It’s supposed to hit 50 degrees today. Start your weekend right with these stories from WTTW News.
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The Field Museum’s beaver diorama, featuring real specimens from the collection. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)
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Patty Wetli: Talk about a comeback kid.
The North American beaver has gone from being nearly hunted and trapped to extinction, to being celebrated as a viral sensation in the Chicago River.
In a lot of ways, the history of this rodent — yeah, sorry, beavers ARE members of the rodent family — is inextricably linked with the history of Chicago itself, something I learned on a recent visit to the Field Museum.
Lauren Johnson, an assistant collections manager, pulled out a shelf holding pristine, caramel-colored beaver pelts, still so glossy and lush it was easy to see why the fur had been so prized by traders who helped found what would become modern-day Chicago.
This particular pelt had been prepared by Carl Akeley, aka the “father of modern taxidermy,” whose work is still revered today. It was just one of the 100 beaver specimens the Field has in its collection.
“The very first (beaver) specimen actually came to us through the Columbian Exposition here in 1893,” Johnson said.
Thanks to advances in DNA technology, information gathered from these older specimens can be used to make comparisons with beavers today. “We can keep a finger on the pulse of evolution,” Johnson said.
And make no mistake, while beavers may not be present in the numbers they once were, they are very much a force in current ecosystems.
Sammie Clark is six months into a two-year research project with Urban Rivers to study beaver activity in the Chicago River. Beavers have made daily appearances at two of the three sites where she’s set up wildlife cameras, most famously capturing a “rotund” beaver that’s become a social media star.
Chicagoans’ reaction to the beaver sightings — hundreds flooded Urban Rivers with suggestions of names for the beefy beaver — track with studies that show urbanites are less inclined than their rural counterparts to view beavers as pests. Perhaps because so far, at least in Chicago, the beavers aren’t building dams and flooding anyone’s property.
Clark is keen to get a better sense of how many individual beavers are actually living in the river. Is she seeing the same beaver at multiple locations? Or have several individuals or families created dens along the waterway’s banks?
Stay tuned ….
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Rusty crayfish live well offshore of Chicago’s lakefront, but they tend to wash up on shore in winter for reasons researchers can only theorize. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)
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For invasive species specialists, Lake Michigan is teeming with research opportunities. While some of those invasions are well documented, like sea lampreys, other incursions, though every bit as “successful,” have received less attention. Consider the rusty crayfish.
Native to a small area of the Ohio River watershed, the rusty was most likely introduced to Lake Michigan as fishing bait, and in just a few decades has achieved utter dominance over the native crayfish that were once found off Chicago's lakefront but are now nearly nonexistent.
Despite their rapid colonization of the lake, it's easy to see how the crayfish have largely flown under the radar. They're elusive to spot. These nocturnal creatures live at the bottom of murky rivers and ponds or, in the case of Lake Michigan, make their homes miles offshore. But they do occasionally turn up on Chicago's beaches, typically this time of year.
What's the difference between crayfish and crawfish?
Nothing. They're the same creature, just two different names for these freshwater crustaceans. "Crayfish" is the preferred choice in the northern part of the U.S., but people in the southern U.S. call them “crawfish.”
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(WTTW News)
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Chicago’s Board of Education has approved a revised resolution that will now keep open five of seven Acero charter school campuses that had been slated for closure, after previously approving plans to maintain all seven.
The 21-member board at its monthly meeting Thursday voted to amend language in a revised resolution that would now keep five Acero schools open beyond this academic year: Cisneros, Casas, Fuentes, Tamayo and Santiago. The original item up for vote sought to maintain only four of those schools, with Cisneros added later in an amendment proposed by board member Debby Pope.
The Acero charter network, which operates elementary and high schools serving predominantly Hispanic students, announced last year plans to shutter those five campuses as well as Cruz K-12 and Paz elementary schools, citing declining enrollment, increasing personnel and facilities maintenance costs.
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Back in the Day: February 28, 2015 - Activists Protest Chicago Police ‘Black Site’ at Homan Square
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On Feb. 24, 2015, the U.K. newspaper the Guardian published the first installment of a yearslong investigative project alleging that the Chicago Police Department “operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site." Reporter Spencer Ackerman wrote about the facility, a West Side warehouse called Homan Square: "Homan Square – said to house military-style
vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown." That Saturday, Feb. 28, 2015, a decade ago today, more than 100 activists and community leaders gathered near the site to protest the alleged police abuses and to call for the closure of the site. Despite the outrage, police denied wrongdoing and the site remains open today. Watch a roundtable "Chicago Tonight" discussion about Homan Square from 2015 here.
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Nature Calls: This Week’s Outdoorsy Events and Activities
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Each Friday, WTTW News science and nature reporter Patty Wetli tells you how to get outside.
I’ll be spending Saturday at the (sold out) Wild Things conference in Rosemont. I’m currently trying to figure out how to clone myself so I can attend ALL the sessions. If you’re going, too, see you there! If not, here are some great ways to interact with nature this weekend.
Are you ready for March Mammal Madness? The Forest Preserve District of Will County is holding a kickoff event at the Four Rivers Environmental Education Center in Channahon, Saturday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Activities include the Mammalympics, where people can test their skills against mammals’ abilities, including jumping.
The so-called “planet parade” has been hogging the astronomy spotlight for weeks. But the winter sky is also home to spectacular constellations like Orion — visible even in Chicago. The folks at Adler Planetarium have helpful tips on how to locate these star formations.
In the spirit of Invasive Species Awareness Week, visit the sea lampreys at Shedd Aquarium — where these destructive (and frankly, frightening-looking) Great Lakes invaders are best viewed behind a wall of glass. The sea lampreys are also one of the great success stories in controlling an invasive species.
The Chicago Park District and Chicago Area Runners Association are partnering on weekly runs through Chicago parks, starting this Saturday and going through mid-November. It’s free to participate in the timed 5K and 1-mile run/walks, but advanced registration is required. This month, the Go Run Chicago circuit will swing through Warren Park, Humboldt Park, 63rd Street
Beach, Horner Park and Columbus Park.
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The Oscars are on Sunday. What was the best movie you've seen recently?
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Email DailyChicagoan@wttw.com with your responses and your answers might be published. Here's what you had to
say:
"Flow" —@trishinohio.bsky.social
"A Boy and His Dog" (1975)—@robertbob.bsky.social
"Conclave" —Robert K.
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5:30 PM | 7:00 PM
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Newsletter Producer: Josh Terry
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