more than 1,000 migratory birds He died days ago by crashing into a congress building in Chicago (USA); This highlights the danger posed to these animals by a type of construction that does not respect the environment and biodiversity.
The night after the crash, employees of the Field Museum in Chicago collected more than a thousand dead birds that had collided in flight with the McCormick Place Lakeside Center. A convention center located on the shores of Lake MichiganAs Chicago Bird Collision Monitors Director Annette Prince told CNN.
Volunteers from this NGO collected another 1,000 dead birds in the city centre, Prince added. And although other specimens continued flying after impact, they were likely to die from their injuries shortly afterward.
Among the samples found dead next to the building Tennessee warblers, monk thrushes, and sandpipers.
“It was overwhelming and tragic to see so many birds,” Prince said. “I went to a building and when I approached it was like a carpet of dead, dying and injured birds.”
At the beginning of October, on the night of the events, there were large numbers of birds ready to migrate south for the winter. Birds were waiting for winds blowing from the north or west to make their journey easier.
When the right winds arrived, most of them began to fly almost simultaneously. Also the existence fog and low clouds obscuring the outlines of buildings This may have helped kill the bird. McCormick Place, in particular, is one of the first buildings encountered by birds moving across Lake Michigan.
The collision was caused by light pollution
Light pollution also comes into play in this case, as buildings that leave their lights on at night, when most birds migrate, encourage collisions. “These lights are a very important attraction for birds.it’s almost like a lighthouse,” Prince said.
But, Even throughout the day, birds continued to fatally collide with the McCormick Place Lakeside Center.This just shows how large clear glass panels can confuse animals, because they don’t see that there is any barrier and see it as open sky.
A 2019 report from researchers at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology estimates that: In the United States, 600 million birds die every year from crashing into buildings. During the fall and spring migration seasons, Chicago was the most dangerous city for birds, followed by Houston and Dallas. Other reports, such as the American Bird Conservancy, put the figure at 1 billion dead birds per year.
“People admire the aesthetics of clear or reflective glass. But I think There needs to be a change of mentality“None of these aesthetics deserve the deaths of hundreds of thousands of animals because of them,” the environmental leader added in a statement to CNN.
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Contact address of the environmental department:[email protected]