LATEST NEWS:
Important Step Toward Bird Friendly Chicago’s Proposed Ordinance
March 27, 2020
The Chicago City Council passed O2020-136, an ordinance to make bird-friendly design a significant part of future sustainability planning as applied to building construction. Specifically, it “amend(s) the Chicago Sustainable Development Policy to provide greater weight and priority to strategies 9.1 Bird Protection (Basic) and 9.2 Bird Protection (Enhanced) as listed in the Chicago Sustainable Development Policy Handbook, with the goal of reducing avian mortality and injury from circumstances that are known to pose a high risk to birds."
The Department of Planning and Development’s Sustainability committee has asked Bird Friendly Chicago to provide suggested language for the strategies. We are part of the team that will work to incorporate bird-friendly measures into sustainable building standards. We expect that this policy will be enacted within the next few months and will help reduce bird mortality for a large percentage of the city’s new planned developments.
This is a positive step that acknowledges the importance of protecting birds in our urban environment. We will continue to work towards passing an ordinance that incorporates even stronger bird-friendly design requirements into Chicago's building code.
Prioritizing bird-friendly practices as important components of the sustainability guidelines will influence policy, awareness, understanding, and innovations that will reduce hazards for birds traveling through Chicago's critical migratory path. Bird Friendly Chicago calls on the City of Chicago to approve language in the sustainability plan that minimizes bird mortality.
Have a problem window?
There are many attractive new products that can help you make your windows safe for birds. These two partner organizations maintain current product lists with links:
Chicago Bird Collision Monitors
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has an excellent best practice guide to reducing bird collisions with thorough explanations and a bibliography.
From the Bird Friendly Chicago website:
Members of the Chicago birding community created a working group for the advancement of a bird-friendly building ordinance for the city of Chicago. Representatives from Chicago Audubon Society, Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, Chicago Ornithological Society and Illinois Ornithological Society have formed "Bird Friendly Chicago", an alliance to promote a safer urban environment for birds through improved lighting, landscaping and glass features of buildings. Partner organizations and individuals are invited to join our efforts.
Advocate for a bird-friendly building ordinance in Chicago by signing our declaration
The Problem: Our beautiful city is killing birds in staggering numbers.
For thousands of years, birds have migrated in impressive numbers through the Chicago region.
Only in the last six or seven decades have birds had to contend with a new deadly peril—bright, shiny cities with confusing canyons of light and glass. The lights of our cities draw birds in. Once here, they fall victim to an unmoving and unseen menace—glass windows and facades.
The numbers are staggering. In North America alone, it is estimated that as many as 1 billion birds—yes, 1,000,000,000!—are killed each year by collisions with buildings. In just the Chicago Loop, more than 26,000 dead birds were collected over a ten-year period - and many more deaths were undetected.
It's not a small problem... but we can do much much better.
Art courtesy of Miranda Brandon