"Maggie and Mommy and Daddy and Aunt Patty, they all helped me," Jake said.

Jake was one of 83 volunteers who celebrated Earth Day on Saturday by planting 3,000 bur oak saplings in Campton Forest Preserve. The natural forest in the forest preserve was cleared in the 1800s for farmland.

The Kane County Forest Preserve District chose bur oak, which nature program manager Valerie Blaine called "the quintessential Illinois tree," to try and return the area to its natural state.

"Back in the 1830s, this part of the township was scattered timber – that's how the original surveyors termed it," said forest preserve Natural Resources Director Drew Ullberg.

About half of the tiny twigs sticking out of the ground have a shot at becoming trees, Ullberg said.

Dryness, deer and rabbits will get the rest.

"If we plant 10,000 trees, we expect 5,000 to be overcome," he said.

The 50 percent mortality rate was taken into account, and more trees were planted than the area can handle.

"If they all grow to maturity, there won't be room for them," Blaine said.

Campton Forest Preserve stretches 1.25 miles from Town Hall Road to La Fox Road.

The preserve contains 304 acres and is used by snowmobilers and horseback riders.

Preserve staff used a tree planter to cut a series of light grooves in the earth so volunteers will have an easier time planting the trees-to-be. In the past, volunteers had to dig their own holes, Ullberg said.

After the volunteers, mainly children, left, Ullberg and other forest preserve staffers walked the grooves and tamped down the dirt around the trees, giving them a better shot at survival.

"This one's just stuck in the ground," Ullberg said, inspecting a particularly wobbly stick.