One of the biggest cities in the U.S. has released a plan to protect nearly 5,000 acres of natural habitat within city limits. Rebecca Williams has more:
Transcript
One of the biggest cities in the US has released a plan to protect nearly
5,000 acres of natural habitat within city limits. Rebecca Williams
has more:
Cities are some of the last places you’d expect to find good wildlife
habitat. But Chicago officials have mapped out 100 habitat sites within the
city. These are remnants of prairie, savanna, dunes and wetlands that
either escaped development or have potential to be restored.
Kathy Dickhut is with Chicago’s planning department. She says the city
needed the habitat plan to maintain green spaces for migratory birds and
other wildlife.
“Unless you know that you have all these things you’re kind of hit or
miss-managing things and you can’t really manage to improve the system.”
Dickhut says when the city recently revamped its zoning codes, these habitat
areas were zoned as natural areas. That means they’ll be set aside strictly
as wildlife habitat: no buildings or ball fields can be put on the same
spaces.
For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.