7 June 2017
We have nature reserves on land
and at sea, but the sky has never been considered a habitat, let alone one
worth preserving, until now
By Lesley Evans Ogden
THE Federal Bureau of
Investigation has a spectacular view of the city skyline from its Chicago
office tower. But when special agent Julia Meredith arrived at work one Monday
morning, her eyes were focused firmly on the ground. That’s where the bodies
were – more than 10 of them.
Some of the dead were
Blackburnian warblers, birds with bright yellow and orange plumage that are
rarely seen in the city. They had been on their way to their wintering grounds
in South America when they had collided with the building’s glass facade. “They
had come all this way and here they were, dead,” says Meredith.
It’s not an isolated incident.
Just last month, 395
migrating birds were killed in one building strike in Galveston, Texas.
The world over, wherever humans are extending their buildings, machines and
light into the sky, the lives of aerial creatures are at increasing risk. We
don’t have very accurate figures, but in the US, casualties are
thought to run into the hundreds of millions every year. Yet
while efforts to protect areas on land and in water have accelerated since the
1970s, the sky has been almost entirely ignored.
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