Urban Birdscapes - Food For People, Too

Before I was pulled into my present bioenergy assignment, the food systems efforts I was pulling together were starting to get off the ground. An academic book related to urban agriculture that I read at that time is titled Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes by Andre Viljoen. Coming from an agricultural background, it is fascinating to look at ideas about food systems through the eyes of architects and their perspectives on how food production not only fits into the landscape - plots, fields, and farms - but becomes a part of a solution for the re-design of cities to directly address their social and environmental challenges. Europe is so much older than America, and the evolution of towns and cities there was intertwined with agriculture and urban development through the ages - even as late as World War II, food production and concentrated populations could still be closely tied together, though these had to be revitalized in a time of emergency. I miss being able to put time into this idea - maybe another re-assignment will come along so I can get back into the thick of those kinds of things, again. More information about urban food footprints can be found here.

Along a similar track, urban landscapes to be more accommodating of not only the well-being of people, but birds as well. This morning I happened to take a look at the Portland Oregonian newspaper 
on-line, and one of the feature articles from yesterday was about bird-friendly actions that can be taken to protect travelers in avian migration corridors that happen through cities. Pasted below is the article, with an insert showing the birds that mentioned to be casualties that result from their disorientation caused by night lights in cities. I take for granted how wooded some towns are, but the portion of the land area of cities and suburbs that is fairly inhospitable to wildlife is quite high. Urban planners are considering how to design wooded corridors into the footprint of suburbs to create bird-friendly habitats (click here), just as food-productive corridors in cities. These all seem to be wise consideration, given the world population growth that is expected over the next 40 years - every little bit will help. For more background information about world food security, click here. For more reading about food security in America, click here.
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Portland's Audubon Society Fights Light Pollution, Helps Migrating Birds with Lights Out Portland
Katy Muldoon, The Oregonian
March 25, 2011

Pop quiz: Name a phrase that goes hand-in-hand with "bright lights" and "big cities."

You get an A if you guessed "dead birds."

The Audubon Society hopes to ease the avian death toll as it launches Lights Out Portland, part of a nationwide effort to reduce overnight lighting in urban areas, particularly during spring and fall bird migrations -- mid-March to early June, and late August through mid-November.

Birds frequently migrate at night, using stars to navigate. City lights can obscure the night sky's visual cues and can lure birds into urban areas, where dangers abound, says Mary Coolidge, Portland Audubon's assistant conservation director.

"Light pollution interrupts circadian rhythms," Coolidge says. "With birds, it can affect breeding and migrating cycles, foraging and predator-prey relationships."

Plus, birds lured to cities are far more likely to grow confused or exhausted, and to collide with glassy buildings, increasingly prevalent as places such as Portland grow.

More than 209 species migrate through the city and many show population declines. 

Since 2009, volunteers with another Audubon project, BirdSafe Portland, have been on the lookout for birds that die in downtown window collisions.

"The vast majority of the birds we pick up are Swainson's Thrushes (a)," Coolidge says, "but also Yellow Warblers (b), Wilson's Warblers (c), Orange-crowned Warblers (d), Rufous Hummingbirds (e), Varied Thrushes (f), Red-breasted Nuthatches (g)... We've picked up 26 different species of birds."

The deaths prompted Audubon to seek funding to join the Lights Out project, which has measurably reduced collisions in other cities. Coolidge secured a $10,000 Together Green grant from Toyota and the National Audubon Society for this spring's project launch.

Lights Out's roots date to 1960s-era Chicago, when birders noticed dozens of dead birds on the sidewalks after the 100-story, 1,127-foot John Hancock Center was built. William Beecher of the Chicago Academy of Sciences had a graphic idea for drawing attention to the problem: He showed the news media boxes of dead birds that the Chicago Audubon Society collected, for the first time drawing attention to the fact that illuminated buildings attract migrating songbirds.

Chicago Audubon's members, the group's Web site recalls, called managers of the city's tallest buildings before migration, asking them to darken the lights. Response was tepid.

Over time, though, the bird lovers' voices were heard and today nearly all the tall buildings on Chicago's Loop, that city's commercial center, participate, turning off lights from sunset to sunrise during spring and fall migrations.

Portland Oregon Skyline at Night (1)

Coolidge hopes downtown Portland building owners and managers will follow suit, as their counterparts have in New York, Toronto, Detroit, Boston, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Houston, Indianapolis and elsewhere; about 20 cities participate. Coolidge, already in negotiations with some building operators, said she hopes to have 21 Portland buildings sign on to the program by next spring.

She also hopes to secure a mayoral proclamation calling for continued seasonal Lights Out Portland campaigns. Plus, she's working with the city to revise the Portland Bird Agenda, which addresses ways to improve habitat, reduce hazards to birds, manage invasive species, and educate the public about the birds that share our city (2).

And what better time to consider a darker Portland, Coolidge says, than this weekend. Saturday is Earth Hour, a global sustainability movement in which 50 million people across 35 countries and territories are expected to turn off lights from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. because darkness is good for more than just the birds.
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(1) Portland Oregon Skyline at Night, David Gn Photography. To view more of the Gn portfolio, click here.

(2) A checklist of birds found in Portland, Oregon.