Position Statement of Bird Friendly Chicago Coalition

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Downtown Chicago, April 13, 2022. Photo by Robyn Detterline.

Launched in 2016, Chicago bird advocacy organizations, supporting scientists, founding members, and committed citizens of the Bird Friendly Chicago coalition have been focused on achieving one crucial goal: working with the City of Chicago to secure passage of a policy requiring new building projects to meet bird-friendly building design standards to minimize risks to birds. This is a first step to reducing thousands of bird deaths in Chicago over the last decade from bird collisions with glass windows in Chicago buildings.

The Bird Friendly Chicago coalition has been working with the City for almost 8 years to achieve passage of this bird-friendly design standard policy. Course changes, administration changes, slowdowns, and delays on the part of the City have punctuated our work with the City over the last 7 years as we have attempted to secure passage of this policy.

Now, release of the new City of Chicago Sustainability Development Plan, which would include a requirement that new building projects approved by the Chicago Department of Planning and Development meet bird-friendly design standards, has stalled again as of January 2024.

The Bird-Friendly Design Standards Policy is being delayed again by the Chicago Department of Planning and Development. The list of excuses from the DPD feels like justification to continue delaying much needed bird-friendly requirements and to continue letting birds die year after year to benefit developer profits.

Thousands of birds are documented as having died, and tens of thousands more birds are estimated to die every year, in Chicago from collisions with dangerous glass windows in buildings, something the world became even more keenly aware of during the mass casualty event in downtown Chicago and at McCormick Place on the Lake Michigan lakefront in October 2023. Chicago is ranked as posing the greatest threat to migratory birds of any city in the United States. Chicago has fallen behind our peer cities, including NYC on this; we've ceded our position as one of the most sustainable cities in the country.

We cannot wait any longer in our effort to stop needless bird deaths from occurring in Chicago, bird deaths that are occurring among already dwindling populations of birds.

Chicago must have bird-friendly building design requirements included and enforced as part of the new DPD Sustainability plan by April of 2024. The delays that have occurred since the city ordinance passed in 2020 that mandated that bird protection be prioritized by the city have resulted in 4 years of construction that created scores of new buildings that will be deadly for birds for decades to come. Bird-friendly design requirements as part of the projects that DPD approves is just the start to advancing bird protection to all new projects in the city and beginning to find ways to retrofit dangerous existing buildings to provide safer passages to the millions of birds that travel through our region.

Bird Friendly Chicago:

Annette Prince, Director
Chicago Bird Collision Monitors

Matthew Igleski, Executive Director; Judy Pollock, President
Chicago Audubon Society

Edward Warden, President; Carl Giometti, President Emeritus
Chicago Ornithological Society