The premature loss of life of New York City’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 impression of measures designed to guard the fowl inhabitants. So I help Senator Hoylman-Sigal’s two pieces of legislation—the FLACO Act and the Dark Skies Protection Act. Yet, I additionally urge the senator and his colleagues to go even additional.
Now is the time to require the set up of bird-friendly glass in new buildings and substantial retrofits throughout New York and regulate using synthetic lighting, which disorients migratory birds in flight and attracts them to city areas. Addressing these points is a part of a larger effort to limit the negative effects of the built environment on the natural habitats of migratory species that cross our metropolis and state.
The American Bird Conservancy estimates that half a billion birds are killed within the U.S. every year resulting from collisions with buildings, and the New York City Audubon stated up to 230,000 of these deaths happen proper right here within the Big Apple.
With practically 9,000 new building permits issued every year throughout New York City (and at the least 2,600 residential building permits throughout New York’s Capital Region), it’s clear that the scope of the FLACO Act needs to be expanded to cowl all new buildings and retrofitted buildings—not simply state buildings—whether it is to make a significant discount in fowl collision deaths.
Doing so wouldn’t be troublesome. First, the Act may require that the threshold for bird-friendly building supplies, similar to patterned glass and bug screens, not exceed the American Bird Conservancy’s Threat Factor of 30. (This is a measure of a cloth’s potential to discourage collisions via visible markers.) Second, necessities for the way a lot of a building’s facade is constructed with bird-friendly supplies may merely mirror these in New York City’s Local Law 15, which was carried out in 2020.
Similarly, the Dark Skies Protection Act, which goals to cut back mild air pollution, needs to be expanded. As written presently, it doesn’t embody all common streetlights, lighting for promoting, lighting on building facades, and customary flood lights—a few of the most egregious sources of sunshine air pollution. Additionally, its measure of lighting brightness needs to be modified from watts to the extra correct metric of lumens, with decrease thresholds.
Fortunately, shields that goal mild downward and timers that routinely flip off lights at an inexpensive hour might be carried out in practical, low-cost, and replicable methods. The nonprofit DarkSky International certifies lighting fixtures that assist forestall mild air pollution.
Of course, 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. Instead, the Act’s parameters round lamp shielding ought to enable for exactly aimed, narrowly targeted aesthetic lighting, and deal with defending in opposition to extreme mild trespass.
Ultimately, these fowl collision mitigation options wouldn’t be troublesome to make use of. However, they want the help of a extra expansive FLACO Act and Dark Skies Protection Act to mandate their implementation and scale up their effectiveness.
Daniel Piselli is a principal and director of sustainability at FXCollaborative.
