Is the restoration of natural areas important to you? The N.A.R.W.H.A.L.S. club is all about restoring the natural environment and helping out all living species. Restoration work, plant monitoring, and frog monitoring is a big part of the club because students get to go outside, get active, and give back to their community.

“The club is a great way to be apart of the community and they also learn a little bit.  They might even pursue a job in this,” said science teacher Thomas Jodelka.

The beginning of The N.A.R.W.H.A.L.S. (Through Natural Areas Restoration, We Help All Living Species) club was started two years ago.  Jodelka, the sponsor of the club, required his Honors Biology class to go on a field trip to Harms Woods to perform some natural areas  restorations by removing invasive plant species. Many students that went on this field trip, enjoyed the experience and wanted to do this on a daily basis. Juniors  Vasilios Stefanis and Robert Svaia are the co-presidents who started the club during their freshman year (after enjoying the Biology field trip).

“The purpose of the club is to get a new found understanding of the importance of protecting natural environments; it’s sometimes not enough just to recycle and be active this way. It’s good to volunteer for something bigger and more important,” Svaia said.

Students join this club because they know that they are helping out their environment in their community, bonding with other students, and making positive changes to the ecosystem.  The purpose of The N.A.R.W.H.A.L.S. club is to restore our nearby ecosystems to the way they used to look before people brought plants from all different continents from around the world.

Buckthorn is a very well-known, popular plant planted for privacy around people’s homes that birds commonly eat the berries from and then carry the seeds into Harms Woods.  The seeds lay in Harms Woods because animals and birds don’t want to eat the seeds. The students in this club have to remove all of the Buckthorn plants because they are not helpful to the environment. To remove the unneeded plants, students who are a part of this club use tools like handsaws and loppers, when necessary. Over the weekends, the students take part in burning wood and clean up everything.

Jodelka is confident about the future of the club.

“The future of NARWHALS is bright. We have a strong core of about 20 members who are freshmen, sophomores, and juniors…Who knows what the future holds!” Jodelka says.

Jodelka enjoys getting out onto the Niles West prairie and working with students to renovate the area back to where it used to be before anyone brought any unneeded plants. He is the only sponsor of the club. There are a couple of adults outside of West who are involved in site stewarding at Harms Woods.  John and Jane Balaban work at Harms Woods and they run the clubs monthly work days.

“We could not do it without them,” Jodelka says.

The club has won many awards from the green committee for their work in the prairie and other areas. The students are very proud of what they are doing because they do it from their heart. This club is a great way to bond with other people who have the same interests as you and to realize how important our environment is to us.

“When we finally get to see a dense wall of invasive plants cleared into a beautiful prairie of native grasses, it’s very rewarding,” says N.A.R.W.H.A.L.S. secretary, Jessica Govis.

“Because of the work we have been doing in the forest preserve over the years you can see that it its looking more like a spread out northern woodland and less like a dense forest,” says Stefanis.

The club goes out into our school’s prairie and they either get rid of plants that don’t belong there or they collect and plant seeds of plants that will improve and beautify the prairie. Recently, a wide event was held that included going to three different forest preserves, one of them included Harms Woods. They have been working on this project in Harms Woods for a couple years now, and they are finally getting to an end and beautifying the area.

“We are definitely doing something for the environment,” says Govis.

The students who are part of the club try meeting a couple days after school and on Saturday mornings, just to try and make a little bit of a difference to the environment.

The N.A.R.W.H.A.L.S. club meets every Tuesday after school in room 2420.