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Northwestern to Make Campus Bird-Friendly

Northwestern's lakefront campus provides challenges to millions of migrating birds each year. A new effort aims to reduce bird collisions with campus buildings.
Corrado Matteoni / CC BY-NC 2.0
Northwestern's lakefront campus provides challenges to millions of migrating birds each year. A new effort aims to reduce bird collisions with campus buildings.
Credit Corrado Matteoni / CC BY-NC 2.0 / Flickr

Northwestern University will be taking additional steps to ensure its campus buildings are bird friendly. University officials say the school is working with experts from the American Bird Conservancy to keep birds from crashing into glass walls and windows.

Annette Prince is the director of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors. She says Northwestern's position on the lakefront provides challenges to millions of migrating birds who pass along Lake Michigan each year. Birds will fly into glass not realizing it's a solid surface.

The school will be applying patterned bird safety film to existing windows and choosing patterned glass visible to birds for new construction projects.

Prince hopes other universities will follow Northwestern's example. Up to 1 billion birds a year are killed from striking into glass barriers.

 

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