Xander Hazel

What began as volunteer work became something more: a family commitment to preserve one of North America’s oldest and largest insect collections.
One day this spring, William “Bill” and Cindy Ruesink arrived at the Natural Resources Building on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus – a 400-mile round-trip journey they have been making regularly from their home in Chesterfield, Mo., over the past year.

As millions of birds migrate southward across the U.S. this fall, Tara Beveroth operates an important bird banding station in central Illinois.
Each week, a volunteer group of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign students and researchers assist Beveroth, an avian ecologist at the Illinois Natural History Survey, in the capture and banding of migratory birds. Before sunrise, Beveroth meets the volunteer group at Phillips Tract, a 130-acre research site northeast of Urbana.