Millions of birds die as they migrate through Texas. Here’s how you can help save them
For the next seven weeks, more than 1 billion birds will travel through Texas as they fly between food sources during the fall migration period. Most residents will never see the superhighway of birds moving south, since the vast majority of birds fly at night.
That’s why a new campaign is urging Texans to prevent birds from colliding with buildings by turning off outdoor and indoor lights between 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. during the migration period, which is expected to last from Sept. 5 to Oct. 29.
“Most people don’t realize that something so simple can be so helpful to birds,” said Ben Jones, the executive director of the Texas Conservation Alliance. “I feel like people would want to be in their corner and help them if they knew about this issue.”
The Lights Out Texas campaign, a partnership between the Texas Conservation Alliance, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Dallas Zoo and the Perot Museum, hopes to raise awareness of how light pollution directly leads to bird mortalities. Each year, between 365 million and 988 million birds are killed when they collide with buildings, according to studies cited by the Cornell Lab.
“What also makes this a critical issue is that bird populations are in such dramatic decline,” Jones said. “We’ve lost 3 billion birds since 1970, and that’s about 30% of our whole breeding bird population that has declined. A lot of the problem is habitat degradation and loss, but just underneath that is collisions.”
Light pollution is particularly harmful in large metropolitan areas like Fort Worth, Dallas and Houston, where bright lights emanating from tall buildings and downtown centers disorient birds and lead to more collisions, Jones said.
In a study last year, researchers at the Cornell Lab identified Houston and Dallas as two of the worst cities for exposing nocturnal migrating birds to high levels of light pollution. While the Houston Audubon Society has held a Lights Out campaign since 2018, this is the first year that North Texas has been involved in a similar campaign, Jones said.
Cornell and Colorado State University researchers are also conducting a two-year research project in association with the campaign, studying the conditions that lead to building collisions and how the U.S. can best reduce light pollution to save birds.
“Sometimes it’s set up as a false dichotomy between public safety and saving birds,” Jones said. “We’re not saying that. Everybody has got to use their best judgment. We’re talking about that light that is not essential, not just outdoor light but indoor light as well. Other actions that can be taken are just drawing blinds, closing curtains.”
Alongside the campaign, the Cornell Lab’s BirdCast monitoring program will send city-specific alerts on nights when researchers expect migration to be especially intense. Ann Hoover, the vice president of programs for the Fort Worth Audubon Society, said that the alert technology will make it easier for cities to get involved because officials and residents will have more information about when more birds are flying through their airspace and it is more imperative to turn off non-essential lights.
“I think the issue is getting a little more notice since the technology is getting better and more people can hone in on their area,” Hoover said. “We are going to try to send some emails to the city of Fort Worth to tell them a little bit about it and see if they would participate.”
Jones hopes to convince managers of influential towers or skyscrapers in North Texas to adopt the campaign, in addition to partnering with more environmental groups in the region. The Texas Conservation Alliance will also measure success by how many people sign up for Cornell’s alerts and by conducting some anecdotal surveys of bird mortalities through October, he said.
“Building and window collisions are a massive source of mortality for birds in our country, and I think anything we can do to help mitigate that, people will want to step forward and take action,” Jones said.
This story was originally published September 3, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
