Nara Schoenberg

Robert Sullivan, a volunteer who takes care of a native plant garden at the Center on Halsted in Chicago, says the rooftop oasis attracts hummingbirds, monarch butterflies and other insects.

A rooftop garden in Lakeview has thousands of native plants — and a mission

September 10, 2023 at 5:00 a.m.

Three stories above a busy stretch of North Halsted, on a rooftop with views of downtown skyscrapers, crickets chirp and prairie flowers dance in the breeze. Waist-high grasses set the...

Vintage Chicago bungalows on the South Side of Chicago, Aug. 22, 2023.

Electric heating in vintage Chicago homes, including bungalows and two-flats, could greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, study finds

September 3, 2023 at 5:00 a.m.

Built in 1922, Katanya Raby's South Side home has a classic look: dark brick, white trim and cheeky little attic windows peering out from the roof. But this is not...

Pidgeon Pagonis chants during a protest against genital surgeries on intersex kids outside Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago on July 19, 2018, in Chicago.

Chicago intersex activist, who won a historic victory at Lurie Children’s Hospital, talks about life and a new memoir

September 2, 2023 at 11:09 a.m.

Nobody told Pidgeon Pagonis that they were intersex, or born with a body that doesn't fit standard definitions of male and female. Not when Pagonis, who was raised as a...

A monarch butterfly rests in the Rice Garden just outside the Field Museum, Aug. 9, 2023.

Field Museum researchers enlist hundreds of home gardeners in fight to save the iconic monarch butterfly

August 22, 2023 at 5:00 a.m.

On a suburban street with smooth lawns and trimmed bushes, Martha Chiplis' yard stands out. It's not just the wildflowers: purple wild petunia, golden lanceleaf coreopsis, hot-pink Bush's poppy mallow....

Imani, a piping plover, stands in the water in the Montrose Beach Dunes Natural Area on July 27, 2023.

Piping plover chick roaming Montrose Beach revealed to be a relative of Chicago’s beloved Monty

July 27, 2023 at 2:47 p.m.

One of the federally endangered piping plover chicks that's been roaming a North Side beach in recent weeks has ties to a prominent local family. When the chick, who was...

Sabrina and Ralph Jones spend time in their kitchen with their children on May 18, 2023, in rural Nokomis. The couple moved out to the country to live a quiet life. This spring, Navigator CO2 started a 24/7 drilling site about 500 feet from their home.

CO2 pipeline company conducted a 24/7 drilling operation for 2 months across from family’s Nokomis home: ‘They’ve created chaos.’

July 24, 2023 at 5:00 a.m.

One day last fall, Sabrina and Ralph Jones spotted four wooden surveyor stakes in the farm field across the street, each one marked with a strip of orange plastic. That,...

A carbon storage well at the Archer Daniels Midland ethanol facility in Decatur, July 2, 2009.

Push to build more CO2 pipelines and store vast amounts of the gas underground in Illinois raises alarms about safety regulations

July 23, 2023 at 5:00 a.m.

For years, the carbon dioxide pipeline snaked through the fields and forests of Yazoo County, Mississippi, going largely unnoticed. But that changed forever on a winter evening in 2020. Under...

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