The premature dying of New York Metropolis’s beloved Flaco the owl has prompted renewed calls to make New York safer for birds, and rightfully so. As an architect, I’ve seen the optimistic influence of measures designed to guard the chook inhabitants. So I help Senator Hoylman-Sigal’s two items of laws—the FLACO Act and the Darkish Skies Safety Act. But, I additionally urge the senator and his colleagues to go even additional.
Now could be the time to require the set up of bird-friendly glass in new buildings and substantial retrofits throughout New York and regulate the usage of synthetic lighting, which disorients migratory birds in flight and attracts them to city areas. Addressing these points is a component of a bigger effort to restrict the detrimental results of the constructed surroundings on the pure habitats of migratory species that cross our metropolis and state.
The American Fowl Conservancy estimates that half a billion birds are killed within the U.S. every year on account of collisions with buildings, and the New York Metropolis Audubon mentioned as much as 230,000 of these deaths happen proper right here within the Massive Apple.
With almost 9,000 new constructing permits issued every year throughout New York Metropolis (and a minimum of 2,600 residential constructing permits throughout New York’s Capital Area), it’s clear that the scope of the FLACO Act must be expanded to cowl all new buildings and retrofitted buildings—not simply state buildings—whether it is to make a significant discount in chook collision deaths.
Doing so wouldn’t be troublesome. First, the Act may require that the threshold for bird-friendly constructing supplies, reminiscent of patterned glass and bug screens, not exceed the American Fowl Conservancy’s Risk Issue of 30. (It is a measure of a cloth’s potential to discourage collisions by way of visible markers.) Second, necessities for the way a lot of a constructing’s facade is constructed with bird-friendly supplies may merely mirror these in New York Metropolis’s Native Regulation 15, which was applied in 2020.
Equally, the Darkish Skies Safety Act, which goals to cut back gentle air pollution, must be expanded. As written at the moment, it doesn’t embody all common streetlights, lighting for promoting, lighting on constructing facades, and customary flood lights—a number of the most egregious sources of sunshine air pollution. Moreover, its measure of lighting brightness must be modified from watts to the extra correct metric of lumens, with decrease thresholds.
Fortuitously, shields that purpose gentle downward and timers that mechanically flip off lights at an affordable hour may be applied in sensible, low-cost, and replicable methods. The nonprofit DarkSky Worldwide certifies lighting fixtures that assist stop gentle air pollution.
After all, being an architect, I acknowledge that artfully positioned exterior lights aimed with precision can create magnificence and class—the narrowly projected lighting on the Statue of Liberty, which provides it that magical glow at nighttime, involves thoughts—so I’m not suggesting that the Act prohibit all exterior lighting. As an alternative, the Act’s parameters round lamp shielding ought to enable for exactly aimed, narrowly centered aesthetic lighting, and concentrate on defending in opposition to extreme gentle trespass.
In the end, these chook collision mitigation options wouldn’t be troublesome to make use of. Nevertheless, they want the help of a extra expansive FLACO Act and Darkish Skies Safety Act to mandate their implementation and scale up their effectiveness.
Daniel Piselli is a principal and director of sustainability at FXCollaborative.