Joey Santore isn’t your typical plant expert, but his colorful style and depth of knowledge have proved popular. We go for a stroll through Wolf Road Prairie, an 80-acre nature preserve in Chicago’s western suburbs.

It’s been a rough few decades for the rusty patched bumblebee. Once widespread in Illinois and throughout much of the U.S., the species has lost nearly 90% of its population over the past 20 years.

Joel Brammeier, president and CEO of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, talks about the area’s shrinking and disappearing beaches this year, and why it matters.

As they set out to learn more about kids’ affinity for nature, a group of psychologists had a strong idea about what they would find. As it turned out, their assumptions were wrong. “We were incredibly surprised,” said the lead author of the study.

The discovery comes about a month after an alligator in the Humboldt Park Lagoon captured the attention of the city for about a week before the alligator was captured by a gator hunter who was flown in from Florida.

Could you imagine life without the “like” button? Ben Grosser, an arts and design professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, tells us about “demetrication.”

Advances in prosthetics mean that in the not-too-distant future it’s possible that people who have lost a limb could receive a fully functional robotic replacement. And a lab in Chicago is leading the way to the future.

Most of the costs arose from city workers putting up and removing barricades to keep people away from the lagoon in Humboldt Park after the male reptile was first spotted there last month.

A new law in Illinois prohibits discharge of coal ash into the environment and establishes a regulatory framework to ensure that polluting companies finance the cleanup of coal ash waste, according to the Illinois Environmental Council.

A new study offers a framework cities can use to begin measuring the mental health benefits of nature, while helping municipal planners and policymakers integrate nature into their projects. 

Jeanne Nolan shows us how to harvest red onions, garlic, scallions and edible weeds from our organic garden at WTTW.

The massive art project that got the attention of students across the globe is part of an educational initiative aimed at preserving oceans and the people who live closest to them.

By 2025, at least 25% of the Illinois’ energy must come from renewable sources, like wind or solar. But projections by the Illinois Power Agency find that without changes to current policy, the state could fall short.

Save a horse, ride a bike. That’s the message some Chicago animal welfare advocates are looking to send by sponsoring one of the pedicabs that shuttles riders along Michigan Avenue.

The fine is the largest the Federal Trade Commission has levied on a tech company, though it won’t make much of a dent for a company that had nearly $56 billion in revenue last year.

Could Jeff Bezos’ vision of giant rotating habitats one day support millions of people in space? We speak with two experts about humankind’s future in space.