Ontario considers regulations to protect birds from striking tall buildings

Keith Leslie , The Canadian Press 

Published Monday, November 9, 2015 3:34PM EST 

TORONTO - Ontario is considering regulations to force owners of tall buildings to take steps to protect birds, which die by the millions each year as they fly into skyscrapers.

Birds are confused by lights left on in highrises at night, and during the day they get disoriented by glass windows that reflect the sky or nearby trees and plants.

Environmental commissioner Ellen Schwartzel takes the Liberal government to task in her annual report for saying voluntary measures are the way to get building owners to turn off lights, install non-reflective glass and window coverings.

A 2013 ruling by the Ontario Court of Justice found reflected light that is responsible for bird deaths is a "contaminant" under the Environmental Protection Act.

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Plain Talk: Let's do a little to save a lot of birds

March 14, 2014 6:45 am • DAVE ZWEIFEL | The Capital Times editor emeritus | 

Editor Emeritus Dave Zweifel has been with The Capital Times since he graduated from UW-Madison in 1962, serving as the paper's editor in chief from 1983 to 2008. He was president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council for 15 years, served as a Pulitzer Prize judge in 2000 and 2001, and named to the Wisconsin Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2011. A native of New Glarus, Wis., where he grew up on a farm, he serves on several non-profit boards and is a military veteran, having served on active duty as a field artillery officer in the early 1960s and for 26 years in the Wisconsin Army National Guard where he retired as a colonel in 1993.

Ever so often in the summertime I'll hear a sickening thump at my second-story office window that signals once again the sad news that a bird mistook it for an opening.

Sometimes the bird falls to the ground below, stunned a bit, but survives, but more often they hit the window with such force that it's doomsday.

This isn't uncommon, I've learned. A recent study conducted by fellows at the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has concluded that between 365 million and 988 million birds are likely killed in the United States each year as a result of collisions with buildings.

Read more:

Hundreds of dead birds on display to raise awareness about bird-building collisions

By Heather Loney Global News

TORONTO – The bodies of over 1,700 birds are on display in Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) on Monday.

More than 90 species of birds, including federally protected species at risk, are included in the display. All of the birds exhibited in the ROM’s Rotunda died while trying to navigate Toronto’s skies last year.

Every year millions of migrating birds are killed from crashing into buildings in North America, according to non-profit organization Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) Canada.

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Audubon Society wants building lights dimmed during migration Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/26/3556147/audubon-urging-uptown-skyscrapers.html#storylink=cpy

Each morning for more than a month, well before dawn, a pair of Mecklenburg Audubon Society volunteers has patrolled the sidewalks of uptown Charlotte. It is somber duty for bird lovers, because they’re collecting corpses.

Fall is when migratory birds wing their way south down one of the four broad flyways that span North America. Many fly at night, the moon and stars guiding them to ancient wintering grounds.

But eons of evolution never prepared birds for cities. The bright lights of tall buildings attract the migrants, which often crash into them or circle, confused, until they drop exhausted to the ground.

Millions of birds a year die that way, researchers calculate. That’s why Jill Palmer and fellow Audubon volunteer Sarah Linn walked Tryon Street, peering into niches and under shrubs, in the early morning dark Tuesday.


Continued: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/26/3556147/audubon-urging-uptown-skyscrapers.html