Protecting Birds at the Liberty Bell Pavilion

As America celebrates its 250-year anniversary, the Liberty Bell pavilion in Philadelphia is internet hosting thousands and thousands of individuals from throughout the nation. Latest upgrades, nevertheless, had been designed to accommodate a wholly completely different form of customer. 

Audubon Mid-Atlantic labored with different members of Chicken Protected Philly  (together with the Liberty and Valley Forge chapters, the Delaware Valley Ornithological Membership and the Academy of Pure Sciences of Drexel College) to allow the Nationwide Park Service to put in a bird-friendly window remedy that makes use of patterns of UV mild to forestall migratory birds from colliding with the Liberty Bell pavilion’s expansive glass home windows.  This strategy additionally preserves a key function of the construction’s design – the flexibility to simply see the Liberty Bell by way of the constructing’s home windows.  

“The Liberty Bell is a logo of American historical past, and now it’s additionally serving to to put in writing a brand new chapter for chook conservation,” stated Keith Russell, City Conservation Program Supervisor at Audubon Mid-Atlantic. “This mission exhibits that defending our historic landmarks and the wildlife that shares these areas can go hand in hand.” 

Every spring and fall, over forty million birds migrate by way of town of Philadelphia as they journey between their breeding grounds and wintering areas. Throughout migration, most of those birds fly at night time, utilizing the earth’s magnetic subject, the place of the celebs, and different alerts to navigate. Synthetic mild can lure birds off course, whereas glass can seem invisible or replicate open sky and habitat. Consequently, greater than 1 billion birds are estimated to die from constructing collisions every year in america. 

Independence Nationwide Historic Park, dwelling to the Liberty Bell and different landmarks related to the American Revolution, grew to become a precedence for collision monitoring after group members reported frequent chook strikes on the park’s trendy buildings and since the park was a website that was simple to entry for monitoring and analysis. 

Chicken Protected Philly discovered that chook collisions had been occurring at all of the park’s trendy buildings, and the Liberty Bell pavilion was the primary park constructing to be retrofitted partially as a result of the work aligned with preparations for the nation’s 250th birthday. Whereas Independence Nationwide Historic Park and the Nationwide Park Service deliberate, managed, and funded the whole mission, Russell initiated the park monitoring mission in 2021 and managed the subsequent reporting efforts that helped to encourage and information the retrofit work.    

This spring, contractors accomplished the addition of Chicken Divert, a bird-friendly window remedy manufactured by Feather Pleasant, to the pavilion’s 9,000 sq. toes of glass. The almost clear product is simply barely seen to individuals however extremely seen to birds, considerably decreasing collisions with out compromising the clear nature on the historic website.  

This expertise isn’t restricted to historic landmarks. Owners and companies also can set up bird-friendly window therapies to scale back chook collisions whereas sustaining clear views by way of their home windows. 

Monitoring of the construction will proceed over the approaching months and years. Related therapies have been proven to scale back bird-window collisions by a median of almost 80%.  

Chicken-friendly constructing practices gained momentum in Philadelphia following a devastating 2020 mortality occasion in which up to 1,500 birds collided with skyscrapers in a single day. Chicken Protected Philly was fashioned shortly after. Led partially by Audubon Mid-Atlantic, the coalition advances migratory chook analysis, public schooling, bird-friendly constructing enhancements, and participation within the nationwide Lights Out initiative, which inspires decreasing pointless nighttime lighting throughout peak migration. 

As we have a good time America’s 250th anniversary, the Liberty Bell stands not solely as a logo of our nation’s previous, but additionally for instance of how preservation and innovation can be a part of collectively to assist a extra sustainable future.