![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/CTC-L-piping-plovers-hatch-061626-14_263770263.jpg\")
A bird monitor uses binoculars to watch the area where piping plovers Sea Rocket and Imani’s nest is located at Montrose Beach Dunes on June 16, 2026, in Chicago. (John J. Kim\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n
Tamima Itani, leader of Chicago Piping Plovers, said the Chicago Park District has been an excellent partner in providing sanctuary for the birds. What\u2019s concerning to her about the federal changes, she said, is what will happen when piping plovers fly south for the winter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what I worry about; will those beaches be protected and preserved for these birds to return to?\u201d Itani said.<\/p>\n
The Endangered Species Act always allowed developers to modify habitats, said Kristen Boyles, managing attorney at Earthjustice. The legal nonprofit focuses on environmental issues.<\/p>\n
But for state, local and private projects, Boyles said developers have been required to create \u201chabitat conservation plans\u201d to receive construction permits. She called these plans \u201cironic,\u201d as they detail how endangered species\u2019 habitats will be destroyed but in lesser amounts than they would have been otherwise.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat permit then says, \u2018Go ahead. Whatever you\u2019re going to do now, even if it destroys and degrades some habitat, it\u2019s lawful because you\u2019ve come up with measures for mitigation, or you\u2019re doing things less harmfully than you initially would,\u2019\u201d Boyles said.<\/p>\n
While the Endangered Species Act has shortcomings, once these changes go into effect next month, even fewer protections will exist, Boyles said. Developers will no longer need to submit a habitat conservation plan, she said.<\/p>\n
![\"Piping](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/CTC-L-piping-plovers-hatch-061626-19_263770275.jpg\")
Piping plover Sea Rocket dries herself off after taking a bath at Montrose Beach on June 16, 2026, in Chicago. All four of her chicks hatched the previous day, according to bird monitors on-site. (John J. Kim\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n
Conservations groups<\/a>, represented by Earthjustice, sued the Trump administration<\/a> last month to restore the prior definition of harm.<\/p>\n According to the U.S. Department of the Interior\u2019s website<\/a>, the reclassification was based on a U.S. Supreme Court case from 2024 requiring agencies \u201cto follow the single best meaning of a statute rather than contorting laws to fit political agendas.\u201d<\/p>\n Boyles said this interpretation is incorrect. The case they cite actually gives the role of interpreting regulations to courts instead of agencies, she said.<\/p>\n Boyles said it\u2019s still unknown exactly what will happen when the changes go into effect. Agencies will likely begin to approach the permitting process from the perspective that harm no longer constitutes modifying an endangered species\u2019 habitat, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cBased on the statute itself, I would hope that very little would change,\u201d Boyles said. \u201cBut I think I would hope in vain.\u201d<\/p>\n After the harm reclassification, the Trump administration announced two additional changes to the Endangered Species Act, according to a July 17 statement.<\/a> First was the removal of protections automatically granted to threatened species, treating them similarly to endangered species.<\/p>\n Second, the term \u201ccritical habitat\u201d must consider \u201ceconomic, national security and other relevant impacts.\u201d An area can now also avoid the critical habitat label if its exclusion will not cause the extinction of a species.<\/p>\n Whooping crane rebound<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Greuel said he took his children to the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin. They were among many observing whooping cranes: North America\u2019s tallest birds. Some of them breed in Wisconsin, and males can stand about five feet tall, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a great way to teach our kids about the success of the Endangered Species Act and the importance of protecting the habitat for animals that need it,\u201d Greuel said.<\/p>\n Whooping cranes are another Midwestern animal at risk due to Endangered Species Act changes.<\/p>\n Rich Beilfuss, president and CEO of the International Crane Foundation, said the law has been especially useful when trying to prevent the building of power lines where whooping cranes may collide with them.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Endangered Species Act is a tool in the toolbox for that, but it can be a very important one when you\u2019re up against a big project that really is harmful but has enormous development pressure,\u201d Beilfuss said.<\/p>\n Three years before President Richard Nixon signed the law in 1973, the whooping crane was listed as endangered under the act\u2019s predecessor, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service\u2019s website.<\/a> Tens of thousands of these birds used to live in North America but, following habitat loss, the population dropped to just 15 in 1938. There are estimated to be more than 500 whooping cranes today after decades of wetland preservation under the Endangered Species Act.<\/p>\n In the U.S. Department of the Interior\u2019s July 17 statement, Secretary Doug Burgum said the law has driven up costs for families, weakened the country\u2019s competitiveness and undermined national security.<\/p>\n But Beilfuss said the law was more about maintaining a delicate balancing act between human and environmental interests.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Endangered Species Act was never about putting the well-being of species over the well-being of people,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s really about trying to create a voice for trying to do development better, more sustainably, keeping development out of areas that will really have a significant impact on species we care about.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI fear this will slant us too far toward not having any voice in those kinds of decisions,\u201d Beilfuss said.<\/p>\n Dragonfly challenges<\/p>\n Species living in specialized environments are particularly vulnerable to habitat destruction, said Marla Garrison, faculty emeritus at McHenry County College. One example is the Hine\u2019s emerald dragonfly, the only dragonfly on the federal endangered species list. Research suggests these insects, found in northeastern Illinois and other Midwestern states, require burrows created by Great Plains mudbugs and water flowing over the mineral dolomite, Garrison said.<\/p>\n Garrison said killing individual insects for educational purposes isn\u2019t really a concern. Every child should have a bug collection, she said. The most significant impacts to insect populations come from human disturbances to habitats.<\/p>\n \u201cHine\u2019s emerald is a perfect example of how it is dependent on critical habitat, not on individual hunting or loss,\u201d Garrison said.<\/p>\n Andres Ortega, aquatic resources supervisor at the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County, said the most robust population of Hine\u2019s emerald dragonflies is in Door County, Wisconsin, at roughly 3,000 adults per year. Ortega said this is a relatively low, but stable, number for an insect.<\/p>\n Throughout all of Illinois, he said there are an estimated 200 to 300 adults yearly.<\/p>\n \u201cFor an insect, that is considered being on the brink of extirpation or local extinction from Illinois,\u201d Ortega said.<\/p>\n To illustrate how easily insect habitats can be harmed, Garrison gave the example of water trickling down a hill into a wetland. If a housing development went up, it could cut off the source of water and destroy the habitat. Sometimes developers pledge to restore these habitats, but it\u2019s not possible to fully recreate what was already there, Garrison said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t rebuild something that took tens of thousands of years to form through glacial deposits,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Ortega also said fully recreating natural conditions for the dragonflies would be very difficult if not impossible. However, the Forest Preserve has gotten \u201cvery close\u201d by modifying areas with characteristics already conducive to the species, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cDown the road, there may be other areas identified that have similar characteristics that, with some man-made modifications and restoration work, could become, or become again, Hine\u2019s emerald habitats,\u201d Ortega said.<\/p>\n Garrison said insects, sometimes seen as just \u201cbiting and stinging things,\u201d are often overlooked in discussions about conservation. They can also be less visible than the animals people look for at Montrose Beach.<\/p>\n Everyone else<\/p>\n Alex Terrana, 42, stood on the stone pier watching birds through a pair of black binoculars. She was looking for willets, but, upon hearing a piping plover was spotted earlier that morning, said she\u2019d have to check it out.<\/p>\n Terrana said she logs birds at River Park for a local nonprofit once a week, and she thinks fondly of the peregrine falcons that sometimes nest on her Edgewater high-rise.<\/p>\n \u201cI find it helps me to appreciate the city in an additional way,\u201d Terrana said. \u201cIn the city there\u2019s sirens and alarms, and here it\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, here\u2019s a bird.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Like Itani, Terrana said the city of Chicago does a great job supporting the piping plovers. The Park District expanded the birds\u2019 habitat<\/a> at the Montrose Dunes in 2021 after Monty and Rose<\/a>, the first piping plovers confirmed to nest in Chicago in over half a century, unified city residents around their success raising chicks.<\/p>\n However, local involvement only matters so much when regulations like the Endangered Species Act keep getting changed at a federal level, Terrana said.<\/p>\n \u201cOver time, what everyone else is doing is going to affect us, even if we are protecting Chicago,\u201d Terrana said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As temperatures hovered around 80 degrees and few clouds obscured a bright blue sky, many people took the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[47138,59503,343122,343121,79,3479,343123,201],"class_list":["post-808381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-endangered-species-act","tag-great-lakes","tag-hines-emerald-dragonfly","tag-piping-plover","tag-science","tag-trump","tag-whooping-crane","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Jane](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ctc-l-endangered-species-02.jpg\")
Jane Chandler, dressed in a whooping crane costume, leads a flock of whooping cranes being raised in captivity, at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center on Nov. 19, 2013, in Laurel, Maryland. Patuxent Wildlife Research Center has been home to efforts to replenish the whooping crane population since 1967. (Brendan Smialowski\/Getty)<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ctc-179147345.jpg\")
An endangered Hine’s emerald dragonfly (Somatochlora hineana) specimen from Door County, Wisconsin, is in a collection at the Field Museum on Sept. 1, 2017. (E. Jason Wambsgans\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n![\"New](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/CTC-L-ESA-rollback05_265410973.jpg\")
New birder Edward Shih keeps an eye out for birds at Montrose Beach in Chicago on Aug. 5, 2026. (Antonio Perez\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n