LINCOLN PARK — Just in time for New Year's resolutions, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum is hosting 20 organizations for a habitat conservation fair.
The fair, which is the first of its kind at the museum, will allow guests to browse and learn about each of the 20 organizations and find out how to volunteer.
The exhibitors, including the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, Chicago Botanic Gardens, Fermilab and Friends of the Chicago River, will have tables set up to explain their projects and volunteering opportunities ranging from single day river clean-up trips to how to transform your backyard into a verified monarch butterfly station.
"I just really want these conservation efforts to be known to the public," said Laura Saletta, one of the organizers behind the habitat conservation fair. "It's such an easy way to get involved."
The idea is to put all the organizations and opportunities under one roof for families or individuals to come in and learn how they can get involved with conservation and reconnect with nature.
If you are into birds, there's an opportunity for you. Natural lands? That will be covered. Even space will be included in the "zooniverse" project.
The conservation fair will be held inside the museum, spread throughout the exhibit areas on Jan. 2 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Museum entry is free for Illinois residents.
"People turn their sights to New Year's resolutions, but they don't always have to be the typical things people make those resolutions about," Saletta said.
The one-day fair is being put on by Saletta, along with the museum's public programs coordinator Glenda Gonzalez and volunteer Luis Melendez.
The full list of organizations that will be there includes the Animalia Project, Brookfield Zoo, Chicago Ornithological Society, Habitat 2030, Lincoln Park Conservancy, Lincoln Park Zoo, Northerly Island, Sacred Keepers Sustainability Lab, The Conservation Foundation, The Habitat Project, Wildlife Habitat Council, the Nature Museum's adopt an animal, project squirrel and tools of the trade projects and the Citizen Science Book.
