Emory University's Eco-Friendly Building is a Bird "Slaughterhouse"
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 11.26.07
Can a building really be environmentally friendly if it also happens to be a songbird "slaughterhouse," in the words of a reporter from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution?
The five-year-old Emory University Mathematics and Science Center—which boasts such green features as a storm-water retention vault to capture runoff for irrigation, motion sensors that turn down air conditioning and lighting when a room is unoccupied, benches upholstered with scrap seatbelt material, and a solar-powered meteorological station—killed 60 birds in its first year alone, no thanks to the highly reflective windows that confuse birds ramming into them at full speed.
"The building killed 60 birds in the first year," said John Wegner, Emory's chief environmental officer, tells AJC. "It was the wall of death." He said administrators ignored his concerns until he showed up at a meeting pulling dead birds out of his pockets.
Now, the university drapes part of the $40 million building with black mesh netting for about three months every fall, so migrating birds, including Magnolia warblers, Swainson's thrushes, and ovenbirds, can bounce off safely. "It has saved hundreds of lives," Wegner said. ::Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Can a building really be environmentally friendly if it also happens to be a songbird "slaughterhouse,"
Yes, if the Environmental Officer is doing his job and convinced his superiors to remedy the situation. The building was certainly not designed to kill animals. The story here should be the resolution not the original problem. Congrats to Mr. Wegner.
I am a student at Emory, and I am proud that the school is working to green up the campus. Problems like these will inevitably arise -- we can't foresee every single problem. I'm glad that someone is working to fix it.
A real problem for sure, but I wouldn't say it shouldn't be considered green, as long as they are following through with mitigation strategies. At my house we just put a few cut-out stickers of cats and owls on the windows and drastically cut the number of bird deaths.
Funny, I haven't seen any dead birds around the building while patrolling and while geocaching.
I'll take a closer look around this building and the other buildings with large glass walls.
To Emory's credit, once the issue was pointed out to them, they DID put the process in place to put up the mesh.
I also have a feeling that the reporter is being a bit dramatic. There's a certain portion of the Metro Atlanta area that loves to hate the University and loves to smear the Emory name at every turn, blowing stories out of proportion. Carrying dead birds in your pocket seems a bit dramatic and Emory tends to CYA pretty quickly in response to potential bad press, especially if it involves a reporter.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This poster grew up as the child of two Emory employees, attended Emory for undergrad, and now works for the Emory Univ Police Dept.
My error. (Not enough sleep)
The main quotes came from Emory's chief environmental officer. He seems to have been effective with his point, even if it is really gross to carry dead birds in your pocket.
Whether one of Emory's own or a love-to-hate-Emory reporter, the pocket birds did make the point.
And, credit Emory with the fact that we HAVE somebody who does what Mr. Wegner does: cover the organizational petard and self-police on environmental concerns.
How many birds would normally fly into such a building, were it built with more conventional methods?
Hey, some people are idiots, maybe some birds are too.
In the Netherlands you can by ready made stickers in the shape of a bird of prey silhouette at the bird protection society. I assume this is also possible in the US. Seems to be less cumbersome than working with nets.
We used to have an inflatable owl for that purpose. Not sure it really worked though.....
It's too bad they didn't research this aspect of 'green design', but there are things that can be done to make windows more perceptible to birds. The Toronto organization FLAP has a good set of suggestions on their website:
http://www.flap.org/
Click on the link to Bird-friendly Guidelines in the top-left corner of the home page (links to a PDF file).
Well, to be fair to Emory, birds fly into the windows at our house all the way in California as well. Due to the window tinting, the glass is now very reflective, and the birds probably think it's another one of their kind or they're trying to get to that other habitat they see. The stickers sounds like a good idea. The poor birds must go mad wondering why they're not getting to where they want to go.