Mark Weitekamper has lived in Chicago’s West Ridge neighborhood for almost twenty years. Weitekamper says that he has been enjoying wildlife in the heart of the city for years.
“You can spot turtles, you can spot herons, you can get lucky sometimes and there are mink and river otter,” Weitekamper said. “We can see ducks and geese, of course, and there is a time when the frogs hatch and jump around.”
Weitekamper sees most of this wildlife at West Ridge Nature Park, an urban habitat within walking distance of his home. But that kind of space isn’t available to many people in Chicago.
A new study from Lincoln Park Zoo shows that low-income neighborhoods in Chicago have about five fewer mammal species than wealthier areas, according to Mason Fidino, a senior quantitative ecologist at the Urban Wildlife Institute at Lincoln Park Zoo.
Fidino published the study together with other researchers across the country and looked specifically at how changing demographic developments in a neighborhood can influence nature.
Fidino said researchers used the census definition of gentrification to compare neighborhoods, using changes in racial composition, education levels and housing prices, to determine whether a neighborhood had gentrified. Fidino then compared the number of mammals in gentrified and non-gentrified neighborhoods.
“We know that systemic racism can impact the ecology of cities,” Fidino said. “We wanted to further investigate how gentrification may be related to variation in wildlife diversity.”
Fidino and his team distributed camera traps throughout the city and measured for three years how many and what types of mammals were observed in certain neighborhoods. Researchers noticed a particular difference in Chicago. While most cities, including other major metropolitan areas such as Seattle and Los Angeles, saw a difference of one to two species between neighborhoods, Chicago neighborhoods saw differences of three to five species of mammals.
“We are seeing an increase in species diversity across the board in gentrified neighborhoods,” says Fidino. “Usually it’s not that big of a bump. But there are some cities where we actually saw a much larger effect, and that was specifically the case in Chicago.”
Fidino said the team observed raccoons, coyotes, deer, squirrels, foxes and other mammals in Chicago-area neighborhoods.
Still, many Chicagoans said they were not surprised by the disparities revealed in the study’s findings.
Anthony Moser, for example, lived in the McKinley Park neighborhood for more than a decade starting in 2008. He now lives just a few blocks away in Brighton Park and said he hasn’t seen much wildlife in either neighborhood.
Moser said he thinks this is likely due to a long history of pollution in the area. McKinley Park is adjacent to the Central Manufacturing District, the city’s first planned industrial district, founded in 1905.
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While the six-story buildings of the old manufacturing district are largely empty and abandoned today, McKinley Park is still the site of industrial development. After an asphalt plant was built near his home in 2018, Moser said pollution in the area got worse.
“I could hear it every morning when I woke up without even opening a window,” Moser said. “You could just smell it in your house. But this is not about one plant. It represented a larger history of putting industrial facilities and heavily polluting facilities in communities like ours.”
Winifred Curran, a geography professor at DePaul University, specializes in environmental gentrification. She said Moser’s experience is part of a larger pattern: Industrial sites have traditionally been placed in lower-income neighborhoods, leading to noise, odors and pollution.
All of that could impact the amount of wildlife in those neighborhoods, she said. Many lower-income communities also tend to have less green space and more asphalt, which perpetuates the problem, she added.
But, Curran said, solving that problem is difficult. When lower-income communities try to add green spaces, they often attract real estate developers, who start housing projects that cost residents more expensive than the places they’ve lived for decades.
“The neighborhoods most likely to gentrify are those that have some form of environmental amenity,” Curran said. “We see much more attention being paid to green space, trees, wildlife and habitat restoration.”
A 2022 study by the Chicago Tribune found that the city tended to plant trees and greenery in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods. Local organizations such as Openlands, a conservation organization, have since set up initiatives and grants to help address these disparities and bring tree canopy to underserved neighborhoods.
In extreme heat, trees can help cool neighborhoods. But a Tribune investigation found that the city has planted more trees in wealthier, whiter areas
Fidino said the study proves the need for developing urban green space and solutions to environmental pollution that do not encourage gentrification, especially in low-income neighborhoods. He added that he hopes his research will help lead to environmental policies that equitably prioritize access to nature in the years to come.
“Urban green space should be viewed as a very important part of equitable urban maintenance, and not as an economic development strategy,” Fidino said. “And it should never price people out of neighborhoods. The question is: how can we devise a process that leads to just outcomes, both environmentally and socially?
