Lessons Learned from Chicago Wilderness—Implementing and Sustaining Conservation Management in an Urban Setting

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

Island biogeography of urban insects: tenebrionid beetles from Rome tell a different story

“…In fact, these studies were conducted in Central and Northern Europe and North America, where cities grew into agricultural and forested landscapes (e.g. Breuste et al 2013;Kotze et al 2012;Schiller and Horn 1997;Heneghan et al 2012). By contrast, urban Rome is placed in the Mediterranean biome, and the landscape predating modern urban expansion was mainly composed of a mosaic of wild grazing, grasslands, cultivated plots and Mediterranean maquis, with few patches of true forests (Fattorini 2011a, b).…”

Estimating Milkweed Abundance in Metropolitan Areas Under Existing and User-Defined Scenarios

“…There are significant model assumptions in this extrapolation, including: environmental growing ranges and conditions of milkweeds, similar socioeconomic conditions to Chicago, social momentum and desire to support monarchs, accuracy of our milkweed density estimates, and translation of our model onto the USGS habitat raster 17 and its applicability across the eastern range. In addition, when considering extrapolations to other metropolitan areas, it is worth knowing that the Chicago region has long been engaged in open space preservation and ecological restoration that may not be as prevalent elsewhere and is among the many local circumstances that should be borne in mind when making broad generalizations across land cover categories (Heneghan et al, 2012;Crane et al, 2014;Watkins et al, 2015). Therefore, we consider these extrapolation results as useful in goal-setting and as aspirational particularly for our exemplary results.…”

Island biogeography of insect conservation in urban green spaces

“…Species richness should be inversely related to isolation of green spaces Davis 1979;Hardy & Dennis 1999;Magura et al 2001;Koh & Sodhi 2004;Weller & Ganzhorn 2004;Pacheco & Vasconcelos 2007;Öckinger et al 2009;Lizée et al 2012Lizée et al Öckinger et al 2009Bräuniger et al 2010;Fattorini 2014b Relatively strong 4. Species richness should increase with the extent of native habitats within each green space Schiller & Horn 1997;Wolf & Gibbs 2004;Clarke et al 2008;Bräuniger et al 2010;Heneghan et al 2012;Kotze et al 2012;Breuste et al 2013Koh & Sodhi 2004Pacheco & Vasconcelos 2007;Öckinger et al 2009;Bräuniger et al 2010;Fattorini 2014a Moderate open habitats. Other studies that failed to find a positive relationship between the extent of pristine habitats and species richness included those of Pacheco and Vasconcelos (2007), Öckinger et al (2009) and Koh and Sodhi (2004).…”