WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

The advance of the so-called Asian carp (the term can refer to many species of carp, but in Illinois it typically refers to bighead carp and silver carp) has long prompted worries that the fish will wreck the Great Lakes ecosystem, including its $7 billion fishery. Its impending arrival has even energized debate over whether to spend billions physically separating Chicago waterways from Lake Michigan.

The carp’s march up the Mississippi River basin even surmounted electric barriers set up by the Army Corps of Engineers to keep them out of the Great Lakes area.

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With the Bloomingdale Trail poised to cut a streak of green through the park-poor west side of Chicago, there has been renewed talk of the so-called High Line effect — the idea that trails like New York’s defunct viaduct-turned-economic engine could be a boon for businessmen as well as urbanists.

We typically imagine the value of trails to be the way they connect people with nature. Though not without their own environmental concerns, trails make wilderness accessible.

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They may have evolved to make the trip, but migratory birds are still tired after flying for thousands of miles. As a major stopover for roughly 300 species of birds, Chicago’s lakeshore can be a good place to rest.

Building off similar work east along the waterfront, the Chicago Park District will restore native habitat for migratory songbirds along a 2.2 mile strip of land sandwiched by railroad tracks and Lake Shore Drive between 31st and 47th Streets.

The Park District is calling the 103-acre parcel the Burnham Wildlife Corridor. It includes land east of Lake Shore Drive, where restoration is already underway.

Shirlee and Douglas Hoffman, both retirees, live on 32^nd Street, just steps from the proposed site. The Hoffmans said they have seen more kestrels, hawks and warblers than ever before since work began on the corridor several years ago.

“We can really notice the difference so far,” Shirlee Hoffman said. “And we’re hoping that this will continue that work.”

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Torrential rain drenched the city in 2010. Lula Cafe in Logan Square, like many homes and businesses, was inundated and had to shut down for a few days due to flooding.

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At a time when environmentalism is as much about high-tech innovation and industrial economies of scale as it is about conservation, recycling seems almost quaint. But what is one of the world's most widely adopted environmental programs has made considerable strides since it began in earnest during the 1960s.  Sharon H. Kneiss is the president and CEO of the Environmental Industry Associations, the trade association that represents the private sector solid waste and recycling services industry.

Chris Bentley: Recycling rates are increasing, but citywide recycling still isn’t a reality in Chicago, the nation’s third largest city. Meanwhile it’s mandatory elsewhere, as in San Francisco, where they also have curbside composting. Are municipally organized systems doomed to be a patchwork of programs, some of which work and some of which don’t?

Sharon Kneiss: Recycling has been developed at the municipal level, but we’ve learned a lot about the tools that they have to promote it. Accessibility is very important.

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In the age of big data, it pays — or, in this case, saves — to put your nerdiest foot forward.

Matthew Gee co-founded Chicago startup Effortless Energy, where his business card reads “Chief Nerd.”

“I swim in this stuff,” he says, mocking up a probability distribution on a whiteboard in the company’s offices in Merchandise Mart tech incubator 1871. Gee, a third-year PhD student studying computational public policy at the University of Chicago, started the business in 2012 with a fellow University of Chicago student, Claire Tramm.

They want to be a one-stop shop for residential energy efficiency retrofits. Simple upgrades like air sealing can save American homeowners energy and money — sometimes as much as 50 percent on their energy bills.

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The first thing you see upon entering the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum’s new exhibit on food is a 19^th century hand plow, its modesty a bit disarming as the climax of a walk-up whose walls are splashed with projections of grain nodding majestically in the wind. But that simple tool, which seems downright primitive in a time of genetically modified organisms and concentrated animal feedlots, was revolutionary.

Steve Sullivan, the Nature Museum’s senior curator of urban ecology, said the diverse suite of native species that scientists now see as a hallmark of ecological resilience looked more like a mess to the area’s white settlers.

“Illinois was bulletproof,” he said. “It was an intact ecosystem.” Settlers didn’t know how rich the soil was, in other words, because they couldn’t access it. Once John Deere helped them turn the soil, they changed the landscape rapidly.

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