Great blue heron, kingfishers, warblers, ducks, and many more are common. Signs of beaver, muskrat, and even mink have been sighted on the river. Friends works in a number of different areas to promote the Chicago River as a resource for everyone. Friends hosts public cruises, walking tours, and canoe trips May through October. Friends works to educate and involve more and more people in the River, through workdays at restoration projects, Chicago River Rescue Day, and water quality monitoring programs.
Friends is also a resource for community groups and organizations who want to do work on the River.
Before European settlement, Chicago was a low, flat, swampy place. The Chicago River has always been slow moving with shallow banks. The water may have always been muddy looking, or it may have have looked more like the Nippersink, which runs clearer. The region was probably a mix of prairie grasses and trees, plants that could live in wet soils like sedges and swamp white oak, and on higher land, species that liked drier soil, like grasses and other trees. The Dead River at Illinois Beach State Park, near the Wisconsin Park, appears remarkably similar to early drawings of the Chicago River.