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 What Your City Does:
Natural Spaces
With a city the size of Chicago, it’s important that we preserve and protect our natural spaces as places where Chicagoans can relax and retreat from hectic urban life. In addition, these natural spaces are home to a surprising amount of diverse wildlife found nowhere else on Earth.
To preserve and enhance these natural areas, the Chicago Department of Environment has created a number of programs that will both protect our natural heritage of biodiversity and ensure people retain our City's natural recreational amenities.
By participating in these programs, Chicagoans can experience species diversity firsthand, while practicing stewardship in their own neighborhoods.
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Nature in Neighborhoods
The Department of Environment’s Nature in Neighborhoods program brings natural areas and nature programming directly to the neighborhoods where Chicagoans live, work, and play.
The project includes developing many more nature trails, bike paths, and canoe launches throughout the City. Another priority is to increase the number and scope of community activities, library initiatives, and exhibits about biodiversity and nature.
As a part of the program, many railway corridors, abandoned lots, and underutilized waterways will also be reclaimed and redeveloped into protected wildlife habitats and recreational areas.
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Calumet Area Initiative
The Calumet Area Initiative aims to rehabilitate one of the largest wetland complexes in lower North America—an ecosystem that supports an incredible diversity of plant and animal life!
Located on Chicago’s far southeast side, the 20-square mile area has undergone radical change wrought by 120 years of intensive industrialization, pollution, and waste disposal.
The goal of this Initiative is to enhance and support the coexistence and improvement of the Calumet area’s economy and ecology by providing jobs, reinvigorating neighborhoods, and nurturing the remaining complex of rare natural areas.
To achieve these goals, the City of Chicago has created the Calumet Area Land Use Plan, which recommends 3,000 acres for industrial redevelopment, and 4,800 acres to be set aside as the Calumet Open Space Reserve.
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Lights Out Chicago!
Chicago is one of the first cities in the United States to dim bright lights on skyscrapers as a way of protecting migrating birds. The City has developed the Light’s Out Chicago program, which helps residents and building managers learn how to prevent this dramatic loss of wildlife.
During fall and spring migrations, birds become confused by bright lights and can lose their way. Many crash into brightly lit skyscrapers and become injured or die.
Over 250 species migrate through Chicago, about 5 million individuals in all. Depending on weather, tens of thousands of birds are killed each season. As some building owners know, a hundred birds might be killed at one building on a night of heavy migration.
Over the past four years, Chicago’s Lights Out program has saved the lives of thousands of birds as the Loop’s tall buildings have extinguished their decorate lighting during spring and fall.
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Find Out More
For details on any of these programs, check out the Chicago Department of Environment website.
Introduction | Investigate Biodiversity | YBC | Meet the Scientist | Explore Global Diversity | Events and Programs | Take Action! | Teaching Biodiversity | Biodiversity Exhibition | Credits
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