Reconciling the Chicago River for birds and people

The Chicago River’s north branch intersects multiple urban land uses, including residential, industrial, commercial, and recreational. The north branch also supports a diversity of birds exploiting a variety of resources and structures along the river as habitat. From three breeding seasons of point count surveys, I assess the breeding bird communities in four different sections, representing four different restoration or management styles. These four river sections are also very different with regards to the surrounding neighborhood demographics. These data serve as both a baseline for future studies to evaluate restoration projects along the Chicago River, and as a snapshot to compare bird diversity and community composition between these river sections given current conditions. Unsurprisingly, the section of the river with the most extensive and longest established restoration effort had the highest species richness (number of species) of native birds. In terms of aquatic and riparian birds, however, that section was comparable to river sections with much less management in measures of both species richness and species composition. I discuss ways that river restoration efforts can be sensitive to demographic context, to avoid contributing to eco-gentrification and displacement.