fish and Wildlife Area (JEPC) in 2001. The site was named in honor of

, governor of Illinois in 1991-1999. Of the within JEPC, are managed as open space, are managed as

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (se ...

and are managed as production

farmland Agricultural land is typically land ''devoted to'' agriculture, the systematic and controlled use of other forms of lifeparticularly the rearing of livestock and production of cropsto produce food for humans. It is generally synonymous with bo ...

. The production farmland is leased out to local

farmer A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer m ...

s, a move that has caused some controversy. It can be up to a Class B misdemeanor to trespass upon Illinois land used for production

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people t ...

, and that penalty applies to JEPC land in production, even though the land is owned by all of the people of Illinois. The Jim Edgar Panther Creek parcel, however, makes up more than half of Panther Creek Township within Cass County. Allowing part of JEPC to remain as production farmland allows

property tax A property tax or millage rate is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property.In the OECD classification scheme, tax on property includes "taxes on immovable property or net wealth, taxes on the change of ownership of property through inhe ...

es to be levied on the land for the support of local

school A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes comp ...

s and units of government.

JEPC open space

Some primary target species for which JEPC open space are managed are

mourning dove The mourning dove (''Zenaida macroura'') is a member of the dove family, Columbidae. The bird is also known as the American mourning dove, the rain dove, and colloquially as the turtle dove, and was once known as the Carolina pigeon and Caroli ...

pheasant Pheasants ( ) are birds of several genera within the family Phasianidae in the order Galliformes. Although they can be found all over the world in introduced (and captive) populations, the pheasant genera native range is restricted to Eurasia ...

quail Quail is a collective name for several genera of mid-sized birds generally placed in the order Galliformes. The collective noun for a group of quail is a flock, covey, or bevy. Old World quail are placed in the family Phasianidae, and New ...

snipe A snipe is any of about 26 wading bird species in three genera in the family Scolopacidae. They are characterized by a very long, slender bill, eyes placed high on the head, and cryptic/ camouflaging plumage. The ''Gallinago'' snipes have a ...

woodcock The woodcocks are a group of seven or eight very similar living species of wading birds in the genus ''Scolopax''. The genus name is Latin for a snipe or woodcock, and until around 1800 was used to refer to a variety of waders. The English name ...

, and rabbit. Rotating areas of grass, sunflower seeds, and wheat are managed to feed and encourage these populations, all of which can be hunted with an Illinois license. Several small natural

pond A pond is an area filled with water, either natural or artificial, that is smaller than a lake. Defining them to be less than in area, less than deep, and with less than 30% emergent vegetation helps in distinguishing their ecology from ...

s and artificial

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

s exist on the JEPC property, and are stocked with

largemouth bass The largemouth bass (''Micropterus salmoides'') is a carnivorous freshwater gamefish in the Centrarchidae ( sunfish) family, a species of black bass native to the eastern and central United States, southeastern Canada and northern Mexico, bu ...

, channel catfish and typical Illinois farm-pond

panfish The word panfish, also spelled pan-fish or pan fish, is an American English term describing any edible freshwater fish that usually do not outgrow the size of an average frying pan. It is also commonly used by recreational anglers to refer to a ...

such as bluegill, the Illinois state fish, and

green sunfish The green sunfish (''Lepomis cyanellus'') is a species of freshwater fish in the sunfish family (Centrarchidae) of order Perciformes. A panfish popular with anglers, the green sunfish is also kept as an aquarium fish by hobbyists. They are usu ...

. In addition to these fish, Prairie Lake is also stocked with

muskellunge The muskellunge ''(Esox masquinongy)'', often shortened to muskie, musky or lunge is a species of large freshwater predatory fish native to North America. It is the largest member of the pike family, Esocidae. Origin of name The name "muskell ...

. within JEPC have been set aside as the ''Cox Creek Hill Prairie State Natural Area'', a collection of upland hill prairie remnants scattered throughout the JEPC. 87 separate species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

s have been logged on the Cox Creek Hill Prairie parcels. In 2004, the Jim Edgar Panther Creek State Fish and Wildlife Area was designated as an ''Important Bird Area of Illinois.''

JEPC woodland

The Jim Edgar Panther Creek site's woodland is managed for

white-tailed deer The white-tailed deer (''Odocoileus virginianus''), also known as the whitetail or Virginia deer, is a medium-sized deer native to North America, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru and Bolivia. It has also been introduced t ...

and

wild turkey The wild turkey (''Meleagris gallopavo'') is an upland ground bird native to North America, one of two extant species of turkey and the heaviest member of the order Galliformes. It is the ancestor to the domestic turkey, which was originally d ...

Fur Fur is a thick growth of hair that covers the skin of mammals. It consists of a combination of oily guard hair on top and thick underfur beneath. The guard hair keeps moisture from reaching the skin; the underfur acts as an insulating blanket t ...

bearing animals, such as coyotes,

raccoon The raccoon ( or , ''Procyon lotor''), sometimes called the common raccoon to distinguish it from other species, is a mammal native to North America. It is the largest of the procyonid family, having a body length of , and a body weight of ...

, opossum, red fox,

gray fox The gray fox (''Urocyon cinereoargenteus''), or grey fox, is an omnivorous mammal of the family Canidae, widespread throughout North America and Central America. This species and its only congener, the diminutive island fox (''Urocyon littor ...

, and striped skunk, also live in the woodlands and adjacent open areas. Illinois hunting licenses also provide access to these species.

References

External links

*
DNR JEPC PDF area map
{{authority control Protected areas of Cass County, Illinois State parks of Illinois Protected areas established in 1993 Exelon 1993 establishments in Illinois