Phyllis Schulte was looking for a fun way to exercise, so she started heading to her local forest preserves and got active.

Over the next 27 years, that effort has turned into a crusade to save and resurrect the area’s native ecosystem.

In April, the Forest Preserve District of Will County named Schulte, a Mokena resident, the district’s Volunteer of the Year.

Last year alone, Schulte contributed 454 volunteer hours of work in the forest preserves.

“We’re humbled that Phyllis chose to provide so much of her time and energy to restore our forest preserves over the years,” said Ralph Schultz, the district’s chief operating officer.

After learning of the honor, Schulte was humble as well.

“There are so many exceptional volunteers,” she said. “They all deserve an award.”

Schulte was one of the more than 1,000 volunteers in 2017 that contributed about 16,300 hours of service to the Will County Forest Preserve District, officials said.

“With continued contributions from Phyllis and all of our volunteers I’m sure that number will continue to grow,” Schultz said.

Much of Schulte’s recent work has been at the Hickory Creek Barrens Preserve in New Lenox, where she is helping to restore it to its native condition as the preserve’s steward.

“The work is important because our natural areas are under a great pressure from invasive species,” she said.

“We can easily lose entire ecosystems if the invasive (plants) are not brought under control. Our natural areas are being overrun with species from other countries — many readily available at the local nurseries — because those nonnative species often have longer growing seasons and, therefore, have the advantage over native species.”

Throughout the course of her service, Schulte has learned an array of skills, such as operating a chainsaw, the use of herbicides and how to conduct prescribed burns.

She also took classes to become a master gardener, and signed up as a butterfly monitor for the Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network to learn more about the butterflies that frequent Hickory Creek Barrens.

For the last 25 years Schulte has organized the Frozen Butts workday in January, when volunteers work on removing invasive plants from Hickory Creek Barrens in the heart of the winter, when the invaders are easier to spot.

Volunteers saw the invasive plants down and then burn them in the fall and winter.

In the spring and summer, Schulte said volunteers plant native species.

She plans to continue her work in Will County for years to come.

“Basically, the work is still management of invasive species to recreate what Illinois looked like prior to settlement by our ancestors,” Schulte said.

Frank Vaisvilas is a freelancer for the Daily Southtown.