Blog Entry 1 -- Going Native

There are two ponds in Lincoln Park. The north pond is a typical city-park pond, populated by ducks, geese and plants and fish that have moved into the area with the neighborhood’s human population. The south pond was nearly the same, except it was a bit bigger, close to the Lincoln Park Zoo and stocked with paddle boats shaped like giant swans. This changed in 2008, when the zoo undertook a restoration project to return the pond and its shoreline to a native Illinois habitat. In order to do this, the zookeepers trapped turtles and frogs to house them temporarily, then they drained the pond, killing off the koi and goldfish city residents had dumped in the water over the years. Apparently, it’s illegal to move fish from one body of water to another, partly because the fish can carry bacteria that might be harmful to other fish and wildlife. When we came across the pond restoration on a bike ride that summer, my son Henry dubbed it Genocide Pond.

Four years later, the South Pond and Zoo Boardwalk is a peaceful nature preserve. No longer home to some discarded goldfish, it is, rather, home to native animals such as raccoons and coyotes, native prairie grasses and shrubs and fish, such as largemouth bass, bluegills and one called pumpkinseed. I plan to get to know the pond and its flora and fauna over the next semester for this nature blog.

For my first visit, I drove instead of walked, which felt wrong. But it seemed the best use of my time to stop there while out. I brought Mucho, my aging mutt. He needs the air and exercise as much as I do, so we’re going to make an effort to walk the mile or so to the pond in the future.

The most noticeable thing for me this morning was the quiet. The pond isn’t far from Lake Shore Drive, but the sounds of speeding cars don’t make it over the hill that separates the highway from the park. When we first arrived there were about 30 Canada geese, most of them sitting on the ice. For some reason, they all stood up and walked across the ice then flew away shortly after we arrived. It wasn’t us; there were other people and dogs there as well. They left many, many piles of goose poop on top of that section of ice.

A lot of cities and suburbs share space with Canada geese. A friend told me recently that there weren’t any in Chicago until about 10 years ago, a result of climate change. There’s been more and more press about the geese and the copious amounts of poop they leave behind in parks and their unfortunate tendency to fly into airplanes. It’s become a big issue for city planners. They’ve resorted to scarecrows, noisemakers, dogs and falcons to control geese populations. But are we humans the ones who took the geese’s land originally? Where might the geese go, when so much of the land is populated by humans?

The ice that wasn’t covered with poop was surprisingly beautiful. Pond water is generally an ugly color. But frozen, it had a sheen and fine lines that swirled around and made the surface look like designer wallpaper. I realized how little I know about ice when looking at the fine lines on the surface of the ice, but only in spots. I wonder what causes the lines to form, and why only in some places. In another spot along the boardwalk, the lines were vertical running the depth of the ice. Because of the ice, the pond’s aerators were visible. When architect Jeanne Gang, who’s known for her environmental designs, restored the site she dredged the pond, making it deeper and installed aerators to keep the water from becoming stagnant. This might be a good thing for the local birds—and those visiting from Canada. They can probably still find fish in the water that’s not frozen, assuming fish don’t hibernate, something I hope to find out in the next few weeks.