Following decades of decline, even fewer birds will darken North American skies by the end of the century, according to a new analysis by scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Among the snowbirds returning north for the summer, A24 is special. For one thing, A24 is an actual bird: a Black-crowned night heron, to be exact. And it has just returned to Chicago to join hundreds of its kind nesting near Lake Michigan. But unlike the human snowbirds that share A24’s migratory habits, this bird is helping to inform conservation efforts in the city and far beyond. 

Today, the Walder Foundation of Chicago announced the recipients of its 2024 Biota Awards, recognizing early-career researchers working to understand, protect, and restore the unique and diverse ecosystems in Chicago and around the world.

Researchers from the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences tracked bird diversity in public parks and private backyards in twin cities in Illinois with significantly different development histories and green space management practices. They found that birds rely on both public and private spaces in different seasons and for different reasons. The study linked park management practices aimed at conservation and restoration to increased bird diversity and the persistence of rarer species. 

Consider the globe, spinning silently in space. Its poles and its middle, the equator, remain relatively stable, thermally speaking, for the duration of Earth’s annual circuit around the sun. The spaces between — Earth’s temperate zones — experience seasons, with their characteristic temperature extremes. 

URBANA, Ill. — A new conservation tool from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is helping protect lions across Africa, where populations have plummeted in recent decades due to poaching and other factors.

Bats come out of the shadows during Bat Week (Oct. 24-31, 2023), an international awareness campaign that aims to educate the public about bat conservation in the week leading up to Halloween.

URBANA, Ill. – For tiny salamanders squirming skin-to-soil, big-picture weather patterns may seem as far away as outer space. But for decades, scientists have mostly relied on free-air temperature data at large spatial scales to predict future salamander distributions under climate change. The outlook was dire for the mini ecosystem engineers, suggesting near elimination of habitat in crucial areas.

URBANA, Ill. – It was the height of summer 2022 when the calls started coming in. Scores of dead deer suddenly littered rural properties and park preserves, alarming the public and inconveniencing landowners. According to officials at the Urbana Park District, it was Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD), a midge-borne viral illness that pops up in white-tailed deer populations around the state every few years.