The Brewster Creek Marsh Nature Preserve is located in Pratt’s Wayne Woods Forest Preserve – the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County’s largest Forest Preserve encompassing 3478 acres.
Brewster Creek Marsh is a 130 acre diverse marsh that also contains portions of the following plant communities; sedge meadow, wet prairie, monoculture marsh, shrub marsh, stream, and pond communities. This includes the floodplains of Brewster and Norton Creeks. A total of 445 native plant species have been documented in this area that includes species such as: swamp betony (Pedicularis lanceolata), marsh shield fern (Thelypteris palustris), sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis), great water dock (Rumex orbiculatus), common tussock sedge (Carex stricta), common bur-reed (Sparganium eurycarpum), bristly aster (Symphyotrichum pumiceus) and swamp thistle (Cirsium muticum).
In 2004 Audubon named this Forest Preserve an Important Bird Area. In 2012, 256 acres of the land in the preserve that includes the Brewster Creek Marsh was dedicated as a Nature Preserve by the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission (Brewster Creek Marsh Nature Preserve).
The Greater DuPage Wild Ones will be hosting a nature hike in Brewster Creek Nature Preserve on Sunday, August 17, 2024 from 10 pm to 12 pm. Click here for more information on this event and click here for a map on where to meet.