202 more than 11,700 acres into high-value habitat for the monarch. ComEd managers use GIS to plan this work and then monitor impact on pollinators and other wildlife. “We have standards, we have metrics, we have monitoring,” said Sara Race, principal environmental program manager at ComEd. “We use GIS to understand where there are opportunities for prairie restoration and to prioritize projects.” Focusing on Vegetation Management It takes time and patient management practices to turn land into high-quality pollinator habitat. At ComEd, vegetation management crews have made this work part of their ongoing efforts to keep the company’s 43,000 miles of power lines clear from trees and tall shrubs—reducing outages and fire hazards. The utility’s GIS maps track which rights-of-way corridors are transitioning to native plants and which are candidates for conversion. “We have an annual inspection program to look at every span of transmission and make sure there’s nothing growing past our limits,” said Tom Ringhofer, manager of transmission vegetation management at ComEd. Vegetation management teams collaborate closely with environmental restoration teams, using GIS to share data and communicate. Ringhofer says maintenance crews consult GIS maps to avoid endangered species and spot Wildflowers growing under high-tension powerlines. Courtesy of ComEd.
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