Patrick M. O'Connell

Patrick M. O'Connell is a former Tribune reporter.

A Chicago Animal Care and Control officer tranquilizes a coyote behind a home near the corner of Willow and Fremont streets on Jan. 9, 2020.

Coyote caught on North Side, authorities checking if it’s the animal that attacked boy at Notebaert museum

January 10, 2020 at 10:21 p.m.

Animal control workers caught a coyote Thursday evening on Chicago's North Side, but authorities said it might not be known for weeks whether it's the same animal that attacked a...

A Chicago Animal Care and Control van drives in the Gold Coast on Jan. 9, 2020, in an area where officials were searching for a coyote that may have bitten a child in the Lincoln Park area and a man outside Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Thousands of coyotes live in the Chicago area. But attacks on people, like the one that left a young boy injured, are extremely rare.

January 10, 2020 at 1:35 a.m.

For years, teams of researchers in Chicago and the suburbs have been tracking the movement of coyotes throughout the region, using a network of motion-activated cameras and radio collars to...

An aerial view of Snows Channel at Les Cheneaux Islands in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on Nov. 20, 2019.

Homeowners near the Great Lakes face a ‘very scary’ challenge: How do you handle a generation’s worth of water level changes in just a few years?

July 25, 2024 at 1:59 p.m.

Near-record high lake levels have astonished residents and business owners in the tiny hamlet of Cedarville, an unincorporated waterfront community built around boating.

Karen Daniel stands in the Bluhm Legal Clinic's break room at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago in 2012. At the time, she was co-director of the Women's Project of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.

Prominent attorney Karen Daniel, who led Northwestern’s wrongful convictions unit, is struck and killed by vehicle in Oak Park

December 28, 2019 at 5:49 p.m.

Karen Daniel was a petite woman with a soft voice. But when she spoke, her passion, knowledge and confidence demanded the attention of everyone in a courtroom. She knew how...

Signs on a fence surrounding a Dakota Access pipeline mainline valve in a cornfield in Mount Sterling, Illinois, on Dec. 12, 2019.

Dakota Access pipeline owners want to pump more oil through Illinois. Critics worry the move will increase the risk of leaks or a devastating spill.

December 27, 2019 at 3:05 a.m.

Oil has been flowing through the Dakota Access pipeline across Illinois since the summer of 2017, traveling underground from the Mississippi River to a hub in a tiny central Illinois...

Cardinal Blase Cupich visits Elizabeth "Ellie" Georgas, 10, as her mother, Evanthia Georgas, looks on at Lurie Children's Hospital on Dec. 23, 2019.

Cardinal Cupich prays with children, families at Lurie Children’s Hospital. ‘I know there are so many good people who are working each and every day to help others.’

December 24, 2019 at 12:09 a.m.

Cardinal Blase Cupich entered the room in the cardiac care unit at Lurie Children's Hospital with a smile and a warm greeting for 2-year-old Livi Etue. "I like your Merry...

Brandon Walter, left, chats with his father, Kerry Walter, as they load a truck with corn in Harvard on Nov. 27, 2019.

Wet, cold weather has put Illinois farmers behind on the fall harvest. The result: soggy corn and hay shortages.

November 28, 2019 at 7:00 a.m.

An exceptionally rainy spring and a cold autumn have made farming particularly challenging in Illinois this year, keeping tractors and combines busy throughout November and delaying the harvest for corn...

An aerial view of the damaged Len Small Levee on the Mississippi River near Cairo, Illinois, on Nov. 6, 2019.

Barges stranded, levees breached and a town in danger: How the Mississippi River is dividing a community — literally — in southern Illinois

November 28, 2019 at 11:36 p.m.

Miller City Road, the two-lane blacktop that slices across Dogtooth Bend peninsula at the southern tip of Illinois, has been pummeled by Mississippi River floodwaters for three years. The road,...

A boat of commercial fisherman Drew Koch, returns home on Sandusky Bay after fishing in Lake Erie on Sept. 27, 2019. The warm, shallow waters of Lake Erie act as an incubator for algae and toxin-producing, which gives the lake its trademark green tinge.

The shallowest Great Lake provides drinking water for more people than any other. Algae blooms are making it toxic — and it’s getting worse.

July 25, 2024 at 2:11 p.m.

Every year, an explosion of microscopic life reigns over western Lake Erie, forming a green slick of algae and bacteria so massive and vibrant that it can be seen from...

Jarrod Brant loads a catch of catfish from Lake Erie to a container at Whites Landing Fisheries in Sandusky, Ohio, on Sept. 26, 2019. He works for commercial fisherman Drew Koch and his father, Dean Koch.

In the Great Lakes’ most productive fishing grounds, algae-fueled dead zones are eroding livelihoods

July 25, 2024 at 2:15 p.m.

After decades of pollution, habitat degradation, overfishing and numerous waves of invasive species, Lake Erie is still the most productive fishery in the Great Lakes and among the most valuable...

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