Stories by Patty Wetli

It’s the time of year when some of the tallest native plants are in bloom, coming into their own just as most other flora are on the wane. And by tall, we mean they could easily dunk on LeBron James.

As part of a grassroots "depaving" movement, communities are ripping up strips of asphalt and concrete to make way for pocket parks, gardens and nature play spaces. The newly launched Depave Chicago is aiming for a spring 2023 pilot project.

Illinois officials are about to release a draft of the first comprehensive overhaul of the State Water Plan in 40 years, with climate change among the critical issues the document is set to address.

After a week that saw multiple people dead from drownings in Lake Michigan off Chicago’s shoreline, Mayor Lori Lightfoot had words of caution for the city’s residents and visitors.

Chicago police and fire departments conducted multiple water rescues in a less than 24-hour period on Lake Michigan, with at least two people dead.

The Chicago Department of Public Health announced that the city will receive another 20,000 doses of monkeypox vaccine from the federal stockpile, to be distributed to clinics across the city next week.

The man was pulled from the water early Wednesday morning. More than 30 people have drowned in Lake Michigan so far in 2022.

While federal legislation to create a modern-day Civilian Conservation Corps inches its way through Congress, the Cook County Forest Preserve is moving full steam ahead with programs that deploy crews of youth and adults to tackle restoration and maintenance projects across the district’s acreage.

The native swamp rose mallow has hit full bloom, its super-sized six-inch blossoms bursting forth in seemingly every shade of pink from the palest blush to saturated fuschia

The new contract will be in place for 2023 and run through 2032, with the potential for a five-year extension.

The online used-car dealer has once again had its dealer’s license in Illinois suspended. The company’s construction of a glass “vending machine” for cars remains on hold in Skokie as a result.

For the fifth consecutive month, the Chicago Police Department reported a decline in homicides from the same period a year prior, but that hasn’t translated into a reduction in other crimes.

A 16-year-old boy fatally shot in Brighton Park early Sunday morning was among five people killed by gunfire over the weekend in Chicago.

The 2022 season may have been heartbreaking for Chicago’s piping plover lovers (RIP, Monty and Rose), but the news from across the Great Lakes was among the most encouraging in decades when it comes to the endangered shorebirds.

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.

From planter boxes to koi ponds, these Chicago gardeners know how to create an oasis in the city. 

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.

Chicago Shakespeare has canceled its Friday and Saturday shows following a shooting during its Thursday night performance.

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.

After a month-long "spa vacation," the Art Institute of Chicago's lions returned to their posts Tuesday and are once again guarding the museum's Michigan Avenue entrance.

Some people are concerned about what they say are deteriorating conditions at the high-quality habitat where the endangered plovers Monty and Rose raised their three successive broods of chicks between 2019 and 2021. 

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.

Monday was like Christmas in July at the Field Museum, where staff unpacked crates of newly arrived fossilized meteorites, holding 460-million-year-old secrets.

The girl drowned Tuesday in the lake waters off Gary, Ind. On Sunday, a 72-year-old man was pulled from the water off Indiana Dunes State Park. 

Time to head to the polls once again, Chicagoans. Online voting is now open through Tuesday in the annual Bungalow Garden Contest.