Recently, two researchers with Brookfield Zoo received prestigious awards for their work in the field. Their current work focuses on the impacts of major oil spills on marine life.
Animals & Nature
Hundreds of millions of birds are currently on the move every night across North America as they wing their way south during fall migration. Chicago is under a high alert Sunday, with a massive number of birds expected to pass overhead.
Like any good host, the Forest Preserve District of Cook County has done its best to make sure the guests feel welcome.
Jorge Garcia wasn’t always a bird paparazzo – in fact, he’s only been at it for a couple of years, after a gear upgrade for his job as a technologist took an unexpected turn. The fledgling interest soon hatched into a full-blown hobby.
The Chicago Park District is joining a national community science project designed to raise awareness of all the bees, butterflies, beetles, moths and wasps that rely on urban green spaces for food and shelter.
The Duchossois family — whose late patriarch, Richard Duchossois, purchased Arlington Park in 1983 — has announced the sale of its 246.5-acre Hill ‘N Dale Farm South property to Barrington-based Citizens for Conservation, ensuring the land’s protection as open space in perpetuity.
Complaints from animal rights advocates regarding the coyote, dubbed “Rocky,” prompted the forest preserve to review its ambassador animal program. A report was released Tuesday, outlining changes to the program, including a bigger enclosure for the coyote.
The bee was logged at the outset of the fourth annual Backyard Bumble Bee Count, which kicked off Saturday and runs through Aug. 1.
Nearly a dozen baby Blanding’s turtles — a state-listed endangered species — were recently released into the swampy waters of a Cook County forest preserve wetland.
The addax, a Saharan antelope, is threatened with extinction in the wild, where fewer than 100 exist. A baby just born at Brookfield Zoo is part of the species’ conservation plan.
This simple act of monitoring the presence of breeding birds at specified sites across the Chicago region is how the Bird Conservation Network has, over the course of more than 20 years, methodically amassed a data set that would be the envy of any research institution.
The lateleaf oak has confounded botanists since it was first discovered in the 1930s. Scientists have been hard-pressed to find a single surviving example in recent decades. But a new discovery, pending genetic testing by Morton Arboretum, could put the tree back on the map.
“We are heartbroken by the act of violence in Highland Park on Monday,” a spokesperson for the garden said. “In times of crisis, nature can be healing.”
Climate change and the alarming trends of species extinction and habitat loss demand that conservation organizations think big. So The Land Conservancy of McHenry County stepped up its game.
Illinois is rebranding Asian carp as “copi” in a bid to get people to eat the invasive fish into submission. Fishermen are catching thousands of pounds a day and barely making a dent in the number of carp in waterways like the Illinois River, where it's estimated 20 million to 50 million could be harvested annually.
Paula Fasseas, founder and executive chairman of PAWS Chicago, said she started the shelter as a grassroots organization in 1997 after learning that every year more than 42,000 homeless animals were being euthanized in Chicago.
