Potential names should reflect Chicago's heritage, culture and diversity.

An avian soap opera is playing out in Waukegan where this year’s piping plover breeding season has been full of unexpected plot twists.

The Great Lakes Piping Plover Recovery Effort is reporting a record-setting 90 pairs of plovers in 2026, the most since the bird was listed as an endangered species in 1985.

On Friday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finalized its designation of critical habitat for the endangered bumblebee. Counties in six states, including Illinois, are listed in the new ruling.

Monitors with both Chicago Piping Plovers and Lake County Audubon Society reported eggs laid at Montrose Beach and the Waukegan shoreline, respectively.

Monitors have confirmed that for the third year running Sea Rocket has returned to Montrose and Blaze is back at Waukegan.

Lincoln Park Zoo’s baby Eastern black rhino is ready to meet her adoring public.

The Trump administration on Tuesday exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said environmentalists’ lawsuits against the industry threatened to hobble domestic energy supplies.

Lincoln Park Zoo is celebrating the arrival of a baby eastern black rhinoceros, born early Thursday morning.

A newly released survey of the eastern monarch’s 2025-26 winter population in Mexico showed a 64% increase over 2024-25.

Lincoln Park Zoo is celebrating a baby boom of nine eastern massasauga rattlesnakes, the first new arrivals of this federally threatened native species in nearly a decade.

The zoo is soliciting potential names for the chick, whose sex is still TBD, via its social media channels and will release the finalists next week as part of a naming contest.

On Thursday, Brookfield Zoo announced that Amelia Gray, an 8-year-old female, will be making the move from the Oregon Zoo to Chicago’s suburbs, where she’ll also be paired up with 5-year-old Hudson.

Ferris, one of three chicks hatched at Montrose in 2025, was killed by a red-tailed hawk midday Saturday, according to Chicago Piping Plovers.

Amur leopards are critically endangered, with fewer than 100 estimated remaining in the wild.

Just as piping plover season was beginning to wind down, volunteer monitors in Waukegan have been called back into action, with four captive-reared chicks released on a Lake County beach earlier this week.