Author: Natalia Ocampo Penuela

Sometimes architects and project managers argue that renovations to make a building bird friendly are expensive, and don’t give an added benefit to the structures. Well…think again! After a half-billion 5-year renovation, the Javits Center has bird friendly glass that has also reduced energy consumption by 26%. A dotted patter, just like the one installed at Duke’s CIEMAS, has reduced bird collisions by 90%.

This is a great example of a large scale renovation that yields benefits for all. Plus this building now has a green roof with nesting gulls, geese, and (soon) kestrels!

Read the complete New York Times article here!

Read the article here!

Here is an example of action taken after data collection at our university, Duke.

During three seasons of data collection in 2014 and 2015, we identified the engineering building, CIEMAS, as the building with the most bird-window collisions with 72% of the strikes. The obvious solution to prevent collisions on campus, then, was to retrofit this LEED certified structure and stop about 2/3 of the collisions.

After conversations with the administration in several occasions, and a through media coverage, Duke has decided to make CIEMAS bird friendly! This summer, dotted patterns were applied to the most dangerous structures for birds: glass walkways and large windows. We will continue to monitor collisions at the building to assess the efficacy of the patterns.

We invite other universities and organizations to do the same!

The new Law School at the University of Utah is not like your normal Law school building. This building has several energy-efficient and sustainable features, the best? It’s bird friendly! This university decided to give bird lives a lot of weight in the decision about which glass to use (as it should be). The new Ornilux glass put in place is thermally efficient, while it saves bird lives.

We should all take this as an example! Being energy-efficient can compliment bird collision prevention

Read more here!

This is the site for the “Bird collisions on LEED buildings” project. Here, we present the project, the collaborators, and recent news.

Please read on and join in documenting and preventing bird collisions on university campuses!