Abstract
We summarize the factors that shaped the biodiversity of Chicago and its hinterland and point out the conservation significance of these ecological systems, addressing why conservation of Chicago’s biodiversity has importance locally and beyond. We highlight Chicago Wilderness (CW), a regional biodiversity conservation alliance committed to protecting nature and enriching the lives of the region’s residents. Chicago Wilderness, with over 250 institutional members, has for over a decade coordinated the efforts of diverse institutions, including federal, state, and local agencies, public land-management agencies, conservation organizations, and scientific and cultural institutions. Chicago Wilderness is committed to using science and emerging knowledge as a foundation for its conservation work. CW has several specialist teams that promote an interdisciplinary approach to conservation; we focus on the work of the CW Science Team, the one team with a research mission. The scientific investigations that are undertaken to provide a knowledge base for the work of Chicago Wilderness have drawn upon a wide variety of conservation paradigms, including that of resilience thinking, which we illustrate in a series of case studies.
Highlights
With a population of 2.7 million, Chicago is the largest city in the US Midwest and the third largest in the country [1] The greater Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) to which Chicago belongs has a population of almost 9.5 million [2] The radical and rapid transformation of the landscape that has occurred over the past century and a half in order to accommodate a burgeoning population might suggest that Chicago is not a promising place to undertake large-scale conservation efforts
In this paper we provide an overview of the factors that shaped the biodiversity of the Chicago region and evaluate the conservation significance of these ecological systems
We describe the work of Chicago Wilderness (CW), a regional biodiversity conservation alliance that emerged over a decade ago and that has more than 250 institutional members, committed to protecting nature and enriching the lives of the region’s residents
Summary
With a population of 2.7 million, Chicago is the largest city in the US Midwest and the third largest in the country [1] The greater Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) to which Chicago belongs has a population of almost 9.5 million [2] The radical and rapid transformation of the landscape that has occurred over the past century and a half in order to accommodate a burgeoning population might suggest that Chicago is not a promising place to undertake large-scale conservation efforts. That significant biodiversity protection occurs in Chicago is, in part, a consequence of the region’s climate and its evolutionary and ecological history. It is the result of decisions made by people both before and after the settlement of the region by European and other non-indigenous populations (hereafter referred to as the “settlement” period). We describe the work of Chicago Wilderness (CW), a regional biodiversity conservation alliance that emerged over a decade ago and that has more than 250 institutional members, committed to protecting nature and enriching the lives of the region’s residents. The Chicago Wilderness alliance is committed to using science and emerging knowledge as a foundation for its conservation work. By resilience we mean the amount of disturbance that a system can absorb without changing its basic structure (its “state”) state [3,4]
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