As part of a relatively new Lincoln Park Zoo project, guano from bats across the Chicago area is collected and tested for levels of cortisol, an indicator of stress. 

The structures, which look like doghouses without doors or windows, rest atop 12-foot stilts and can accommodate as many as 2,000 bats. Is this the year the bats will move in?

Conservation-minded volunteers in suburban Barrington are attracting snakes to their own backyards – on purpose.

With the 30th anniversary of the Discovery Channel’s popular “Shark Week” fast approaching, the Shedd Aquarium is calling on visitors to help protect a key habitat for “one of the world’s most misunderstood species.”

Orangutans are one of humankind’s closest cousins. We meet a baby orangutan as she takes a trip to the doctor.

A new program aims to create or preserve nearly 2 million acres of habitat across the U.S. for monarch butterflies, which could face extinction in 20 years. 

Once a year, scientists and veterinarians check on nesting birds at Baker’s Lake in Cook County, where they can also learn a lot about the environment – and predict possible health concerns for humans.

We peek behind the scenes at an exotic butterfly sanctuary in Chicago, and learn how volunteers help scientists track butterfly populations.

A growing number of states are taking up bans on the sale of ivory in an effort to curb elephant and rhinoceros poaching and undermine the $20 billion-per-year enterprise of wildlife trafficking. Illinois could be next.

A Chicago-based animal care expert is playing a key role in an unprecedented effort to save thousands of critically endangered tortoises that were found in squalid conditions in an abandoned home off the southeast coast of Africa.

One of the world’s most endangered birds finds itself in even greater peril after a hurricane ripped through its habitat last year. But you can help – by drinking beer. 

Why more than two dozen volunteers have been tracking migrations of white and longnose suckers, an often overlooked family of fish. 

We peek behind the scenes at an exotic butterfly sanctuary in Chicago, and learn how volunteers help scientists track butterfly populations.

Spring serves as mating season for all sorts of animals found in Illinois, but no creature goes about it quite like the wood frog.

Three years after they began installing bat houses along waterways in Cook County, conservationists are hoping the bats will start moving in this year.

The 14-year-old female polar bear who recently arrived in Chicago is expected to mate with 8-year-old Siku, who has lived at the zoo since 2016.