Park District’s failures
Reporter Maddie Ellis’ article on the destruction of a colony of endangered black-crowned night herons in a section of Lincoln Park behind the Chicago History Museum (“The case of the black-crowned night herons,” Dec. 11) is thorough and well-written. The article, however, focuses on the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ flawed oversight due to understaffing, stale data and inadequate enabling legislation, while giving an almost complete pass to the Chicago Park District on whose the land this very expensive Near North Side project was placed.
While the article suggests that the Park District did not do the work but rather turned over its land to the museum, such a giveaway begs the question of the Park District’s culpability. As was seen during the saga of the endangered piping plovers at Montrose Beach, where a well-heeled concert promoter was almost allowed to do in the poor birds at breeding season, the Park District serves competing demands for bread and circuses versus natural preservation.
Surely the Park District knew or should have known of the many large, loud and stinky nests above the parcel of its land earmarked for redevelopment by the well-funded Chicago History Museum. I recall several years ago, there was a colony of these birds along the promenade in Lincoln Park just north of North Avenue, and the Park District, to its credit, closed off the area during breeding season.
Has this institutional knowledge been lost or deliberately buried by the current administration? Does the Park District have qualified naturalists or environmental scientists on its payroll, and if so, what do they do?
Given that the Park District has been strained to the breaking point by its inability to protect human lifeguards from predatory supervisors, ensuring that endangered nonhuman species aren’t destroyed by glitzy projects might be better accomplished by a reinstated city Department of Environment, which was promised years ago by then-mayoral candidate Lori Lightfoot.
— Andrew S. Mine, Chicago