EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Title: Illinois Recreational Access Program (IRAP) Legal Name of State Agency and applying department/division: Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR)
Proposed project area: 66 CREP eligible counties in the Illinois and Kaskaskia River Watersheds: Adams, Bond, Brown, Bureau, Calhoun, Cass, Champaign, Christian, Clinton, Coles, Cook, DeKalb, DeWitt, Douglas, DuPage, Eff mgham, Fayette, Ford, Fulton, Greene, Grundy, Hancock, Henderson, Henry, Iroquois, Jefferson, Jersey, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, Knox, Lake, LaSalle, Lee, Livingston, Logan, Macon, Macoupin, Madison, Marion, Marshall, Mason, McDonough, McHenry, McLean, Menard, Monroe, Montgomery, Morgan, Moultrie, Peoria, Perry, Piatt, Pike, Putnam, Randolph, Sangamon, Schuyler, Scott, Shelby, St. Clair, Stark, Tazewell, Vermilion, Warren, Washington, Will, and Woodford Counties.
Length of grant request ( l -3 years): 3 years Congressional Districts: All Illinois Congressional Districts 1 -19
ACTIVITIES Through this grant, the State of Illinois will launch a new public access program with three access campaigns to provide new opportunities for youth turkey hunting, deer and upland game hunting, fishing, canoeing and boating. The new program will be offered in the 66 county Illinois CREP area. Due to the tremendous demand for fishing and canoeing access in the Chicago Metropolitan area, the initial focus for fishing will be river, stream and impoundment access in the Kankakee River Watershed. The Illinois CREP is an extremely popular riparian and wetland based program that, since inception in 1998, has enrolled 126,000 acres. These CREP acres have been restored to forests, wetlands and prairies along the Illinois River and tributaries providing a huge base of potential participants with appropriate habitats for IRAP. The Illinois CREP received sufficient state funding in State Fiscal Year 2010 to expand to the Kaskaskia River Watershed and to enroll an additional 105,000 new acres, which will provide another large source of potential participants for IRAP. Intergovernmental Agency Agreements are currently in place between the IDNR and the County Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCDs) for the implementation of CREP and can easily be modified to accommodate the new IRAP. While CREP acres will be targeted, all eligible landowners in the CREP area will have the opportunity to enroll in IRAP. The long-term goaJ is to expand IRAP statewide and to expand the availability of other compatible recreational use activities for Illinois landowners and recreational users. With 95% of Illinois land in private ownership and a huge demand for recreational use opportunities, creating a new public access program for private lands is critical to IDNR and the State
