January and February are prime months for bald eagle watching in Illinois, with some 3,000 of the raptors hanging out in the state during the winter.

Supporters of Promontory Point can breathe a sigh of relief that the peninsula's much loved stair-step limestone wall is poised, finally, to become protected from attempts to replace it with concrete.

The road to city landmark status for Promontory Point starts at Thursday’s meeting of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. Supporters have been fighting to protect the lakefront peninsula for more than 20 years.

According to NASA, the comet would last have been seen in the night sky more than 10,000 years ago — millennia before the birth of human civilization — and it may never pass this way again.

The funding, established through the 2022 climate and health law signed by President Joe Biden, marks the largest environmental justice grants the agency has ever offered.

Lincoln Park Zoo announced it welcomed not one, not two, but three lion cubs on Monday. The zoo had been on lion watch since early December, when staff confirmed 4-year-old African lion Zari was pregnant.

The six recommended appointees to the board, which was created in June 2021, all received unanimous support during a key committee hearing. Next up is a full Chicago City Council vote.

"Despite promising signs of recovery the first 48 hours, the bird took a very rapid turn for the worst," Willowbrook Wildlife Center shared on social media.

A GPS collar allowed researchers to track the wolf from Michigan all the way to Manitoba, Canada. That's just one of the wild stories we followed this week.

Live trees — well, not so live anymore — can be recycled at any one of 26 citywide locations, Jan. 7-21.

Rescuing a bald eagle floating on ice in open water raises the stakes exponentially, but volunteers with Chicago Bird Collision Monitors proved up to the task with a New Year's Day recovery effort.

Enjoy a cosmic Christmas, with all five naked-eye planets visible in the sky. The moon, Mercury and Venus will form a sparkling triangle on Christmas Eve. 

From industrious sharks to the bird of the year, here’s what caught our attention this week on the climate and nature beat.

The snow total from Thursday was a mere 1.3 inches at O'Hare (though northwest Indiana and lower Michigan have been hammered with lake effect), but the real danger of this system was always the wind and cold, meteorologists said.

More than 1,800 flights have been canceled Thursday across the United States, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware, as severe winter weather complicates holiday travel.

The number of travelers expected to fly – 7.2 million – is just shy of 2019’s 7.3 million. And when you factor in that airlines are operating fewer flights that are more crowded, there’s serious potential for a serious mess for air travelers. How to cope? Here are some strategies.