Episode 7: The Value of Audacious Thinking

06/02/18 • 27 min

“When you can spark an interest in a kid and get a kid thinking about the environment and things beyond, I find that thrilling.”

Mary Hennen directs the Chicago Peregrine Program and is Assistant Collections Manager at the Field Museum of Natural History.

Zero. When Mary Hennen was growing up, that was the total number of peregrine falcons living anywhere near her home in Chicago. Even in the wilder areas Mary would visit in summer, in Vilas County in northern Wisconsin, no peregrine falcons could be seen anywhere. In fact, in the nineteen sixties, these impressive birds had gone missing from the entire eastern half of the United States.

But Mary recalls finding other connections to nature, and those helped lay a path that eventually led her to run the program that successfully brought populations of peregrine falcons back to life. “Some of my earliest memories of being four or five, I’d be in Vilas County walking the little boat road with my grandmother, looking under the tree to see if the little fawn was sleeping there,” Mary said. That time spent outdoors led Mary to get a degree in wildlife from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. In the nineteen eighties, she returned to Chicago and wound up becoming a key player in an audacious effort to bring peregrine falcons back from the brink of extinction.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? DID MARY & THE OTHERS SUCCEED?

The conservation specialists on peregrine falcons had what sounded like a truly insane idea: reintroduce the birds not to wilderness areas but to large cities. In nature, when left to their own devices, peregrine falcons nest in canyon environments and for food, they eat other birds. The thinking was that in a city, tall skyscrapers could mimic canyon walls where the birds could nest, and a plentiful supply of pigeons could become the peregrines’ buffet.

This unpromising sounding plan totally worked. Not just slightly, but astonishingly well. Adults were fine with using ledges on buildings as places to nest, and they had no trouble finding one another, courting and mating. Their little fluffy chicks hatched out and fledged, no problem.

This year marked the 30th anniversary from when Mary spotted her first peregrine. “In 1988, I went to see that first peregrine nest site, the first one in the state of Illinois since 1951. The female was flying around the Sears Tower, going after a yellow-bellied sapsucker. My first sight of a peregrine was her in this phenomenal dive after another bird. It was just astounding.”

Today Illinois has around thirty known nesting territories for the falcons, with about twenty in or near Chicago. (Numbers and locations change slightly from year to year.) The program has been so successful that peregrine falcons have been officially removed from Illinois’ list of endangered species.

For more information about Mary and her team’s incredible work and about the birds themselves, see the Chicago Peregrine Program and its frequently asked questions page.

WHAT IF YOU LOVE FAST, HANDSOME BIRDS AND WANT TO HELP?

Mary’s ability to track how nesting sites are doing and where new nest spring up is dependent on the information she receives from people who live or work near peregrine nest sites or who happen by chance to see one when they’re out somewhere. Wildlife photographers have played a particularly key role in pointing Mary toward peregrines that nest in natural cliffs distant from Chicago.The most important thing you can do to assist the Chicago Peregrine Program is when you spot a falcon, be prepared to take down and report some information. Report the sighting to Mary, and if you can manage to take a photo that shows the band on the bird’s leg, that’s even better. Email the information to Mary at [email protected] with a subject line of “Citizen peregrine report.”

Of course, stupendously large donations are an effective way to help as well. So feel free to go that direction. Send big bucks to the Field Museum of Natural History and tell them you want the money to go to the Chicago Peregrine Program. Or call the development office at the museum at (312) 665-7777.

Peyton does a dramatic flyby. This male peregrine and his mate hatched two chicks this year on the thirty-seventh story ledge of a building in downtown Chicago. Photo by Jill Riddell.

Each peregrine chick is given a band by Mary’s team. The metal bands are carefully sized to fit, they have no sharp edges, and they ...

“When you can spark an interest in a kid and get a kid thinking about the environment and things beyond, I find that thrilling.”

Mary Hennen directs the Chicago Peregrine Program and is Assistant Collections Manager at the Field Museum of Natural History.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? DID MARY & THE OTHERS SUCCEED?

For more information about Mary and her team’s incredible work and about the birds themselves, see the Chicago Peregrine Program and its frequently asked questions page.

WHAT IF YOU LOVE FAST, HANDSOME BIRDS AND WANT TO HELP?

Peyton does a dramatic flyby. This male peregrine and his mate hatched two chicks this year on the thirty-seventh story ledge of a building in downtown Chicago. Photo by Jill Riddell.

Each peregrine chick is given a band by Mary’s team. The metal bands are carefully sized to fit, they have no sharp edges, and they ...

Previous Episode

Episode 6: Women in the Garden

“I’m in awe of plants and their interconnections with the rest of the organisms they live with. They can’t speak for themselves so someone has to speak for them.”

Kayri Havens is Director of plant science and conservation at the Chicago Botanic Garden, where she is also a senior scientist. She holds faculty appointments at Northwestern, Loyola, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The person responsible for Kay Havens’ early interest in interest in science was female: her mother. Together, they collected, studied, and identified shells when Kay was young. But when it came time for Kay to choose a field of study in college, she first chose engineering. “That didn’t work,” she said, but soon after she developed a fascination with plants.

Kay went on to a career in biology, and at the Chicago Botanic Garden, Kay runs a program that recruits young students to begin working in science from an early age, and that supports those students into early adulthood. “Botany has always been a field where women feel welcomed,” says Kay. “But it’s only a beginning because we really need to welcome other folks who’ve been underrepresented in the sciences as well. We’re trying to build a pathway for people.”

WHAT TO DO IF YOU WANT TO HELP KAY—AND THE WORLD—KNOW MORE ABOUT PLANTS & HOW THEY’RE FARING

One great way is to participate in Budburst, a national citizen-science campaign where you agree to pay attention and record your observations each year about when plants begin to flower and produce new growth in the spring, and when they change color in the fall. Called “phenology,” these types of observation have been collected for centuries for various reasons. Farmers used the data to improve timing for planting; foragers found it helped them better estimate when desirable plants might be in the proper stage of growth for collection. Today, phenology is critical to help track the effects of global weirding (AKA climate change.)

To become part of a national network of plant conservationists and to lend your voice and support for good policies, join the Plant Conservation Alliance. You can join for free and be as involved as you want to be. On a philosophical note, about that world “involved:” it doesn’t mean you have to become the organization’s president or take on the planning of an annual conference; sometimes joining an organization like this one serves as a way to stay an informed, concerned and thoughtful citizen. (That’s not a small thing.)

WHAT ELSE IS OUT THERE ON A BIGGER SCALE?

The Chicago Botanic Garden is an active player in Botanic Gardens Conservation International, a network of botanic gardens dedicated to saving threatened plants. This group is committed to helping the rest of us fully grasp that the continued existence of plants is intrinsically linked to global issues like poverty, hunger and human well-being.

This pretty flower is the Pitcher’s thistle, a plant researched by Kay Havens. The Pitcher’s thistle spends most of its life as a few leaves hugging the ground and then, after four or five years, it comes into bloom. The Pitcher’s thistle lives in the sandy dunes of Door County, Wisconsin.